By: Anouk Pelletier
After graduating from the school of Oriental and African Studies in London, I’ve continued pursuing migration studies at the American University in Cairo. My interest in this field mostly stems from my early childhood growing up in East Jerusalem, and multiple later visits, where I’ve witnessed perpetual dispossession and displacement of Palestinians. I had the opportunity to work with CARE International in the West Bank as well as with IOM in Morocco, alongside volunteering for various organisations including Utopia56 in Paris and the British Red Cross in London.
Burnt fingertips
I keep turning over specific lines from The Optician of Lampedusa (Kirby, 2016) since I first read them eight years ago. They depict the protagonist discovering that some refugees, whom he had rescued from the sea just a few days prior, burnt their fingertips. Why would someone willingly harm their body, most likely causing permanent damage, after miraculously having survived a shipwreck?
This disturbing bodily harm is an emerging practice for asylum seekers upon reaching the European Union (EU). They resist the European border regime and its damaging effects through this act.
The story told by The Optician of Lampedusa is based on actual events from 2013. Based on one of the deadliest shipwrecks of the decade, which occurred off the coast of the Italian Island of Lampedusa, a group of locals stumble upon the disaster while sailing. This boat, which has recently capsized, has almost 400 asylum seekers, mostly women and children from Eritrea. The improvised rescuers realized the passengers were drowning in front of them, and there was no rescue team in the vicinity. Only 47 people survived. From its dreadful beginning, when the main character becomes an improvised rescuer, the novel tells several wretched stories. Yet, what I remember most vividly is the short passage about refugees burning their fingertips.
Photo Credits: Anouk
I keep wondering to myself, why?
Perhaps because I had wrongly assumed the author would focus the story on the survivors and their experience of “victimhood” based on the shipwreck itself, but also how they were poorly treated once on the tiny Italian island.
One of the predominant narratives in Europe about migration has focused on this, how a migrant attempting to reach the continent is inevitably a “mere victim at the mercy of the atrocities of the border policies and practices”. Figures support this narrative well. Since 2014, over 28,919 migrants have gone missing or have lost their lives while crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach the European continent. Indeed, most media, along with some politicians, have helped develop this helpless victimhood narrative as images of rundown ships sink into the sea along with their unworthy passengers. This narrative is also usually reflected in both academic and non-academic writings.
However, this narrative is disingenuous as it implies and is associated with misleading discourses of overarching victimhood and loss of political agency. It paints the portrait of migrants as mere hopeless and helpless victims. This in turn helps foster expectations from the public, as well as decision and policy makers, that migrants should be grateful of any support they receive as they are thought to be completely resourceless. The Optician of Lampedusa shatters this narrative without downplaying the reality of border violence. The displaced Eritreans who had just survived the shipwreck are described as being exhausted, scared, and seemingly unorganised and confused with what to do and where to go next. This fits right into the classic victimhood narrative, but then, without warning, the author shifts the story with the protagonist seeing the migrants’ burnt fingertips. Not only does this narrative show the readers that asylum seekers are informed enough to understand how and what to resist, but they manage to organise and find the resources to collectively damage their fingerprints en masse.
How is burning ones’ fingerprints an act of resistance? It defies the establishment of the EU innovative policy to manage displaced populations in Europe.
Almost all passengers on board that fateful ship in 2013 were fleeing Eritrea and planning to seek asylum in Europe, but not necessarily with Italy as their final destination.
From 2001 onwards, there has been a marked and substantial decline in human rights conditions in Eritrea. During this period, the Eritrean Constitution was suspended, and dissenting political views, apart from the government's own ideology, have not been allowed within the nation. A report released by the United Nations Human Rights Council provides an account of the severe political climate in the country and reaches the conclusion that Eritrea is governed by a climate of fear rather than adherence to the rule of law. Thus, the passengers of the ship that capsized in 2013 were most likely fleeing the military dictatorship in Eritrea, as well as forced conscription into the military which can last for decades, if not one’s entire lifetime.
Most had probably already gone through a dangerous and expensive journey. Forced migrants from Eritrea often start their journeys by travelling to Ethiopia and Sudan. Then they pay smugglers a very high price to go through the Sahara Desert and onwards to Libya. The sea crossing from the Libyan coast is supposed to be the final leg of a dreadful journey in search of refuge in Europe. The only thing left for the survivors to do is to ensure they receive the protection they need once they reach European shores.
At the time of the writing of the book, the rate of granting protection to applicants from Eritrea in the European Union (EU) was notably high, standing at 81%. Nevertheless, there were, and still are, substantial disparities among EU countries concerning both the approval rate and the choice of protection status, which may include refugee status, subsidiary protection, or humanitarian permits. While some countries are inclined to acknowledge refugee status on a vast majority of Eritrean applicants, others tend to offer subsidiary protection. These distinctions primarily stem from varying evaluations on the grounds for extending protection. Alongside personal preferences, these disparities explain why not all survivors of the Lampedusa boat planned on seeking asylum in Italy.
However, it does not fully explain why they resorted to burning their fingertips. The technological tool developed by the EU explains this; indeed, it has become the newest and most important feature of the EU asylum regime: EURODAC.
A quick history of the Dublin Protocol’s technological arm
In 1997, the EU adopted the Dublin Convention, which aims to reduce the movement of migrants within the EU. This convention stipulates that member states are responsible for processing asylum claims from individuals who arrive on their territory. In 2013, the Convention was reinforced by the implementation of Dublin III (Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013), also known as the Dublin Protocol. This new regulation requires asylum seekers to complete their asylum application in the first EU member state they enter, de facto preventing them from seeking asylum in multiple countries.
To facilitate the implementation of this policy, the EU established EURODAC, which is essentially a database that gathers personal information, including fingerprints, of all migrants entering the EU, including asylum seekers. Since migrants often lack official or recognized identification documents, the EU uses fingerprint records to identify them. In addition to its role under the Dublin Protocol, EURODAC has expanded the EU's overall surveillance of migrants.
These policies have restricted the freedom of movement for migrants and refugees within the EU. Refugees who have been "Dublined" – meaning their fingerprints are in EURODAC's records, are now subject to deportation to the EU country where they first arrived, meaning they are compelled to stay in a country that may not have been their intended destination. Human Rights Watch has characterised the Dublin Protocol as an "inefficient and inhumane" practice of forcibly transferring asylum seekers. This is where resistance comes in, to defy a growingly controlled border regime.
An almost imperceptible, yet effective act of resistance
The Eritrean refugees from the 2013 shipwreck devised an effective means to counter EURODAC in order to avoid being subjected to the "Dublining" process. By resorting to deliberately burning their fingertips with flames or chemicals, or by using razors or other tools to etch into their fingerprints, migrants undermine the integrity of EURODAC data and, as a result, elude the "Dublining" procedure through these self-inflicted alterations. This practice of resistance effectively achieves its goal by allowing migrants to maintain their overall freedom of movement.
The extent to which this resistance practice is organised remains challenging to ascertain. There is no official data available regarding the number of migrants who have resorted to such methods or when and where this practice is most prevalent. However, it is sure that the Eritrean refugees from Lampedusa are not the only ones to utilise this practice.
Burnt fingers and the nature of this specific act of resistance is clearly disturbing, as is any kind of bodily self-harm. If I dedicated this blog post to this topic, it is not to romanticise border violence, but to urge migration scholars and policymakers to research and learn more about these acts of resistance performed by migrants towards the European migration regime. Despite migrants and refugees experiencing disparities in protection and often undergoing different forms of mistreatment, they actively strive to resist such challenges and pursue their individual objectives in order to achieve their goals. Migrant resistance does not start and end with fooling the fingerprint machine. There is a great array of other examples of acts of resistance; from hunger strikes, the largest one was recently held in September 2023 in a Polish detention centre, to the “March of Hope”, and even everyday “irregular” border crossings themselves.
Resistance can and should have a great impact on the efficiency of EU policies and should be further studied to hear the messages conveyed by migrants to make sure that migrant’s needs and dignity are taken into full account. Furthermore, these acts should be heralded by the public and politicians as a reminder that migrants ought to not only be invited to the table to discuss migration policies in order to design effective and respectful policies that acknowledge the dignity of the entire person, but to have a main seat and strong voice on the decisions that directly impact their lives.
Author’s Bio:
After graduating from the school of Oriental and African Studies in London, I’ve continued pursuing migration studies at the American University in Cairo. My interest in this field mostly stems from my early childhood growing up in East Jerusalem, and multiple later visits, where I’ve witnessed perpetual dispossession and displacement of Palestinians. I had the opportunity to work with CARE International in the West Bank as well as with IOM in Morocco, alongside volunteering for various organisations including Utopia56 in Paris and the British Red Cross in London.
Bibliography
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- European Council on Refugees and Exiles (2016) “The “March of Hope”: refugees in extreme humanitarian conditions try alternative crossing path”. Available at: < https://ecre.org/the-march-of-hope-refugees-in-extreme-humanitarian-conditions-try-alternative-crossing-path/ > (last accessed 10 February 2024)
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