ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to theorize the dynamics that emerge from the intimate relations between contemporary African migrants, borders, and justice on single boats around the island of Lampedusa. African migrations test the contours of legal obstacles set by the national government and provoke the judicial order to intervene and reset the frame of discourse around human dignity and justice. According to the historical reconstruction at the trial, a boat named Cap Anamur, flying a German flag and belonging to a humanitarian organization, had rescued thirty-seven shipwrecked irregular immigrants in the Sicily Channel who declared that they had escaped from Sudan because of the civil war. In particular, the fact that neither nets nor fish were found on the boat by Italian authorities was not considered appropriate evidence. The idea of the fixity of the border reinforces the discourse of Fortress Europe as a socio-political body under a permanent state of siege that instigates violent panic reactions.
