Forced Migration, Masculinities, and Vulnerabilities in the Mediterranean

Forced Migration, Masculinities, and Vulnerabilities in the Mediterranean explores the role of intersectional power hierarchies and the social reproduction of vulnerability in shaping forced migrant men’s embodied realities of suffering along the Central Mediterranean migration route (CMR), which connects sub-Saharan Africa to Sicily via Libya.

Based on life-history interviews and observational research collected from sub-Saharan international protection-holders and seekers in Sicily, the book expands our understanding of the violence-migration nexus by exploring refugee men’s gendered mobilities. Participants’ narratives of gendered embodiment within the trans-Mediterranean illegality industry are used to shed light on the violence continuum produced by their marginalised position within locally salient hierarchies of masculinities across different migration stages. Following the ethnographic encounter between the researcher and participants in the racialised landscape of the Mediterranean migration ‘crisis’, the performance of competent manhood emerges as a crucial narrative site where forced migrant men can contest their protracted experiences of marginalisation and reclaim subjectivity. Overall, the book views the relationships between forced migration, masculinities and vulnerabilities as a locus which reveals participants’ neglected social welfare needs and demands in postcolonial Europe.

Forced Migration, Masculinities, and Vulnerabilities in the Mediterranean appeals to those with research interests in migration, gender, sexuality, postcoloniality, race, ethnicity, European studies, and humanitarianism.