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A Border Island on the Crossroads of History: Lampedusa and the Mediterranean

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Volume 15

New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations



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A Border Island on the Crossroads of History

Lampedusa and the Mediterranean

Dionigi Albera

Translated from the French

236 pages, 7 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-437-8 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Published (March 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-439-2 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781836954378


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Original French edition winner the Costantino Nigra Award 2025 for the best work in European anthropology.

Reviews

“The author traces back the island’s history from medieval times to our own, along an itinerary that turns out to be full of surprises, from soldiers and crusaders, hermits and corsairs … intense and absorbing.” • Alex Corlazzoli in Il Fatto Quotidiano

“Albera’s captivating historical anthropology guides us on a tour of Lampedusa and its centuries of history. By taking us to the shared sacred space of Cave-Sanctuary of Our Lady of Porto Salvo, and through the cast of dramatis personae who have passed through the island, Albera brilliantly demonstrates the intricate challenge, admonition, and hope that Lampedusa holds for the Mediterranean.” • Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Columbia University

“The first ever history of the island and its 20 square kilometers, which is also a learned exploration of Europe's relationship with its southern borders.” • Allan Kaval, Le Monde

Description

Lampedusa evokes the crossings made by migrants and refugees and its name is associated with the sad sequence of shipwrecks and deaths in the central Mediterranean. For several centuries, Lampedusa has been an uninhabited land at the frontier of two conflicting worlds: between Africa and Europe and between Christianity and Islam. It was a stopover for sailors and a zone of religious truce. This book follows an ethnographic account of the social life on this small island, exploring its history articulated with the present where thousands of migrants and tourists cohabit both well and poorly in a few square miles.

Dionigi Albera is Senior Research Fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His research interests include migration, domestic organisation, pilgrimage and interfaith mixing. He has co-edited several volumes with a Mediterranean focus such as Sharing Sacred Spaces in the Mediterranean: Christians, Muslims, and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries (Indian University Press, 2012), and New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies (Taylor and Francis, 2016).

Subject: Anthropology (General)Refugee and Migration StudiesSociology
Area: Southern Europe


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