Emergency in Transit
My book, Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present, responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north, focusing on the discourses and experiences of “emergency” that shape contemporary Mediterranean migration to the EU. I turn to testimonial narratives, analyzing oral history interviews I conducted with migrants and aid workers in Italy, together with a range of visual and narrative texts that portray transit to Europe and within Italy.
Recognizing emergency not as a singular event but as an apparatus that operates continually, this book challenges the colonial logics that posit the movements and presence of Africans in Europe as inherent crises.
Emergency in Transit is out with the University of California Press, in their Critical Refugee Studies Series, in both paperback and open access versions. Please be in touch if you're teaching or working with the book and would like to arrange a class visit or research talk.
Reviews
“This excellent book, while focused on the oppressive tentacles of what Eleanor Paynter calls the 'emergency apparatus,' navigates its way through the at times haunting accounts of survivors of the Mediterranean crossings, the forms of protest crafted in elegy to its victims, and the many literary and other artistic productions that document a rich and vibrant emergent cultural world often all but silenced in popular discourse. Paynter unearths the many symbols and tokens of a transformation of Italian society that many struggle to ignore: the fragments of shipwrecks, the ubiquitous detention centers, and the national commemoration of the loss of victims at sea that all signal a society caught in its own web of forgetting."
—Donald Martin Carter, author of Navigating the African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility
“Exploring the multiple dimensions of danger that compose the transit of migrants to and in Italy, Paynter lays bare the workings of an emergency apparatus that perpetuates itself. But this passionate and timely book does something more than that. Mining memories and testimonies, it illuminates possibilities for a different future."
—Sandro Mezzadra, coauthor of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (with Brett Neilson)
"Emergency in Transit brilliantly shows how emergency, as both a logic and an operation, ushers in a new age in Italy wherein virulent and violent forms of racism are given space to play out. This beautifully written book also holds space for the voices, texts, films, and sounds that serve as witness and testimony to this pernicious age. In so doing, Paynter expands the possibilities of agency for the many who are caught up in the churn of the emergency apparatus of migration."
—Stephanie Malia Hom, University of California, Santa Barbara
in Ethnic and Racial Studies, by Ayşe Şanli: “Emergency in Transit is a profound contribution to scholarship on migration, cultural studies, and racial justice, and will undoubtedly become a key text for scholars and practitioners alike.”
in Border Criminologies, by Janica Ezzeldien: “This is a testimony to the development of alternative visions of mobility and belonging, and thus a groundbreaking new resource for researchers, authors, activists, and anyone interested in how contemporary migration and the borderscapes are reproduced via this emergencification of migration.”
in the European Journal of Life Writing, by Violetta Ravagnoli: “Paynter’s skillful blending of theoretical rigor with ethnographic and narrative insight makes the book both analytically rich and emotionally resonant. She challenges readers not only to rethink how to conceptualize migration but also to listen, remember, and witness.”
in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, by Sadok Ladhibi: “Paynter contributes to the body of literature that addresses issues of migration, migrants’ rights, and racial and social injustice. The book offers a pertinent analysis that seeks to question the official narrative envisioning migration as a crisis to be addressed in terms of governance without considering the migrants’ side of the story.”