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In this paper, we compare two seemingly very similar instances in which individuals and organizations within the borders of the global North have memorialized the deaths of irregular migrants at sea: the SIEV X memorial in Australia's national capital Canberra, and the Giardino della memoria (Garden of Remembrance) on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Unlike ephemeral manifestations of grief, potentially these memorials have effects that reach well beyond their creation. We relate the differences between the memorials to the contexts within which they were created: an immediate local response involving people directly affected by the disaster's aftermath, on the one hand, and a delayed nation-wide response involving people removed from the deaths at sea, on the other. We also discuss the difference between a memorial that names and thereby individualizes victims, and one that does not, and between one that celebrates an alternative, hospitable society, and one that does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southern European countries have come to constitute the most vulnerable external border of the European Union (EU) over the last decade. Irregular migration pressures have been acutely felt on the EU's southern sea borders, and particularly on four sets of islands: Canary Islands (Spain), Lampedusa and Linosa (Italy), Malta, and Aegean Islands (Greece). This quartet is, to a large extent, used as stepping stones by irregular migrants and asylum seekers to reach the European continent. This paper studies the role of these islands as 'outposts' of a framework of externalization. It starts by discussing the notion of externalization and its different facets. It considers how externalization is linked to both fencing and gate-keeping strategies of migration and asylum control. The second part of the paper focuses on the special role of the island quartet with respect to the externalization web cast by national and EU-wide migration policies. It concludes with a critical reflection on the multi-level character of externalization policies and practices that occur both within the EU and between the EU and third countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of information and communications technologies ( ICTs) in the Arab Spring of 2011 has been widely discussed in the popular media, but has received little scholarly attention. This paper presents the results of field work carried out at the Italian island of Lampedusa in March 2011, which investigated migrants' use of the Internet and mobile communications technologies while still in their North African countries of origin, and the influence of ICTs on recent democratic movements there. Empirical work proved that the use of digital social networks helped to break migrants' isolation, spread information and indignation, and virally coordinated demonstrations. The paper stresses the role of emotions and affect in this process, injecting these into regional analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lampedusa Island displays important socio-economic criticalities related to an intensive touristic activity, which implies an increase in electricity consumption and waste production. An adequate island conversion to a more environmental, sustainable community needs to be faced by the local Management Plans establishment. For this purpose, several thematic datasets have to be produced and evaluated. Socio-economic and bio-ecological components as well as land cover/use assessment are some of the main topics to be managed within the Decision Support Systems. Considering the lack of Land Cover (LC) and vegetation change detection maps in Lampedusa Island (Italy), this paper focuses on the retrieval of these topics by remote sensing techniques. The analysis was carried out by Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI multispectral images from 1984 to 2014 in order to obtain spatial and temporal information of changes occurred in the island. Firstly, imagery was co-registered and atmospherically corrected; secondly, it was then classified for land cover and vegetation distribution analysis with the use of QGIS and Saga GIS open source softwares. The Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) was used for LC maps production, while the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used for vegetation examination and distribution. Topographic maps, historical aerial photos, ortophotos and field data are merged in the GIS for accuracy assessment. Finally, change detection of MLC and NDVI are provided respectively by Post-Classification Comparison (PCC) and Image Differencing (ID). The provided information, combined with local socio-economic parameters, is essential for the improvement of environmental sustainability of anthropogenic activities in Lampedusa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration to Europe increasingly emerges as a core security concern. In response to these growing anxieties the external border of Schengen space of free movement of people was established to limit uncontrolled immigration to the European Union. Yet, looking closely at how this border works in Lampedusa and its surrounding seawaters, one realizes the functioning of the European external border works to undermine the legitimacy of institutions on the island, de facto challenging law enforcement both on the island as well as at sea. Based on the data collected during the six-months-long fieldwork that I conducted on the island, this paper disentangles the complex machinery of the border as it structures in Lampedusa, and presents how such complex governing technology works through authorities' strategic use of local land and seawaters and their simultaneous neglect for the concerns of the population inhabiting them - representing a major source of insecurity for islanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abundance of migratory birds on Lampedusa (Sicilian Channel, Italy) has been documented since the fifteenth century, but during the nineteenth century, this small island was particularly noted for the regular presence of cranes. Official reports documented the occurrence of these birds from as far back as the eighteenth century, recording the period of their presence on Lampedusa (every year between May and August), their regular nesting, and even the crop plants they fed on, a habit often resulting in a major damage for to the island's subsistence farming. In spite of all this documentary information, scholars did not, however, succeeded in assigning them to a well-defined species and while several authors described them as Common cranes, Grus grus, others identified them as Demoiselle Cranes, Anthropoides virgo, or even as Black crowned Cranes, Balearica pavonina. The paper is an attempt to investigate this taxonomic and zoogeographic puzzle, while inclining towards an identification of the crane in question in the morphological and ecological characters of the Demoiselle Cranes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on migration-related border controls has greatly expanded during the past decade. Special attention has been given to processes of contestation and of rights-claims enacted by migrants, drawing greatly on Isin’s work on acts of citizenship and Rancière’s articulation of the ‘uncounted’ and the political. Within this broad debate little attention has been devoted to the acts of common people in contesting current border management and especially in refusing the policing and the bordering of theirownterritory. By focusing on the Lampedusa borderland, this paper will explore and interrogate the verbal protests made by the people of Lampedusa in response to the drowning of some 366 African migrants on 3 October 2013. The protests were mostly against current border patrolling and its politics of (non-)life, which prioritise border protection against (migrants’) life protection. The call to protectingallhuman life, equally worthy of being protected, transformed these protests into political acts. Using and extending the work of Rancière, I explore the extent to which the people of Lampedusa have highlighted a ‘wrong’ and enacted ‘dissensus’ by contesting the (natural) securitised order of EU border management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The island of Lampedusa is known as an EU border hotspot. Its high degree of 'borderness', though, is less the result of its geographical location than the product of a 'borderization' process carried out through specific policies, practices and discourses. The introduction explains what Lampedusa's 'borderness' consists in: irregular landings and the changed anthropic and human landscape have turned the island into an ideal observatory for all major issues of the current debate on migration-related border controls. The first section analyses the main factors of the 'borderization' process. Specific political choices (establishing a detention centre, concentrating migrants, dispatching border guards, employing patrol boats, involving humanitarian workers etc.) suggest that borders are the result of the placing and interaction of 'spatial bodies', as well as of legislative measures and international relations. The paper also regards Italian immigration control policies as a 'political spectacle', and Lampedusa as the theatre of the 'border play'. The second section therefore analyses the two narratives (the securitarian one of the 'tough' and the humanitarian one of the 'humane' border) prevailing in five different acts of the play, and shows that both are strictly connected and serve the same purpose of governing and managing human mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a bioengineering intervention within the Mediterranean Basin carried out at Lampedusa Island (Strait of Sicily) on the "Spiaggia dei Conigli", the only sand shore of all Sicilian territory where the sea turtle Caretta caretta lays its eggs every year. The erosion of the steep slope over the beach itself caused sensitive changes in the grain size of shore's sediment and reduced the area of the beach with fine sand suitable for C. caretta oviposition. In order to reduce surface water flow and to stop erosion, several bioengineering options were adopted using only native plant species to preserve local botanical heritage and to prevent the local extinction of some species. One year after interventions, average plant establishment was about 90% and many species which were severely endangered before the action (i.e., Jacobaea maritima (L.) Pelser & Meijden subsp. bicolor (Willd.) B. Nord. & Greuter and Limoniastrum monopetalum (L.) Boiss.) are now at low risk. Micropropagation and inoculation with beneficial root microbial symbionts were successfully applied to selected species. Regular demographic and phytosociological monitoring on permanent plot areas enabled to quantify the effect of bioengineering techniques on plant percentage cover and plant survival. The combination of bioengineering, biotechnology, and agronomic practices applied on plants appears to be effective in increasing plant cover and preserving several locally endangered plant species. Results presented here suggest that erosion can be controlled without moving large quantities of soil and without planting tree species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]