Lampedusa, frontière de l'Europe. La crise migratoire entre alarme et compassion

The small Italian island of Lampedusa has been equipped over the years with a sophisticated border management system, to face the growing flows of migrants reaching its coasts. As a result, a variety of security and humanitarian actors have been deployed to the island. Their practices have been observed through the method of the participating observation. They have also been analysed in light of the prevailing trends in the media narrative of immigration—often built on the mediatisation of migrant landings in Lampedusa—as well as in public policies. A correspondence between these dimensions has been detected; on the one hand, between how migrants are treated at borders and the way they are represented by the media; on the other hand, between the media narrative of immigration and the main migration policies. Migrants are therefore not only represented but also treated according to their stereotyped image.