|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
December 17, 2010 - January 14, 2011. These dates have been fixed
as the beginning and completion of a revolution which took the
world by surprise, opening up a sudden and peculiar spatial
upheaval. Mohamed Bouazizi's gesture, setting himself on fire, was
an extreme one. Immediately following this act, squares and streets
started to fill up, from Tunisia to Tahrir square, to Sana'a, to
Tripoli and to Damascus. The revolutions that originated were
revolutions against political dictatorships and against
dictatorship over people's lives, against the way poverty was
rendered invisible and against unbearable existences. These
revolutionary struggles staged an unprecedented capacity for common
action based on a logic of 'spatial takeover.' These existences
decided to stand up and be counted, taking over streets, squares,
Kasbas, medinas, taking up their freedom, the freedom to be, to go,
to be noticed at last. They did so forming an uncontainable
movement, from Tunis to Cairo, from Maghreb to Mashreq. From
Tunisia to Europe. These 'Arab Revolutions' and, the one that
sparked in Tunisia in particular, have not followed just one
direction in their 'spatial takeover.' They have also managed to
fill a series of European spaces with existences and bodies:
streets, islands, stations, parks; from Lampedusa to Paris,
crossing the sea in an unexpected and sudden capacity to unify two
shores and two continents, hence erasing centuries of history,
acting on and performing the 'natural' proximity of these shores.
Spaces in Migration: Postcards of a Revolution attempts to
rearticulate some of the images of what happened starting from
December 17, 2010, sketching a necessarily fragmented story, a
series of postcards, and piecing together fragments of before- and
after- moments, following the spaces in migration of this
revolution. 'Spaces in Migration is a compelling read, which brings
together a plethora of voices while making a decisive intervention
in debates about migration in the wake of the Tunisian revolution.
Voices that sorely need to be heard find space in this book. Deftly
combining analysis with rich empirical detail, the authors succeed
in highlighting critical dimensions of the revolution as well as
key problems of contemporary migration and humanitarian regimes.' -
Vicki Squire, Associate Professor of International Security,
University of Warwick, UK 'Spaces in Migration is an intellectual
eruption - the eruption of the Arab Spring, and the Tunisian
Revolution in particular, into the critical study of migration and
borders. Combining the very nuanced analyses of the Italian
scholar-activist contributors with the transcripts of their
interviews with Tunisian migrants and their families, and also with
refugees from various African countries encamped in the borderzone
between Libya and Tunisia, this book provides a poignant
exploration of how the autonomous subjectivity of migrants can
radically destabilize the logics of border control.' - Nicholas De
Genova, co-editor of The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space,
and the Freedom of Movement (Duke University Press, 2010)
|
|