FOR A BORDER-DIALOGUE IN ‘FORTRESS EUROPE’: THE REAPPROPRIATION OF MEDITERRANEAN ROUTES by Luigi Cazzato

Contemporary Europe is again haunted by the old stereotypes of
corrupted southerners and virtuous northerners, lazy Mediterraneans and vigorous
Teutons. This paper aims to survey these tropes among current academic and
public debates, from postcolonial and southern studies perspectives. These labels
and views have to do with discursive formations such as orientalism and
meridionism, and stretch back to the Mediterranean colonial history dominated by
northern modernity. Terms like “change”, “innovation”, “modernity” on one
hand, and “immobility”, “tradition”, “backwardness” on the other, can be easily
and predictably attributed to the two geo-cultural spaces. Nevertheless, our task is
less attributing the right category to the right side than disrupting the whole
paradigm, under the pressure of the migrations from the South.

2013_IJCCSEC_For a border dialogue in fortress europe