The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Activists from the network WatchTheMed Alarm Phone created a ‘hotline’ for people in distress at sea in 2014 and have since engaged with tens of thousands in emergency situations in the Mediterranean. Advocating freedom of movement for all, the activists understand their maritime intervention as a challenge to Europe’s exclusionary border regime and its production of Mediterranean ‘death zones’. In solidarity with unruly human mobilities, the phone-line seeks to foster new modalities of collective political struggle in unlikely spaces.
Travellers boarding Greek coastguard vessel, Frontex vessel in the background; Source: WatchTheMed Alarm Phone 2016
