Overview

Survival and Witness at Europe's Border focuses on one of the most mediatized migrant disasters in Europe. On October 3, 2013, an overcrowded fishing boat carrying Eritrean refugees caught fire near Lampedusa, Italy, where 368 people died. Karina Horsti shows with empathy and passion how this disaster produced a kaleidoscope of afterlives that continue to assume different forms depending on the position of the witness or survivors. Pasts and futures intersect in the present when people who were touched by the disaster engage with its memory and politics. Horsti underscores how the perspective of survival can envision a way forward from a horrific unsustainable present. Survival and Witness at Europe's Border develops the concept of survival to rethink border deaths beyond the structures and processes that produce the murderous border and constitute the focus of critical migration studies. It demonstrates how the process of survival transforms people and societies. Survival is productive, Horsti argues, shifting the focus in migration studies from apparatuses of control to emphasize the agency and subjectivity of refugees.

Full Product Details

9781501771378

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Reviews

Karina Horsti's meticulous groundwork and sensitivity to detail with interconnecting activities and cultural productions of sorts, guided by empathic witnessing with survivors and families in the aftermath of a tragedy, led her to write Survival and Witness at Europe's Border. This important and influential book is the authoritative, ultimate go-to book for anyone studying the rough and often violent migration to Europe from Africa. * H-Ethnic * This important and influential book is the authoritative, ultimate go-to book for anyone studying the rough and often violent migration to Europe from Africa. * H-Net * Horsti presents an impressive and humbling study of the ways the disaster lives on: how it is communicated about in public spheres, witnessed and represented, and remembered and memorialised by a variety of actors. * MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research *

Author Information

Karina Horsti is Government of Finland/David and Nancy Speer Visiting Professor in Finnish Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the editor of The Politics of Public Memories of Forced Migration and Bordering in Europe.

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