Lampedusa is the largest of the Pelagie Islands (20km2) with 6,000 inhabitants, located approximately 60 nautical miles from the Tunisian coast and 110 miles from the Sicilian coast.
Maldusa is a cultural association aimed at facilitating freedom of movement, supporting existing infrastructures for migrant solidarity, as well as researching and documenting border violence, on land and at sea, on the Mediterranean routes.
Lampedusa has historically been narrated and understood merely as a border zone, with a binary representation between island of peace and island of violence. The spectacularization of crisis and emergency has oftenled to a lack of understanding of the local, continuous, daily struggles of people who inhabit and cross the island...
In Palermo, the Maldusa cultural association seeks to bridge a multitude of local and transnational realities that derive from anti-racist struggles, migrant activism and solidarity, as well as building bridges between communities on the move and their places of departure...
The Mediterranean Sea is a contested space, inhabited by a variety of actors who struggle for and against freedom of movement. Every day, people who cross the sea, authorities who surveil and abandon them, NGOs who search and rescue, fishermen and merchant vessels crews, either attempt to defy borders or, willingly or not, reinforce them...
BUILDING BRIDGES, BURNING BORDERS - MALDUSA ONE YEAR BOOKLET
'BURNING BORDERS'
We dedicate this slogan to the daily struggles of people, who in North-Africa are called Harraga - "border-burners" - while crossing the border without visa and burning their ID-documents afterwards not to be deported.
In this booklet we narrate the first year of Maldusa, its vision and its projects.
With one station in Lampedusa, a second station in Palermo, a boat at sea and dozens of informal and formal relationships with solidarity infrastructures and people on the move, we created solid platforms for monitoring and reporting border violence, as well as for supporting and facilitating freedom of movement.
NEWS and PUBLICATIONS
Lampedusa prepares for summer - April 2024
09/04/2024
In the first three months of 2024, just over 6600 people arrived on the shores of the island of Lampedusa, both autonomously or at the Favaloro Pier, escorted by the Italian Guardia di Finanza or Coast Guard.
ECHOES 11 - CIVIL MRCC
02/04/2024
Detaining Civil Fleet Ships means: let more people die at sea ….
10th Anniversary from the Tarajal Massacre
06/02/2024
February 6th, 2014 - February 6th, 2024: Ten years have passed since the Tarajal massacre.
ECHOES n.10 - Civil MRCC
24/01/2024
2023, a year marked by a large increase in sea arrivals in comparison to the year before, and not only on the Central Mediterranean route. 2023, a year of intensified attempts by the EU to expand border control in collaboration with its autocratic partners in North Africa. 2023, another year of even tougher racist agitation and deprivation of...
The creation of no-assistance zones as a result of institutional policies and interventions in the central Mediterranean; the criminalisation and repression of people on the move in Sicily, Libya and Tunisia; the shipwreck of 14 December.
FRIENDS
CIVIL MRCC
The Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (CMRCC) is a coordination and documentation platform for people in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea.
Ragazzi Baye Fall
Since 6 years in Palermo, a self-organised solidarity group of the Baye Fall diaspora.
Welcome to Europe
For freedom of movement: Independent information for refugees and migrants going to Europe.
Borderline Europe
Civil resistance against the European migration and border policy since 2007
Mem.Med
Searching and identifying missing migrants at the Mediterranean border.
Louise Michel
Solidarity and Resistance at Sea - combining lifeguarding with the principles of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
In Limine / ASGI
Addressing issues relating to borders control and access to international protection.
