Ethics at the border

transmitting migrant experiences

Filippo Menozzi

pp. 21-40

in: Jessica Elbert Decker, Dylan Winchock (eds), Borderlands and liminal subjects, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

Menozzi focuses on dispossessed immigrants living inside the island of Lampedusa's detention center, who find themselves defined by a space that is neither European Union nor home; they are subjects produced by territoriality and the stratifying process of global capitalism. Menozzi focuses on a group of European poets who have borne witness to the immigrant experience through a collection of poems, Sotto il Cielo di Lampedusa. An ethical obligation to testify to the urgency of an otherwise silent struggle demands that they attempt to give voice to the interaction between the "inside" and "outside" of European citizenship and experience. Such discourse of the European border moves the margins into the center and challenges the definition of European identity.