Naor Ben-Yehoyada
“Narrow, not Channel: Translocal Network and Clandestine Mobility between Sicily
and Tunisia”
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Abstract
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Situated in the maritime border-zone between Europe and the Maghreb, my research investigates Tunisian seafarers’ maritime practices of clandestine navigation and transportation of people across the Mediterranean, and the transnational network of connections that sustain these age-old maritime practices in the current socio-political context in both Tunisia and Sicily. I propose to investigate this transnational community of Tunisians in southwestern Sicily from two complementary angles. First, I examine the emergence and growth of this community since the 1970s as well as its continued role in facilitating additional clandestine migration across the Sicilian Channel. Second, I investigate how the community’s translocal existence, expertise, and success in clandestine maritime transportation hinge on its liminal position—both in relation to Italy and, more broadly, in relation to Europe—while at the same time curtailing its members' chances for overcoming their marginality.
I relocate the investigation of transnational migration to the practical, ongoing network of skills and connections that seafarers employ in the maritime border-zone between the Maghreb and Europe, in order to analyze both phenomena of Arab labor migration in Europe and the latter’s control of its maritime borders—two phenomena which heretofore have been studied in isolation—as two aspects of the same Mediterranean social network. Finally, I analyze Tunisian seafarers and their Sicilians partners as modern-day participants in a translocal social network that builds upon and contributes to the redistribution of people and goods across the political boundaries that the European Union’s emergence and decolonization’s effects have raised across the Mediterranean.
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