Challenging Ideas of Crisis at International Borders
Eleanor Paynter in World in Focus
Eleanor Paynter, Migrations postdoctoral fellow from 2019–22, has published a book on the so-called “migration crisis,” with a focus on migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
In Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present, Paynter gathers the accounts of survivors of Mediterranean crossings and compares migrants' journeys to public debates, government policies, and a range of media. She finds that narrative framings of “crisis” and “emergency” do not align with the lived experiences of people on the move.
A majority of people, Paynter finds, moved around from country to country to seek new and better opportunities. They did not move directly to Italy from their home countries. “These accounts challenge the idea we have that migration is a movement from point A to point B. Very few journeys fit that linear narrative,” she says.
“One key point my research confirms is that the way we often hear about migration in dominant discourse doesn't match the way people crossing borders describe their experiences.”
Yet a pervasive narrative in Italy paints migration to the country as an emergency, reflecting the idea that arrival in a new country is sudden and unforeseen. People do experience extreme risk during their journeys on the Mediterranean Sea, but “crisis is not an inherent quality of migration or of borders,” she says.
“It often gets treated that way—to very differing ends—by people across the political spectrum and in different roles. But emergency is not an inherent fact. It's produced and reproduced in narratives, policies, images, interactions (often in contradictory ways), and all of that has material consequences.”
This is especially true in the case of migration from Africa to Europe, the major focus of the book. “The idea that migration is a crisis reproduces older colonial ideas about Africa as an unknowable space of chaos and crisis,” Paynter says.
“The testimonials I discuss in my book explicitly challenge the idea that the movements and presence of Africans in Europe constitute a crisis,” Paynter explains. “Migrant and racial justice are intertwined, and working towards a just future requires imagining beyond these narrow emergency framings of migration.”
Eleanor Paynter was a postdoctoral fellow for Cornell's first Global Grand Challenge, now the Migrations Program, from 2019–22. She is currently an assistant professor of Italian, migration, and global media studies at the University of Oregon. Read more about her contributions to Migrations.
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