Ventimiglia is a city in north-west Italy, about 10 km from the French border. Since 2015, it is also a focal point within the EU’s internal migration control and management system. National authorities have put measures in place aimed at blocking and controlling the flows of migrants seeking to cross into France. And migrants, for a variety of reasons, have done their best to circumvent these controls and continue their journeys in accordance with their own plans and desires. They rarely fail. It’s is a tense, active place that brings the complex relationship between migration policy, migrants’ vulnerabilities, and migrants’ desires into sharp relief.
During the last five years, a higher number of rejections on the French side of the border has led to an increase in the number of people stuck in Ventimiglia. The Red Cross established a camp in 2016 to provide them with some basic services, and a number of informal camps have been set up in the surrounding countryside as well. These are under constant threat of eviction by the Italian authorities. It is impossible for those stuck in Ventimiglia to move regularly from one country to another, and they are further impeded by a range of policy measures designed to make their journeys difficult, longer, and more fragmented. These include being repeatedly compelled to move, periods of waiting and blockages at the border, and forced transfers from the different EU countries.
Yet despite increasingly restrictive policies, the Italian authorities have not been able to stop irregular mobility. Policies cannot annihilate migrants’ desires and plans, or their aspirations to a better life. So irregular migration cannot be stopped. It can only be made to exact a higher human cost, measured in deaths and the creation of new vulnerabilities. As a result, a wealth of coping strategies and adaptations can be found wherever migrants and migration policy come into contact.
