Introduction: The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders and Citizenship

Abstract

We live in critical and crucial times. With the rise of neocolonial projects and extreme-right populism in Europe and beyond, not to mention the banal and gratuitous violence of neoliberalism, we face today an acute time of overdetermined crisis. These times urgently call for critical analyses about the world in which we currently live. For us, and many others beyond this volume, what is unfolding in the Mediterranean is, in part, constitutive of an unparalleled crisis. While migration across the Mediterranean is a complex and dynamic phenomenon where routes, countries of origin and transit, push and pull factors and more constantly change, the Blackness of it all is constant and ever present. Blackness, more often than not, functions as the symbol, metaphor, and trope of criminality, violence, and much more. So much so, that the performance and creation of legislation and law as well as public sentiments aired on radio or the football pitch are all ultimately the enactment of negrophobia.