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

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.

On 11th of October 2023 an impressive commemorAction took place near the port of Lampedusa to remember the victims of the big shipwrecks ten years ago and at the same time to point out the responsibility of the European border regime in the ongoing death at sea that continues to this day. According to IOM figures, in 2023 another...

While the numbers of people on the move from Tunisia arriving in Italy drastically decreased since End of September 2023, an increasing traffic can be observed from western Libya, including the phenomenon of crowded big fishing vessels


FRIENDS


Mediterranea Saving Humans

In Solidarity with people on the move, at land and at sea.

Watch the Med - Alarm Phone

The hotline in solidarity with people crossing the Mediterranean Sea

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.

Captain Support

Alternative legal support for criminalised people on the move.

Welcome to Europe

For freedom of movement: Independent information for refugees and migrants going to Europe.

Refugees in Libya

Self-organised group of people in struggle in Libya and beyond.

Border Forensics

Investigating border violence, fostering mobility justice.

Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research

Transfeminist autonomous research centre in Athens.

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.

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