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...
'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 a 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.
On 11 March 2025, the EU Commission presented its new proposal for the Return Regulation. Deportation regulations are set to be significantly tightened, with renewed discussions around the establishment of so-called 'return hubs'. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Commission, is proposing that these detention centres for deportees should also...
Lampedusa, as the transit point of many people on the move, is an important place in the fight against borders. We want to share some insights on what we could see while living on the island, by creating links to the other side of the sea. How is the situation in Tunisia and Libya affecting the arrivals in Lampedusa? How...
On March 18, 2025, yet another shipwreck occurred just 15 nautical miles off the coast of Lampedusa. 10 people were rescued, 7 bodies were recovered, and 39 people are still missing. They departed from Sfax, Tunisia on the Night of March 16.[1]
CommemorActions took place on February 6 across dozens of cities in Europe and North and West Africa. Relatives of the disappeared participated in many meetings and demonstrations to commemorate their missing loved ones and to condemn the deadly EU border regime. For more than thirty years, the direct or indirect violence of border regimes has...
Our report, the result of a joint monitoring by ASGI and Maldusa, exposes the contours of a system that confines more than it welcomes, selects more than it protects. A system the Italian government has also sought to export to Albania, further worsening existing criticalities. The hotspot of Porto Empedocle, through its dynamics of detention and...
In 2025, several civil sea rescue organizations will look back to the last 10 years of their fight for safe passage. 2025 is also 10 years since the historic summer of migration. The memories of these months of hard-won freedom of movement from Athens to Stockholm and with demonstrations of welcome all over Europe appear today as something from...
The Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (CMRCC) is a coordination and documentation platform for people in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea.
Since 6 years in Palermo, a self-organised solidarity group of the Baye Fall diaspora.
For freedom of movement: Independent information for refugees and migrants going to Europe.
Searching and identifying missing migrants at the Mediterranean border.
Solidarity and Resistance at Sea - combining lifeguarding with the principles of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
Addressing issues relating to borders control and access to international protection.
