Seite - 69 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 2/2016

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Tony Kushner | Lampedusa and the Migrant Crisis 69 Migration estimate that of roughly 3,700 recorded deaths, close to 2,900 have been en route to Italy via Lampedusa/Sicily. In contrast, there have been just over 700 deaths for the 800,000 plus who have attempted to reach Greece.40 It is perhaps the comparative ‘safety’ of the sea journeys to the Greek islands that has persuaded some, especially Syrian refu- gees, to shift from the ‘high-risk, central Mediterranean to the less risky eastern Mediterranean route’ from 2015.41 At the start of 2016, with European Union attempts to cut off journeys from Turkey to Greece, there are fears (now realised) that the central Mediterranean route will become dominant again. Anticipating this possibility, then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was reported as deman- ding EU leaders to increase the number of patrol ships in order to turn ‘back boats of refugees as soon as they set off on perilous journeys across the Mediterranean from Libya’.42 With reference to the island’s recent, trau- matic history, Paolo Cuttitta has referred to the ‘Lampedusa “Border Play”’ and one that has been ‘performed’ from 2004 onwards and which up to 2014 consisted of ‘five acts’.43 Cuttitta is far from insensitive to the sufferings of the migrants linked to the island, noting that ‘Lampedusa is the place where hundreds of migrants have touched Italian soil only as dead bodies’.44 He is aware of the dangers of studies that ignore the ‘agency and the subjectivity of migrants’, pointing out in his case study 40 ‘Irregular Migrant, Refugee Arrivals in Europe Top One Million in 2015’, International Organization for Migration, 22 December 2015, in http://migration.iom.int/Europe, accessed 27 December 2015. 41 Philippe Fargues, ‘2015: The year we mistook refugees for invaders’, Migration Policy Centre: Policy Brief 12 (December 2015), 2. 42 Rowena Mason, ‘Cameron wants EU to turn back more refugees’, Guardian, 18 March 2016. 43 Cuttitta, ‘”Borderizing” the Island’, 207. 44 Ibid, 197. Fig. 6-8: Migrant tombstones, named and un- named, Lampedusa Cemetery, Photo: Tony Kushner