ABSTRACT
This chapter locates one of the new frontiers of Europe within a fundamental paradox of the city of Rome: an inexorable expansion of buildings together with a mounting rejection and marginalization of an emergent immigrant population that is vital to the city’s expansion. There are two reasons to study the city of Rome in relation to the contemporary European policies of migration control. First, the route that goes from East and Central Africa towards Libya via the Sahara Desert has been, at least until summer 2011, the most trafficked and policed in North Africa, and therefore the most dangerous. The main flow of migrants traveling from SubSaharan Africa to Europe sails from the Libyan coast and arrives at the southern coast of Italy. Several scholars have made the case for the significance of studying the topic of migration to Italy and its relation to questions of space, time, control, power, and visibility (Parati, 2005; Bullaro, 2010). Rome represents the place where immigrants in Italy can most quickly find points of reference and social coordinates to build new ways of life.
