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Emergency in Transit responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights.
Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, Eleanor Paynter draws together testimonials from ethnographic research—alongside literature, film, and visual art—to interrogate the colonial, racial logics that inform emergency responses to migration. She also examines the media, discourses, policies, and practices that shape lived experiences of migration well beyond international borders. Centering the witnessing of Black Africans in Italy, Emergency in Transit reveals how this emergency apparatus operates and posits a vision of mobility that refutes the notions of crisis so often imposed on those who cross the Mediterranean Sea.
About the Author :
Eleanor Paynter is Assistant Professor of Italian, Migration, and Global Media Studies at the University of Oregon.
Review :
"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."
"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."
“Paynter's skillful blending of theoretical rigor with ethnographic and narrative insight makes the book both analytically rich and emotionally resonant.”
“Emergency in Transit analyzes contemporary migration, particularly African migration directed towards Italy, through a critical and multidisciplinary lens. Paynter challenges the dominant narrative of the ‘migration emergency,’ proposing instead a view in which migration is understood as a structural and permanent condition, not as an extraordinary event.”
“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.”
