Looking for an abolitionist future in the early Italian NO border movements

• In Event: Imagining Abolitionist Futures

Abstract

This paper is based on a small qualitative project with 25 participants of the early no borders movement in Italy (1990- early 2000) which contested the criminalization of migration. The project seeks to excavate the possibility of a future without borders in the voices and memories of those who campaigned in the past, before the current necro-political regime of border violence. Through one-to-one online and phone interviews with some of the leaders of the movement from its left wing, autonomist, anarchic and catholic strands, the authors reconstruct the visions that animated those movements and the actions they participated in. We analyze the hopes, struggles, achievements, and setbacks of this Italian early no-border movements. Many of the actions remembered involved challenging the restriction in migration and the use of detention centers, and others involved using the law to enable migrants to settle in Italy and beyond. The aim of the project is to provide some more hopeful sense of future for our current abolitionist strategies and for today’s generations.

Authors

• Teresa Degenhardt, Queen's University Belfast

• Alessandro Senaldi, Bari University