Emergency in Transit

Emergency in Transit responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. Eleanor Paynter reformulates Europe’s so‑called migrant crisis from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights. Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, she draws together testimonials from ethnographic research alongside examples from film, media, literature, and visual art to interrogate the colonial, racial logics that inform emergency responses to migration well beyond international borders. Revealing how this emergency apparatus operates, and centering the experiences of Black Africans in Italy, Emergency in Transit posits a vision of mobility that refutes the notions of crisis so often imposed on those who cross the Mediterranean Sea.

“Passionate and timely. Illuminates possibilities for a different future.” — SANDRO MEZZADRA, coauthor of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (with Brett Neilson)

“This excellent book navigates its way through the at times haunting accounts of survivors of the Mediterranean crossings, the forms of protest crafted in elegy to the victims, and the many artistic productions that document a rich and vibrant emergent cultural world often silenced in popular discourse. Eleanor Paynter unearths the many symbols and tokens of transformation of a society caught in its own web of forgetting.” — DONALD MARTIN CARTER, author of Navigating the African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility

“Emergency in Transit brilliantly shows how emergency, as both a logic and an operation, ushers in a new age in Italy wherein virulent and violent forms of racism are given space to play out. This beautifully written book also holds space for the voices, texts, films, and sounds that serve as witness and testimony to this pernicious age.” — STEPHANIE MALIA HOM, University of California, Santa Barbara

ELEANOR PAYNTER is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Oregon.