Documenting Migration:
From A Lampedusa Outpost To A National Level

MotM seeks partners in growing its migration story
archive from the humanitarian perspective.

ROME, ITALY 16 July 2019 – Join Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) in partnership to document the migration flow in the Central Mediterranean through the framework of humanitarian storytelling. With it, MotM captures the intimacy and urgency of each migrant’s experience on the ground, and now aims to do it on a larger scale, to help inform policy and popular understanding.

It recently launched the new and ever-expanding section of its story archive in Italian (accessible here), and can now leverage this asset to connect with Italian readers more comprehensively. The goal is to raise the human aspect of migration in Italy and in the EU to a national level where gaps in understanding about the core facts of the migrant experience still remain.

MotM began small, with its founder, Pamela Kerpius, publishing single stories at a time from its outpost on Lampedusa island in autumn 2016. With the scope of the work expanded now to over sixty stories and growing, plus regular essays, and a podcast (launching 23 July 2019), the publication is positioned to become a more active component of a larger campaign aimed at humanizing migration flows and finding viable solutions around them.

To do this MotM wants to partner with established organizations, people, and political parties that have long been advocating or reporting on these issues.

Learn more about Migrants of the Mediterranean by contacting the publication directly with any inquiries about how a partnership to publish further testaments and stories can be established, or to find out how its advocacy and fieldwork can be useful in the development of your own platforms and initiatives.

What is Humanitarian Storytelling?
The mission of Migrants of the Mediterranean is to see the trauma people have suffered on their journey and in daily life in Italy and Europe as a reality we see as our own. Only by understanding the crisis of humanity before us are we equipped to address it.

Migrants of the Mediterranean uses the framework of humanitarian storytelling to present the individual migrant’s journey, from country of origin to Lampedusa and greater Italy, documenting both the difficult means of travel across Sub-Saharan and North Africa and the extraordinary human rights abuses faced in Libya, including slavery and torture.

Migrants of the Mediterranean believes that by illustrating the undignified and dehumanizing passages people have had to make from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, in the name of safety, freedom and opportunity, we can develop empathy for the other.

Migrants of the Mediterranean also understands that by documenting the stories of some of the world’s most vulnerable, the work contributes to a more complete historical record.

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About Migrants of the Mediterranean
Migrants of the Mediterranean is an online humanitarian storytelling publication that documents the journeys of the individual people who have crossed continents, countries, the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea from their countries of origin to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa––the southernmost European land point from Africa in the Central Mediterranean.

The archive was developed to restore dignity to those who have had it stripped away during travel and trafficking, particularly across Libya where extraordinary human rights abuses, including slavery and torture, have been endured. It is also an account for the historical record. The journey story archive stands as a document from which we can index the realities of migration for some of the world’s most vulnerable at this pivotal time.

Migrants of the Mediterranean founding writer and Italy correspondent, Pamela Kerpius, personally greets arriving migrants in Lampedusa and in cities across the Italian peninsula for one-on-one interviews. Her storytelling continues across the mainland after people are transferred from Lampedusa, often the place of first reception, and documents issues of daily life and integration in Italy while individuals await asylum hearings and their subsequent results.

Read more about Migrants of the Mediterranean at: www.migrantsofthemed.com.

Documenting Migration:From A Lampedusa Outpost To A National Level

Documenting Migration:
From A Lampedusa Outpost To A National Level