Lampedusa in Focus: Migrants Caught between the Libyan Desert and the Deep Sea

It is the last day of August and at the airport of Lampedusa, a small Italian island situated south of Sicily, yet another deportation of ‘undocumented’ migrants is taking place. The incident appears as wrapped in the mantel of ordinariness that exacerbates even more the violence of the event. Two planes parked approximately 20m away from each other are waiting for passengers. A group of tourists pours out of the airport building and strolls towards the airplane of AirOne, an Italian tourist carrier. The adjacent plane of AirAdriatic, a private Croatian air company, is boarded by a group of passengers walking in a fixed formation behind each other. Four police officers (one officer in the back, one in front and two on the side of the row) wearing civilian clothes and large black protection gloves lead the group of 10 migrants from the detention camp to the airplane. The distance between the AirAdriatic plane and the detention camp is rather short. In fact, the plane is parked only 15m or so away from the barbed wire that separates the runway from the camp. Migrants boarding the plane are dressed the same: they wear dark blue sports trousers with a matching jacket and carry a white plastic shopping bag. Seven groups of 10 men are lead to the plane. Behind the barbed wire there are several hundreds of migrants seated in small groups on the soil. When the plane takes off most of them are on their feet, waving.