We find ourselves in Menton, "la perle de la France". This beach town is known for its lemons and its endless sunny days. It’s the last municipality on the Côte d’Azur before France becomes Italy. It’s also the context of an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Beginning in 2014, Ventimiglia (the last municipality in Italy before France) experienced an influx of migrants hoping to cross into France. Initially, this resulted in the establishment of an informal “No Borders” camp to shelter those in transit. The eviction and dismantling of the camp in September of 2015 sparked protests and the mobilization of numerous associations in Ventimiglia. Since the suspension of the Schengen agreement due to alleged security threats, the Franco-Italian border has undergone continuous fortification and increased police presence since this time.

In July of 2016 an official reception center, Camp Roya, was established in Ventimiglia to be administered by the Red Cross. At the height of the migrant crisis, Camp Roya housed approximately 800 people. In 2017 the camp expanded to accommodate women and children.

In 2020, Camp Roya shut down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving 200 people without shelter. No official camp in Ventimiglia has existed since then, forcing migrants to sleep in informal settlements by the river and under the bridge. Even though in 2022 it was announced that a new permanent hosting center would be opening in Mortola, on the outskirts of Ventimiglia to shelter migrants, following the right-wing party “Lega”’s victory in the municipal elections on May 28th, 2023 this seems extremely unlikely. While the center’s opening is put off, the border remains dangerous for migrants. As of February 2023, over 40 deaths have been recorded along the French-Italian border according to ASGI Medea.

Since February, we have been conducting weekly permanences at the border to document the pushback of people on the move. These took place on Sundays between 7.30 am to 19.30 am, during which volunteers from Sciences Po Refugee Help (SPRH) and Relier Menton alternated in 3-hour shifts. The aim was to facilitate — when possible —  the experience of the pushback for people on the move by providing them with information and snacks while collecting data around the number of pushbacks. From the 5th of February 2023 until the 29th of April 2023, we spent a total of 112 hours at the border, during which 877 people were pushed back, amounting to approximately 7.83 pushbacks per hour.  Yet these numbers hardly begin to capture the scale of abuse occurring at the border, nor the diverse and complex experiences of those who attempt to traverse it.

This report aims to add depth to data, highlighting the humans behind this crisis through testimonies from migrants and local solidarity actors alike. Data is helpful for understanding the situation, but it does not account for the nuances, experiences, and human voices that animate this border. Stories In Motion is an account of some of these voices. Therefore, following a protocol drafted appositely, the volunteers asked the people subjected to the pushbacks if they were willing to share part of their experiences at the border’s facilities or in Ventimiglia at large. This was the case only when the conversation was ongoing and the person seemed comfortable talking to the volunteers. The anonymized testimonies were included in this report exclusively upon the interviewee's consent. Stories in Motion also contains relevant events witnessed by volunteers at the border in Menton and Ventimiglia.

Scholar Thomas Nail holds that even though we live in a globalised world, borders seem as visible as ever. He thinks that borders are not so much about “stopping things from moving, but about movement itself”, since they merely shift fluxes and funnel people into different directions. Thomas Nail calls this “kinopolitics”, the politics of movement. Borders divide and determine, they are political, cultural, social, economic and territorial. They are a political statement in that they promote “expansion by redirection”: in Nail’s words, societies expand juridically and politically by expelling, by excluding and mostly rediricting towards danger and death. Even though borders are strongly political, our work in this report is first and foremost human in nature: we listen to stories and try to go beyond numbers and generalizations. We analyse observable dynamics in an objective way, read legal sources and compare them with the realities present here in the format of direct testimonies from people we meet on the move.

We hold that through the militarisation of borders, migration is not stopped, but simply rendered more difficult and more deathly. We observe the way the Schengen agreement suspension has impacted people on the move in the region and how migrants’ rights are daily violated. We focus on some categories of violated rights, such as minors’ rights, basic access to health services, SBV, criminalisation of border solidarity and racist border control. Finally, we try to promote a dialogue between the disciplines and the opinions, to turn testimonies into art and to build community.

We realize our own limitations in the work we do and the fact that we will never fully understand the experience of irregular migration in Europe and beyond, and we are aware of our incredible privilege in being able to talk to these people, and even write a report about their stories. However, we are also aware of our distance from “the other side” - the inhumanity of a system of illegality and indignity.

So, we choose to pick this side and learn to do it as best as we can. It is, however, a constant work in progress - after all at the core of each of our human activities is, always, movement.

We are open to feedback and discussion, which you can initiate by contacting us. Enjoy the report!

Warmly,
The Stories in Motion team