Migration prohibition at the Tunisian-Italian border: stratification of sea journeys and (in)visibilisation of migrants

In recent years, within the context of the so-called European reception crisis, there has been a marked intensification of securitarian approaches to border management, accompanied by a rise in deaths along increasingly treacherous migratory routes. This process unfolds within a scenario of growing migratory turbulence and the escalating exercise of necropolitical violence and its humanitarian justification. The policies implemented by the European Union and third countries to control and contain irregular migration – framed within a paradigm that we define as “migration prohibition” – have proven ineffective, instead generating ripple effects that are problematic for different actors and spaces. This article presents the findings of a multi-sited collective ethnography conducted between December 2020 and April 2025 across the Mediterranean space between Italy and Tunisia, along an increasingly externalised border. The ethnographic data, emerging from interconnected research experiences between the island of Lampedusa and Tunisia, aim to contribute to the ongoing debate on Central Mediterranean migration. The study offers a transnational perspective and proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding current forms of border crossing, cohabitation, and the production of imaginaries within the Afro-European maritime space.