Ilaria Giglioli
2021 'For an Extrospective Geopolitics of Urban Development' (with William Kutz)
2021 'A World of Walls? Unmaking Borders through Comparative Pedagogies'
2019 'Denaturalizing borders through comparative ethnography'
2017 Migration, colonialism and the making of the Mediterranean border between Sicily and Tunisia.
Related Publications
BORDERING, MIGRATION, AND COLONIALITY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
In a moment of resurgent nationalisms, how can we question the naturalness of borders? My research addresses this question in the Central Mediterranean corridor between Italy and Tunisia, site of one of the most significant mass migrations in recent history. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, I study migration, boundary drawing and debates about coexistence between Italians and Tunisians in contemporary Sicily and in colonial Tunisia. The research shows that throughout the last century of Mediterranean migration, liberal celebrations of cross-Mediterranean coexistence reinforced inequalities between Sicilians and Tunisians. Thus, I argue that liberal multiculturalism is insufficient to transform uneven power relations created by borders. Instead, recognizing exclusion and inequality reproduced through historic and contemporary multicultural projects allows us to develop cross border solidarity initiatives based on anti-racist practice and redistributive justice.
My major work based on this project is my 2025 Book Unbounding Europe. Bordering and the Politics of Mediterranean Solidarity in Sicily and Tunisia. I am also expanding this work comparatively to the US southern border.
THE POLITICS OF WATER
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
What are the socio-political effects of uneven and unfinished water infrastructure provision? How might we define the right to water in different historico-geographical settings? I explore these questions both in the Northern and in the Eastern Mediterranean, analyzing the role of water infrastructure in maintaining uneven power relations in Sicily (Italy) and in the West Bank (Occupied Palestinian Territories), as well as the relationship between contrasting definitions of the right to water in the West Bank, and different long-term visions of the status of the territory.