REPRODUCING BORDERS, REPRODUCING ABYSSAL LINES. REPRESENTATION AND GOVERNANCE OF THE "MIGRATIONS' EMERGENCY" IN CONTEMPORARY ITALY

Abstract

The aim of this text is to draw a picture of how the representation of contemporary migratory
phenomena deals with the hegemonic paradigm of the Eurocentric thought. In particular,
contemporary Italy - as it is located at the center of the Mediterranean and therefore crossed by
enormous migratory flows - is a privileged place to investigate how the theme of migration is
functional, in European societies, to the demarcation of new and multiple abyssal lines. What I intend
to do is to read the system of representation and management of the "migration crisis" in Italy within
the paradigm of the “abyssal thinking”: the two categories of “modern knowledge” and “modern law”
- intending to describe and regulate migratory phenomena - produce migration as a constant form of
emergency; a tendency to represent migrants as criminal, invasive and dangerous subjects is
becoming increasingly evident. The result is the affirmation of a hegemony of the new xenophobic
rights, through the construction - in law and narration - of a state of exception that permanently justifies
the application of extraordinary political measures as a new paradigm of social order management
within the Italian State, formally democratic, but socially authoritarian. The hypothesis to prove is that
the abyssal line - traced by the migratory phenomena - crosses and structures, today, the European
society – the one of the Italian national state, in our case - as a whole, and not only in its "racialized"
population segment: what we intend to investigate is a mechanism of colonial power - and therefore
of exclusion, exploitation and production of absence - exercised within a global North.