We are happy to publish Anna Marino’s paper “Narrating Crises of Europe’s Southernmost Borderscapes: the Case of Melilla and Lampedusa” as part of our EuroMedMig Working Paper Series.

The paper analysis narratives and media coverage of two border crisis, namely the shipwreck of Lampedusa of 2013 and the Melilla massacre of 2022, drawing both a comparison and a temporary dialogue between the media coverage of these two events, and informing about how these territories and migration flows are perceived at the European level as a result of claims made in the media. 

Abstract: This paper presents the qualitative content analysis of claims in mainstream media made around crises related to immigration at specific borderscapes of the European Union located in two Southern European Member States, namely Italy and Spain. The two selected border crisis cases are the tragic shipwreck of Lampedusa, which occurred on the 3rd of October 2013, and the Melilla massacre, which occurred on the 24th of June 2022. I argue that both events were pivotal in shaping the view (local, national and international) on these borders given their broader mediatic reach, which gave these borderlands unprecedented attention, despite being only two of the numerous tragedies that took place on the Central and Western Mediterranean migratory routes since the early 2000s. The aim of the analysis is thus to compare claims made in the media around the mentioned events on these specific borderscapes, peculiar areas shaped by transnational flows that have existed and developed beyond the constructed idea of the national state and its clear-cut borders. Indeed, I argue that what happens on these borderscapes and its consequential media representation profoundly shapes the way we think about these territories, migration flows, and migrants at the national and European levels. The aim is thus to detect potential similarities and differences in how these events are narrated through claims made in the media. These claims and their comparative analysis give us an idea of how these events and these territories are perceived in the two member states and then translated at the European level.

Anna Marino is a doctoral researcher at the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus (nccr – on the move), and at the University of Neuchâtel. As part of her PhD journey, Marino just did a three-months visiting fellowship at GRITIM-UPF. Her PhD thesis is titled "Who’s Beyond the Border? Narratives and Counter Narratives of Migration in Southern European Border Societies".


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