Page - 78 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

78 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Tony Kushner | Lampedusa and the Migrant Crisis Porto M and the politics of memory Why the island is called ‘Lampedusa’ is unclear. Greek origins are suggested with three possible connections – ‘rock’, beacon’ and ‘crab’. All three in combination provide a neat summary of its complex past and present. The island has been a military base for various empires and it has continued this fortress role as a border for the European Union. It has also been a place of local welcome to newcomers escaping danger and a place of livelihood for its fishermen. Population movements in and out of the island, forced (including slavery inflicted on Lampedusa by Bar- bery Pirates) and voluntary are integral to its remote history, a part of and apart from Europe and physically closer to north Africa (a geography and geology reflected in its architecture). The boat people and the treatment of them, including deportation and return, as well as empathy towards them, are part of a deep history and not alien to it, a point highlighted in Rosi’s Fire at Sea. In the politics of performativity involving both Exodus 1947 and contemporary boat people, history matters. On one level, they share a common bureaucratic past and the construction of the ‘illegal immigrant’ or more crudely and commonly today, the ‘illegals’. The ahistorical ten- dency in migration studies has led to the missing of this connection and the origins of ‘Migrant “Illegality”’, which are dated much more recently, for example to American treatment of Mex- cans and others and only from the 1970s.78 Indeed, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the label of ‘illegality’ has become mainstream, used in everyday discourse to deny the common humanity of migrants. Such racist tendencies have not disappeared. In April 2015, Katie Hopkins, columnist in Britain’s best selling newspaper, The Sun, pen- ned an article with the headline: ‘Rescue Boats? I’d use gunships to stop illegal migrants. Make no mistake these migrants are like cockroaches.’ Her Biblical discourse did not stop there, refer- ring to British towns as ‘festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers’.79 Despite an online petition exceeding 200,000 to have her sacked and criticism from Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner, that she had utilised lan- guage ‘reminiscent of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda’ and the Rwandan genocide, Hopkins remained in post.80 The reason why became apparent a few months later. Revealingly, her hate discourse was regarded as acceptable by both the newspaper itself and Prime Minister, David Cameron. On 24 July 2015, The Sun’s front page was devoted to a story from Calais and how ‘Illegals swarm into Britain on empty Channel freight wagons’ with an editorial criticising Cameron for inaction.81 Less than a week later the Prime Minister responded on national news, performing prejudice to the allegedly hostile public by referring to ‘a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain’.82 The acting leader of the Labour Party replied that Cameron should ‘remember he is talking about people and not insects’.83 As radical Church of England minister, Giles Fraser, added, 78 Nicholas De Genova, 2002. ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology 31, 419-447. 79 The Sun, 17 April 2015. 80 The Guardian, 20 and 24 April 2015. 81 The Sun, 24 July 2015. 82 Cameron to ITV television news, 30 July 2015 reported favourably in Daily Mail, 31 July 2015. 83 Harriet Harman quoted in The Guardian, 31 July 2015.