Giovanna DI MATTEO, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy
In recent decades, the islands of Lampedusa (Central Mediterranean, Italy) and Lesvos (North Aegean, Greece) have become steppingstones on migrants’ routes to Europe, attracting volunteer tourism aimed at providing support to migrants. Using the theoretical framework of Lefebvre’s triad and Massey’s theory about space as a product of relations, this work investigates the two islands as lived spaces for volunteer tourists, the representations of the island spaces they carry and their spatial practices not only as volunteers but also as tourists. The choice of where to go to volunteer depends upon wider geopolitical context, and volunteers’ destinations (e.g. reception centres) are, stricto sensu, their working spaces. Nevertheless, during their free time, volunteers leave these spaces to explore the rest of the islands; specifically, I investigate this dimension of their experience. Through a survey, interviews and participant observation carried out between 2018 and 2019, I illustrate how volunteer tourists imbue the space of Lesvos with symbolic meanings, thus confirming their role in the humanitarian borderscape of the island. I further examine the ways in which they challenge the preconceived imaginaries of the island. Concurrently, I show how in specific places in the islands, the lived experience of volunteers creates deep connections between volunteers, migrants and locals, to the point that some spaces are co-produced or deeply transformed by the presence and practices of volunteers. Finally, I draw some preliminary conclusion on how these conditions changed drastically after the covid-19 outbreak and the consequent changes on the migration management and volunteers’ presence on the two islands.
Mots clés : Migration|Volunteer tourism|Lived space|Borderscape|Islands
A103845GD