Working with migrants’ memories in Italy: The Lampedusa dump

Abstract

The Archive of Migrant Memories aims at recording and diffusing migrant selfnarratives in Italy to leave a visible trace of recently arrived migrants and their rising agency in Italian society. Retrieving oral and written records of migrants travelling to and landing on Italian soil intends to contrast, both physically and metaphorically, the hiding or cancellation mechanisms lying behind the collective unease surrounding immigration policies in today’s Italy. The recurrent dumping of migrant lives in the Mediterranean, particularly on its European southernmost gate at Lampedusa, symbolizes the careless disposal of irksome memories of migration within presentday Italian society. Here the remains of rotten boats derived from the repeated landings of irregular migrants on the Island and their human ‘waste’ – old shoes, clothes, cooking utensils, children’s toys, throw-away objects, but also water-stained documents, photos, holy books, and individual writings such as letters, memoirs or diaries – lie to decompose as a vivid expression of what is not to be remembered in the nation’s past.