1 Borderscaping: Some Methodological Notes
In “Frontiers of Utopia: Past and Present,” Louis Marin talks about what he calls a “travel narrative.”1 Marin urges us to understand utopia as a process rather than as an icon, a formalist representation which is only a synthesis of something larger. The representation of utopia always takes the form of a map, and Marin suggests a potential in the process of “travelling” such a map. The map defines each element’s location and trajectory by holding together different names, numbers, and information according to pre-established codes. It is, however, an abstract representation of a place that is “everywhere and nowhere” in the extreme determination it offers.2 When one looks at a map, moves over it with the eyes and follows a road with the finger, crosses a boundary at another point, jumps from one side of a river to the other, what emerges is “the figure of a projected journey,” which can start at a specific point, then move to another, and then return.3 In these different temporal and potential processes of “variation” and “transgression,” the locus becomes space. Space “wakes up” to narrative.
Referring to Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), specifically the chapter “Spatial Stories,” Marin states that “all narrative is a space narrative … All narrative is a travel narrative; all travel consists in going from a place to a no-place, a route to u-topia.”4 The journeys resulting from these movements are positioned in the gap of the limit, in the “work of the horizon,” because
the process of travel may be a way of displaying, just in the front, a utopian space … Any travel is, first of all, a moment and a space of vacancy, an unencumbered space that suspends continuous time and the ordering of loci. The ideology of the travel implies a departure from a place and a return to the same place.5
In this same journey, the traveller accumulates knowledge as well as experience. When they return, they re-establish their own “consistency” and “identity as a subject.” Conversely, “the utopian moment and space of the travel … consists in opening up … a nowhere, a place without place, a moment out of time, the truth of a fiction, the syncopation of an infinity and paradoxically its limit, its frontier.”6
The next part of this book is a journey within the Swiss-Italian border today that takes the form of a travel narrative, on both a practical and a conceptual level. First, this travel narrative is a travelogue of research, which combines a textual part and a visual part made of photographs—Travelling Flowers and Other Stories (2019–2021)—, derived from the places visited and the people met between 2019 and 2021 during fieldwork and research in the border area. And more, this travel narrative is a space of speculation on the horizon of the border, a space of imagination that starts from places, goes to non-places, and then returns, back and forth, crossing passages and transgressing them. Practically, this research also corresponds to several journeys across the border. This method of working follows the idea of borderscaping, that is, a form of field research that points to an active action of border construction and de-construction, while also acknowledging the relevance of experience on the ground for those engaged in the study of borders.7 The resulting activities contribute to the shaping of a territory that is as imaginative as it is legal, physical, and experienced.
The two parts of the travelogue, the textual and the visual, are complementary and equally important. The photographic material is not conceived of as an illustration of the written text but as something autonomous yet interrelated with the text. This way, I aim to overcome a specific academic tradition that believes in the sole value of text and of writing as research material. Recently, alternative forms of doing research have arisen. One example is Hilde Van Gelder’s book Ground Sea. Photography and the Right to Be Reborn. Engaging with several photographic and filmic artworks, the book explores the Strait of Dover and the area of Calais, where the journey of many people on the move comes to an impasse in light of contemporary border policies. While studying this borderscape, Van Gelder produced photographs taken in the field that complement and dialogue with the writings and other images in the book. This way of working outlines a new and experimental method within contemporary art history, which opens up photography theory to a relevant photo- textual practice, defined as “doodling” within the book.
Similar approaches also recall the idea of the artist/writer/researcher as a bricoleur. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes used this word to address the working method of artist Tacita Dean, which Dean herself has labelled as “objective chance.”8 Through an associative process, Dean’s work incorporates different materials, which creates a narrative often focused on minor rather than grandiose facts. The encounter with such facts can occur by chance, but these can take on a layered meaning when placed in a constellation. To derive these meanings, observers “cannot then proceed in a more ‘rational,’ traditionally scientific way than the artists.”9 We are called on to establish links between apparently separate elements and to “follow anecdotes and historical facts, explore chance and complexity, let the ‘self-organization’ of the material occur in front of our eyes, in order to arrive at a picture as rich as the one laid out before us.”10 The poetics of objective chance aims for associations triggered by assemblages that lead to “informed speculation” in order to engage with complexity.
The travelogue text explicitly uses the first person as a way of returning the direct experience of my acts of borderscaping and the inevitable personal and partial field observations, but also as an attempt to consciously grasp the prejudice of “us,” that is, of being situated on one side of the line or the other when studying a border.11 The choice to use the first-person narrative is also related to a feminist perspective which suggests a non-authoritative tone of voice. From feminist geopolitics and sociology, I share the approach of “situated intersectionality” as conceptualised by Nira Yuval-Davis, which has also been applied in the study of borders through the concept of “intersectional border(ing)s.”12 Intersectionality is a theoretical influence from women’s studies that connects to the distribution of power in society, acknowledging the relationships between different modalities and aspects of social relations.13
When situated and applied to borders, intersectionality understands power relations as dialogically constructed and “explore[s] them through the situated gazes of differentially positioned social actors.”14 Among these positionings is that of the researched, but also that of the researcher. The concept of intersectionality thus prompts researchers to “challenge ‘the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere’ as a cover and a legitimization of a hegemonic masculinist ‘positivistic’ positioning.”15 Writing in the first person also refers to the emerging model of autotheory. Arising in the 2010s in the literary field, autotheory is a form of memoir that uses autobiographical elements to comment on the writer’s political and social contexts by framing it with theoretical insights. Lauren Fournier underlined its potential and use in the artistic field, reviewing how feminist writers have long adopted this form.16
When researching the borderscape at large, my focus was on cross-border workers and people on the move, paying specific attention to the perspective of women. This focus should be understood in relational terms. While observing a specific category of people, I have always tried also to include the other, as any subjectivity emerges in relation to others. Women’s perspectives have rarely been addressed in a specific way in the Swiss-Italian research context. Yet among cross-border workers, women experience a condition of disadvantage. They earn less than other workers employed in Canton Ticino,17 sometimes because they work part-time, other times because of a form of wage inequality between different genders. Furthermore, managing the family and children is particularly difficult for those who have a long journey to work, especially considering that children must attend school in Italy.18 In the case of people on the move, women constitute only 10% of the total, and because of their low numbers are often under-studied in migration studies. Yet most of them are subjected to trafficking. Organised crime networks manage their journey, forcing them into prostitution once they arrive in Europe. When not subjected to trafficking, migrant women still experience specific violence during their journey.19
On a practical level, the travelogue text comes from research done when physically moving along different crossing trajectories of labour and migration, linked to specific individual stories but also to trajectories that many inhabitants of the border commonly experience. Among these are the pedestrian paths formerly used by frontalieri between the small Italian villages near the border and the industrial areas of Stabio and Mendrisio in Switzerland, or the train routes between Milan and Lugano used by contemporary workers. These crossing trajectories intercept specific points, which I visited and documented, such as the industrial area of Stabio-Mendrisio, the city of Como with its migrant centre in the parish of Rebbio, or the parking lots used by frontalieri. Some of the topics covered in the travelogue have already been mentioned in earlier sections of the book, but I have repeated information where I felt it was necessary for the travelogue’s narrative.
Structured interviews, casual encounters, and open conversations with people met in the area are layered with the visits to these physical places. Their voices gave an account of those who inhabit the border, narrating that other in relation to which an identity and a space always in becoming are built.20 Again, I refer to an “other” because the border is often defined in oppositional terms with respect to the other and the self. During 2019 and 2020, I conducted semi-structured, in-person and phone interviews with relevant actors in the border area, including several trade unionists, migration activists, and local operators.21 In addition, I had conversations with frontalieri from different working sectors, both male and female, and people on the move.22 To protect their identities, I always avoid reporting the names of frontalieri and people on the move. Furthermore, I have tried not to include sensitive information,
sometimes making the information I provided more general rather than specific. Other “travel companions” have been legislative or administrative documents that clarify the legal conditions under which people can or cannot move in the borderscape and news reported by the local media, which I consulted extensively.23
I took the photographs that comprise the visual part of the travelogue both during a series of walks and travels, whose parameters—such as time of day, duration, and route—were established a priori to retrace specific itineraries, and also during chance encounters. I mainly focused on public spaces and spaces of transits where crossing trajectories unfold. This approach often resulted in non-spectacular photographs and banal settings. Yet, these views follow the subtle invisibility of the border. The materiality of bordering processes emerges here and there, sometimes only through a detail, as in the case of a sofa inside a brothel, which alludes to complex topic of prostitution in the border area, or a trace, as in the writings left by people on the move in an occupied parking lot, which attests their past presence in a space usually associated to other needs.24 Other times, I have only mentioned some elements in the travel narrative without directly showing them in order to avoid re-perpetrating the inherent violence that certain visuals have in themselves, such as in the case of specific political manifestos. Through the captions, separated from both text and photos, many of these fragments of visibility take on a meaning. I also mostly avoided photographing people. Right from the beginning of the research, I felt I should avoid exposing fragile subjects, such as people on the move or even workers, who generally prefer not to be too visible unless under certain conditions. People on the move in Como are used to being photographed by photojournalists who pass by quickly. I thought that the time I had available to stay in the Rebbio centre was too limited to establish the relationship of trust necessary to photograph the residents without being intrusive or exploitative.
Throughout the research, I have worked primarily with analogue photography in colour and black and white. I was drawn to it because of the slowness that analogue photography imposes. Analogue photography’s constraints, namely the ability to shoot a limited number of images and often requiring more time to prepare a shot, lead to a reflective and speculative practice, which was appropriate for research practice. In such a frame, I intended photography as an epistemological practice to see and understand places. At first, I only worked with a square, 6-by-6, medium-format camera. Initially, the square format lent itself to working within a clear structure. Later on, I started using other formats and faster cameras, especially when shooting images on the move, for example, while walking, travelling on a train, or driving.
I have also felt the need to go outside the rigidity of the square format and uniformity of a serial approach, which is visible in the series at the opening of this book, produced almost entirely before the start of the PhD project that led to the making of this travelogue. In the following years, I felt it necessary to produce more hybrid material that would make a better dialogue in a constellation also made of other sources, such as archive photographs and digital photographs of screens. In fact, historical photographs and snaps of digital videos on topics related to frontalierato and migration interweave with the photographs taken in the field.25 Compelled by the impossibility of accessing some places and situations, either because distant in time or because practically unreachable, I started looking for videos on streaming platforms and in historical archives, specifically during the harsh Italian COVID-19 lockdown, mostly on the YouTube video platform. I photographed the screen that displayed such videos, mostly produced by news agencies. These photographs of my laptop screen, sometimes with pixels visible or tiny scratches appearing in spots, make explicit the materiality of the videos and reflect the different media that intervene in the construction of the borderscape—in addition to the ones directly used by me.
The graphic design deserves some final consideration. As mentioned, presenting the textual and visual parts separately is a deliberate choice. Both parts follow their own narrative and logic. The textual sections, as can be seen from the titles, follow places or routes. The photographs, however, do not have a topographical order, but rather one motivated by visual relationships, constructed upon references, juxtapositions, and deviations, around recurring themes and
between different pages. The graphic layout of the photographs was designed according to a democratic criterion, that of putting all the materials present on the same level. Everything is distributed along a line which is however broken between the pages. In this way, the borders between the images and the borders of the images themselves are overcome as they come together in an uninterrupted flow. The cuts that are created, even if they sometimes penalise the individual images, create new dialogues between the elements placed nearby, almost like alternative flags made of two or three pieces.
2 Traveling Flowers and Other Stories (2019–2021), Nicoletta Grillo
IMG 16 - 17 -18
IMG 19 - 20 - 21
IMG 21 - 22 - 23
IMG 26 - 27 - 28
IMG 29 - 30 - 31
IMG 31 - 32 - 33
IMG 33 - 34 - 35
IMG 40 - 41 - 42
IMG 46 - 47 - 48
IMG 48 - 49 - 50
IMG 57 - 58 - 59
Travelling Flowers and Other Stories (2019–2021)
Unless otherwise specified, all images by Nicoletta Grillo and © Nicoletta Grillo.
IMG 15 Balcone d’Italia, panorama of Lake Lugano, 2019
IMG 16 On the TILO (Ticino Lombardia) train, 2021
IMG 17 Sewing stapler in a factory in Mendrisio (image cropped because of privacy agreements), 2021
IMG 18 Portrait of A., a former smuggler (image cut to protect privacy), 2020
IMG 19 Woods on the Swiss-Italian border, 2020
IMG 20 Beginning of the industrial area next to the Swiss-Italian border in Stabio, 2020
IMG 21 Cameras on a road leading to the Swiss-Italian border, 2020
IMG 22 Detail of Camiceria Realini shirt factory in Stabio, digital photograph of archival image, ca. 1940s. With permission of Armida Valli
IMG 23 Camiceria Realini shirt factory in Stabio, digital photograph of archival image, 1940s ca. With permission of Armida Valli
IMG 24 Owl maquette in an aviary of the ethnographic museum in Val Bregaglia, 2019
IMG 25 Detail of a historical Swiss Airlines poster, digital photograph, 2021
IMG 26 Handwriting on the wall of the Autosilo Valmulini in Como, a parking building formerly occupied by people on the move, 2020
IMG 27 Looking over Lugano and the Lake, 2019
IMG 28 Industrial area next to the Swiss-Italian border in Stabio, 2020
IMG 29 Inside a brothel at the Swiss-Italian border in Chiasso, 2020
IMG 30 A mountain cabin along the former smuggling path that connects Erbonne and Scudellate, 2020
IMG 31 Taranto migration hotspot next to the railway tracks, 2021
IMG 32 Inside a factory in the border area in Mendrisio (image cropped because of privacy agreements), 2021
IMG 33 Portrait of S., a cross-border worker, near Clivio customhouse, 2019
IMG 34 Models for manufacturing men’s shirt collars in a factory in Mendrisio (image cropped because of privacy agreements), 2021
IMG 35 A cross-border worker doing housework on a weekend, digital photograph of a screen showing Giorgio Pellegrin’s reportage “Le frontaliere. L’altra metà,” Radio Svizzera Italiana, 06 December 1969
IMG 36 Contrabbandieri e doganieri [Smugglers and customs officers], digital reproduction of archival image by Christian Schiefer, 1938. Archivio di Stato del Canton Ticino, signature 01344/12. © Archivio di Stato del Canton Ticino
IMG 37 Tools for textile manufacturing inside a factory in Mendrisio (image cropped because of privacy agreements), 2021
IMG 38 A plot overlooking the steel plant next to the Taranto migration hotspot, 2021
IMG 39 Women shirtmakers marching on strike in Mendrisio, digital photograph from an archival image dated 1941. With permission of Fontana Edizioni, Lugano
IMG 40 An abandoned spinning mill on a road to the Swiss-Italian border in Valmorea, 2020
IMG 41 Statue of a worker from the 1920s inside a factory in Stabio (image cropped because of privacy agreements), 2021
IMG 42 Access to a plot overlooking the steel plant next to the Taranto migration hotspot, 2021
IMG 43 A flag at the women’s strike in Bellinzona, 2021
IMG 44 Camiceria Realini shirt factory in Stabio, 2020
IMG 45 Protest against the closure of the border, digital photograph of a screen showing an image of the demonstration organised by people on the move in Como in 2016. (This image is no longer available on the web; it probably comes from ANSA news agency. The colours have been inverted.)
IMG 46 A path across the Swiss-Italian border next to an abandoned customhouse, 2020
IMG 47 Empty plot of the former Ticosa silk factory in Como, whose ruins are now occupied by people on the move, 2020
IMG 48 The Mar Piccolo, gulf of Taranto, 2021
IMG 49 In a car park that formerly housed a camp for people on the move in Como, 2020
IMG 50 People on the move on Italian shores, digital photograph of a screen showing the video reportage on Taranto migration hotspot “Hotspot Leaks: (video) dossier alla frontiera di Taranto,” Dinamo Press, 26 June 2017
IMG 51 The Oceano brothel along the Lugano highway, 2020
IMG 52 The Taranto migration hotspot and the city’s industrial area seen from a train, 2021
IMG 53 Tents set up by people on the move in front of the Como San Giovanni railway station in 2016, digital photograph of a screen showing the reportage “Migranti, a Como parte ‘l’alleggerimento,’” Il Fatto Quotidiano, 14 September 2016
IMG 54 Biking in the woods on the Swiss-Italian border, 2020
IMG 55 “Non mi avrete mai” [you will never have me], handwritten in the underpass of a Swiss railway station, 2021
IMG 56 Along the former smuggling path that connects Erbonne and Scudellate, 2020
IMG 57 Construction sheets wrapped around an abandoned customhouse along the border, 2020
IMG 58 Mediterranean Sea in the Mar Piccolo, gulf of Taranto, 2021
IMG 59–60 Fireflies in the woods on a road that leads to the Swiss-Italian border, 2020
I Road to the Border
“On the road leading to the border you will find a supermarket and many more useful services” says the owner of a flat I rented for a few days’ stop in the border area while he raised the shutter. The light comes in. “They have everything there, even a nursery which opens at five a.m.” He looks through the window and points somewhere to the right with his hand.
“Why so early?” I ask.
“It’s for women cross-border workers that leave their children on the way to work. They have early timetables,” he goes on. He knows plenty of them, even though he is an Italian living in Switzerland and working in Italy, hence an atypical exception. It’s usually the other way around. His wife found employment in Switzerland, and then he followed along. The flat they are now renting out was their first home. Located on the Italian side, it is only a hundred metres from the border. That is why I chose it myself, so that I could be close to the border.
As I go shopping in the nearby supermarket, everything seems shiny and tidy. Even the vegetables are precisely stacked on top of each other. I wonder if this order is put in place to appeal to a Swiss clientele. I know many Swiss come to the Italian side to buy groceries to save on their shopping. Swiss clientele may like this environment. We have a saying: Preciso come un orologio svizzero [as precise as a Swiss clockmaker]. It comes to my mind, and then I get a bit ashamed of myself, as I’m falling into one of those stereotypes used to address specific nationalities.
The nursery is in the same building as the supermarket. I try to sneak a peek at the children’s playroom from the entrance, but nothing is visible from the outside. A conversation I had with a trade unionist some months before comes to my mind.
“One of the border’s spatial effects is the multiplication of nursery schools along the principal axes leading to cross it,” she mentioned.26 “In the past, there were many problems with family reunification of frontalieri or foreign workers in Switzerland. So much so that some hid their children in their homes.”
I look for additional information online. In the 1970s, seasonal workers who dwelt in Switzerland on a temporary basis could not take their children with them, hence hiding them was the only option.27 This was a problem shared with different immigrants, as shown in the movie Pane e cioccolata [Bread and Chocolate] (1974). The movie tells the story of the Italian immigrant Nino. When Nino is hosted for a short time by his neighbour Elena, a Greek political refugee, he discovers she has a secret. The woman hides her son in her apartment because she has no documents that allow her to keep him in Switzerland. The child spends his time within the walls of the house without going out, either to go to school or for any other activity, living a ghost existence in the eyes of the state. Today, the possibility for children of frontalieri to attend public schools in Switzerland is still controversial.28
As I go back to my flat, I notice the bar on the ground level is named La Frontera. It seems like an auspicious coincidence that it has the same name as Gloria Anzaldúa’s book. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is rooted in her personal experience as a Chicana, a Mexican-American in between the two countries of Mexico and the United States, and it explores borderlands’ mestiza [hybridity]. Chicano language mixes Spanish and English. In the short poem “Una lucha de fronteras/A Struggle of Borders,” she wrote,
The two sides of the Swiss-Italian border both speak Italian, albeit with some minor differences deriving from similar hybridity mechanisms. The Italian spoken in Ticino was affected by the proximity to other Swiss languages, French and German. Some words are borrowed from these other languages (quark is “ricotta”), others are adapted (tippare is “typing on the keyboard”), while some words have their equivalent in the three languages of Italian, French, and German (buralista is also buraliste or Bürolist).30
La Frontera here is a very popular bar. At 6 PM it fills up with cross-border workers who stop by for an aperitivo before going home. The parking lot is a dovetail of cars on top of each other, which block all ways out. I make my way through it to get in. I can hear the voices and greetings from people who know each other, maybe because they always pass by at the same hour. Inside, the bartender stares at me while I order a coffee. We have a chat and I try to explain I’m doing research on women’s labour in the border area.
He says, “Women working in the Fashion Valley pass by mostly at six a.m., rather than at the end of the day. But it won’t be easy to meet them now. Most of those factories are closed because of Covid-19.” Later, I learn that Fashion Valley is the name of the industrial area across the border explicitly created for fashion companies, a sort of contemporary evolution of the old clothing industry in the area. He continues, “Things have changed with the organisation of company shuttles, though, as people using those buses cannot stop by at the bar anymore.”
I already knew about this kind of shuttlebus taking workers into Switzerland and back, because I came across them during my research before coming here. They have been set up to try and solve the issue of traffic jams related to morning and evening commuting across the border, and the lack of parking in the Swiss territory.31 As for other things on the border, the rules imposed by the presence of two nations have created strange contradictions. In a phone conversation, I asked a Swiss worker about it. She replied, “If I wanted to use the shuttle I could not do so in Switzerland. I should walk a few hundred metres and cross the border on foot to get on the bus from the Italian side, because regulations provide that this is a uniquely transnational service.”32
I go for a walk in the surroundings. There are a few empty homes, some of which have been abandoned while still under construction. Seeing the empty shells makes me think of the reportage by Villi Hermann in 1973, showing the houses that frontalieri relocating to the border area from southern Italy had been building.33 Often being bricklayers themselves, they worked on construction during weekends. Sometimes it took years to complete the houses, which remained in a constant state of being unfinished. Buildings like these arose in informal ways in areas where no urban services were available. Hermann had come across the issue while working on a documentary about frontalieri. I emailed him to ask about the documentary, and he answered, “I am very pleased that someone in Italy is doing research about frontalieri.”34 Since I couldn’t find any work on frontalierato in Italian cultural productions, I asked local historian Fabio Cani if he could give me any tips.35 His reply ends my search, because he said that frontalierato was something collectively removed and forgotten.36 He used the Italian terms rimosso collettivo. In psychoanalysis, the rimosso is the object of removal.
I keep walking.
“Have you seen all the villas around the border? They were built around the border area as a support base for smuggling trafficking in the 1970s,” a man told me on a previous visit I paid to the border. I couldn’t verify his claims, as I couldn’t find any evidence in my research. I now spot a few small villas with gardens and above-ground pools. As I move towards the village, the constructed fabric becomes denser. The town centre is perched like that of an old rural village. I can recognise the structure of the old cascine, those houses organised around a two-story courtyard typical of the agricultural areas of Lombardy, associated with forms of agricultural labour that don’t exist anymore.
When I get back, it’s late. La Frontera bar is deserted, and so is the parking lot in front of my temporary home. Once inside, I can still hear the noise of cars passing every now and then on the main road leading to the border. From afar, the noise of vehicles whizzing resembles that of the sea.
II Woods
When one leaves the town centre of the Italian municipality of Bizzarone, the westward view immediately opens to the meadows. At the bottom, you can see the woods that extend around the border (IMG 19). I had decided to walk from the Italian side to the Swiss one, taking one of the old border-crossing routes used by the frontaliere who worked in the clothing factories of the border area in the past. It’s an itinerary noted down in my notebook that I identified during my research before coming here. The route passes right through the border woods. My journey starts from a small square in the town centre. A religious icon on a wall contains flowers and an effigy. On the Swiss side, similar religious icons are visible.
It is almost evening. A warm summer breeze comes up. In my notes in preparation for this simple transnational walk, I wrote, “Pay attention to thresholds, edges, hems, boundaries. Watch for any other sign of the border.” The first edge I meet is that frayed strip between the built and the unbuilt at the end of the town. As soon as you leave the town, everything opens up. I look at the green meadows. My gaze rests on the trees, a little further down, which form another hem, a sort of barrier. Next to each other, they are a dark blur into which the road slips. I keep walking. Common roses sprout from the houses’ gardens along the way. I don’t see any alpine plants. Some homes have flags of Italy hanging outside as if to emphasise their belonging to this side of the border. Along the driveway, cameras overhanging keep track of the licence plates of the cars passing through the border roads (IMG 21). I have spotted these scrutinising mechanical eyes since the first time I visited the area.
After entering the woods, the road descends steeply to an even lower altitude until it reaches the border. I feel encapsulated by the trees that surround both sides of the road. When I arrive at the border, the low sun illuminates a small, white, abandoned structure. It is a former customs house, says a sign. It seems that it hasn’t been used for a long time. Here are the tracks of an old railway, the Valmorea line, which used to cross the border. It is closed by a heavy metal gate that stands precisely on the national boundary line. Guido Codoni, a local historian, wrote that rumours in the nearby towns say that it was placed in the fascist era in the 1920s, when it was decided to interrupt this newly built cross-border railway because Jewish money had been used for its construction.37 Today the closed gate has remained standing as a joke. Since the border on both sides of it is completely open, the gate no longer seems to have anything to protect or close. You can easily pass to the side of it. The old wire mesh that used to close the border to prevent smuggling, called ramina, has disintegrated. People’s repeated use of this passage has left an unmistakable groove in the grass, which invites you to cross. A cyclist arrives on a mountain bike, passes me, and takes the path to Switzerland. Soon after, a runner does the same. It seems that this route is used by those who enjoy outdoor activities (IMG 46). But maybe other people cross the border here too, unseen, at night.
A cross-border project anticipated creating a transnational cycle path along the railway line. Yet, customs control would have had to be restored for an official re-opening of that border passage.38 Thus, the line continues to be used informally through that line in the grass. Meanwhile, an underground power line was built and runs parallel to the tracks, connecting the Swiss energy network to the Italian one.39 Infrastructures develop underground in a transnational way, playing a specific role in the relations between states and forming a kind of subsoil-expanded frontier, with its own logic different from that of the passage of people. On this spot of the Swiss-Italian border, the transnational power line is mostly invisible, except for periodical signs that warn passersby of its underground presence in the subsoil.
I walk through the existing path in the grass and find myself on the other side. Right after the boundary line sits the church of Santa Margherita, a small chapel with some frescos on the front part. I read a few anecdotes about this place. Here a priest, who for some reason had been excommunicated from the parish of Como, used to come to celebrate mass. He set up the altar on the Swiss side, while the Italian believers would position themselves on the other side of the border. This way, they could attend the mass without committing a sin, as the priest was not excommunicated in Switzerland.40
Some bells used to hang on the wire mesh that closed the border. They were in place to make noise if someone tried to pass across the barrier, but locals filled them with leaves to muffle their effect and allow people to move freely, especially on windy days. This mesh was also crossed by Jews fleeing Italy during World War II, when, after the armistice of 8 September 1943, many Italians crossed the border to apply for asylum, I had read.41 The photographs by Christian Schiefer, taken precisely in the Santa Margherita area, remain as testimonies of this unusual crowd crossing. There were days with huge masses of people moving across the border. Seeing such photos with long lines of people walking together reminded me of the view of sacred processions.
I found out there is a real religious procession that coincidentally crosses the border near this area. It is connected to a local fable, which I encountered many times, always recounted with slightly different details. I remember it as going like this:
Three virgins were imprisoned without food or water by a local bully near the sanctuary of Somazzo, Italy. Taken by a strong thirst, they would ask for water from those who passed by that road. A stroller who came from Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, gave them some water. The virgins promised that thanks to his act of kindness there would be no more drought in his town. From that time, a procession to ask for rain was held along that route.
Once a year, the procession leaves from Riva San Vitale on Lake Lugano and reaches a small chapel on the Italian side in Uggiate Trevano. This custom pre-dates the existence of the national boundary line, as the walk moves from Switzerland into Italian territory, and back.42
As soon as I cross the border, the lawn seems better maintained while the cobblestones at the side of the road look different. After the church of Santa Margherita, the industrial area of Stabio begins. I spot a Swiss flag. I walk a bit more into the industrial area, but the light of the sun getting down urges me to get back, so I turn towards Italy. As I follow the route that I set myself across the border, with a predefined trajectory, time of day, and stops, and with a specific series of actions that alternate notes with taking pictures, I come to think of something that is often mentioned in border studies: Crossing a border is a kind of performance. This performance is highly subjective, as it changes depending on the passport one has.
Shahram Khosravi described the border as a liminal area, where crossing takes place like a ritual, reproducing the state’s order.43 According to one’s role, specific rules and a certain temporality are respected. One may apply for a visa, get (or not) a passport, and pass security checks. Those who don’t obtain a permit to cross will try to be inconspicuous, using camouflage strategies. Yet, the performativity of border crossing is mostly unconscious for those who enjoy the right to move freely across it. I’m one of the privileged ones: a white female with a European passport. Indeed, no one has ever asked for my document in the times I’ve crossed the border.
Border controls also have their own performativity. Security practices constitute a set of performances that contributes to constructing and reproducing the border between two nations, as the practical implementation of foreign policies shows.44 Among such practices are simulated strikes and military exercises, that also express the gendered features of sovereign power—through masculinity. Traditionally, the border is conceived of as man and military, the nation as woman and maternal, and the masculinity of the border is reflected precisely in militarised border controls.
My crossing is a sort of research performance, during which I take photos, like visual notes. Collected one after the other, they may come to allude to the practice of walking and crossing, connected to how the border is kept alive through the bodies of those who cross it.
“Ehi” a man screams to me from afar. I don’t understand what he says. He doesn’t sound polite, so I keep going.
He runs towards me until he gets close enough to speak.
“What are you doing? Were you looking for something?” He points at my camera, which is now standing on a tripod because of the scarcity of light. I understand he wants to know why I am using this bulky tool, what am I trying to photograph, and what am I trying to reveal.
“I’m just taking some pictures of the landscape.” I shrug.
He feels reassured, as if my camera wasn’t that threatening after all.
I start walking again, going up the road through the trees. Darkness begins to surround me. Perhaps the sun has already set. There is just a tiny light from the sky, the bit of light that remains for a while after dusk, on the verge between day and night. Suddenly, I spot some glares at the edge of the road, but from afar I cannot understand what they are. I feel an irrational fear of being there alone. I get closer. Compelled by a feeling of surprise, I realise it is only a bunch of fireflies lingering near the ground by the trees (IMG 59–60). I have never come across living fireflies before. I stop to take a few pictures, even though the light is rapidly changing, thus making them fade. I move on again.
These tiny glows make me think of some renowned writing by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1941, a young Pasolini described in a letter to a friend a first encounter with fireflies, in a text filled with optimism.45 In 1975, he published an article in Corriere Della Sera on the disappearance of fireflies, with words steeped in pessimism.46 In this latter text, he confronts the idea that fascism—which represents both totalitarian thought and homologating culture—has never completely disappeared. He talks about the ongoing change of landscape due to the industrialisation that is transforming Italy, making fireflies disappear, while also erasing the peasant-artisan class. The metaphor of the disappearing fireflies is thus a multiform metaphor which links ideologies, people, and the landscape. His reference to the change in the landscape inevitably resonates with me in the “laboured” landscape of the border area, which has radically changed compared to the pre-alpine imagery that was common a century ago. In the midst of burgeoning capitalism, Pasolini no longer saw hope either for the Italian landscape or for his society.
Years later, Georges Didi-Huberman’s Survival of the Fireflies (2009) tries to provide an answer to this pessimism.47 Arguing that fireflies have not disappeared, but have transformed, he theorised the concept of the “firefly image” as an image of resistance, a glow that remains, an image that allows us to imagine, in spite of all. In his earlier writing, dedicated to four images shot inside Auschwitz in 1944 by a member of the Sonderkommando, he had already tackled the concept of imagination “in spite of all.”48 To know and remember it is necessary to imagine, despite the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust: Those four snaps of the concentration camp taken by a prisoner who hid a camera under his jacket, out of focus and crooked, are fragments of visibility that, in addition to their discernible information, allow us to imagine the harsh conditions in which these photographs were taken.
As I walk away from the border, I think of the space of imagination that can be opened with those images of places where the border is not there, yet it is present. It is visible and invisible, just like the people who move on and around it.
When I get to the centre of the Italian town of Bizzarone, it is completely dark. Everything feels so quiet, so different from the busy border road of my rented flat. Artificial yellow lights illuminate a war memorial where the Italian flag is flying. A breeze lifts it for a moment, then it goes still. Red, white, and green.
III Factories
The alarm buzzes, and I force myself to get out of bed. I peer through the window. The road to the border is already packed with cars moving towards Switzerland. It’s 5 o’clock in the morning. In the dark, you can see the red brake lights of the vehicles coming on when a queue periodically forms. Then the flow of cars starts running again. Movement, stillness, red lights, movement again.
After the Schengen Agreement, systematic checks are no longer carried out at customs. One can pass quickly, but traffic forms anyway. I read that when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, border controls had been, exceptionally, restored for a while.49 The mobility situation deteriorated as two-hour or even three-hour queues formed at the border, revealing the massive size of frontalierato in the territory. The border seems to create a centrality for morning traffic similar to that of a large city, yet the towns surrounding it are quite small.50
An hour later I enter La Frontera bar to have breakfast. I still feel a bit dizzy, because I’m not used to waking up so early. There are a few frontalieri who pass by for a coffee before going to work and I thought I’d try to chat. Of the many people I will talk to in the following days, I particularly remember this woman in her fifties.
“I have been working in Switzerland for seven years,” she tells me. “My choice didn’t come from the desire to find a job with a higher income but from the lack of opportunities in Italy.” She drinks from her coffee cup. “After the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, I couldn’t find a job near home and so I began to work as a frontaliera. I leave the house at least two hours before the start of my working day.”
Others jump into the conversation and tell me that they decided to work in Switzerland because of the salary, which is still higher than the Italian one, even if not as it once was. One says that since they are all Italians at work, he hardly notices the difference. Even company owners are often Italian, despite being located in Switzerland.
Most of the frontalieri I talk to have a certain grudge against the Swiss. I will realise over time that this somewhat latent and somewhat explicit conflict is all around and permeates all the narratives surrounding the border. It is never a conflict with a specific person but against a general category or idea of the other. While the border is mostly invisible in the landscape, it still appears clearly in people’s speech and stories, which might seem unexpected for an open and apparently boring border.51
“Why are you interested in the border at all?” asks a man. “There is nothing there.”
I understand his observation, and yet I feel much of the border keeps on being re-produced immaterially through stories, beliefs, and everyday habits. This seems interesting to me.
From my conversations, I come to know some of the recurring beliefs of frontalieri. They say Italians are wanted only for manual jobs in Switzerland and are paid less simply because they are not Swiss. The general feeling is that they are not welcome, except for labour exploitation.52 Over time, I’ll also get to know the beliefs that have developed on the other side of the border, through occasional meetings and chats. The inhabitants of Ticino often feel that Italians steal jobs from the local population, are responsible for lowering wages for everyone by accepting low salaries and consuming the local territory and resources. Also, they are privileged as they don’t pay the expensive Swiss health insurance Cassa Malati. So the border is still there, in many ways. It is a division between people with different legal rights that gets reinforced by the consequences of those rights.
I have finished my breakfast, and I prepare to move out of La Frontera.
“Be careful if you go to Switzerland with your car,” warns a man. “It has an Italian licence plate. This will make you immediately identifiable as Italian, hence more likely to be fined.”
I decide to take the risk. When the sun is high, I drive along the border road and through the custom-house of Bizzarone, taking a long descent that enters Switzerland. Along the way, I spot a few money exchange bureaux.53
After I cross the border, the radio changes to a Swiss station. The speaker is discussing Swiss desserts. She mentions a few pastries identified with German words that I am unfamiliar with, probably coming from the Swiss German influence. I feel the landscape has slightly changed. It comes to my mind that a frontaliera told me she had a similar feeling when she drove into Ticino. Maybe it’s because the houses look all linear, with no sloping roofs. They seem different from the Italian villas I saw during my walk. Yet some new houses with similar styles are being built near the border on the Italian side. Some call them “the Swiss homes” and think they are made for young Swiss couples moving to Italy to save money, a trend which is continuing.54
I try to enter the industrial area with the car, but I fail. Access is allowed only to those who work there. Finding parking is equally difficult. All are either reserved or paid parking, with a complex payment system for which you need a special card. Everything seems to be organised to make one not stop unless you are a resident, and I get increasingly frustrated. I think of how all the frontalieri I’ve been talking to say they never spend their free time in Switzerland. Their working life and private life are completely set apart. Besides the higher cost of living, it may also be due to the difficulty for them to access non-working spaces in Switzerland. Those who live minutes from the border often never cross that line in their free time.
I look around. The industrial area is a flatland filled with factories (IMG 28). I read a bit about its history. The first factories that used Italian labour at the beginning of the century in Ticino, particularly in Mendrisotto, were those in the textile-clothing sector (IMG 17, IMG 34). When they were established, there were only agricultural fields in the area next to the border. During the first 30 years of the century, there was a significant development of such industries. More growth followed after World War II. The 1960s were the golden years of the clothing industry, whose workforce was made up of 60% frontalieri, mainly women. This specific area filled up after the change that took place with the 1976 urban plan.55 In the late 1970s, though, there was a backlash in the sector, which was in crisis by the 1990s.56 With globalisation, many of the textile and manufacturing industries moved to third countries.
In the districts of Chiasso and Mendrisio, however, textiles and clothing is still the key sector. The 20% of the clothing sector of Switzerland is located in this area and in the 2000s, Canton Ticino implemented a specific policy that gave rise to the so-called Fashion Valley.57 Companies relocating here were offered a low tax rate compared to the European one, so many Italian and international brands opened branches in Ticino58 and started working with a large majority of Italian cross-border workers.59 Besides lower taxes, the Italian companies’ reasons for relocating here were the strategic proximity to Milan and the guarantee of political stability.60
However, the new companies did not bring much new on-site production but rather logistic activities.61 An exception is the former Realini shirt factory, now Consitex SA, which has continued to produce on a long-term basis (IMG 44). Opened in 1902, it is one of the oldest operating factories in the border area. A person from the area shares old photographs of the factory with me. The building had ample open working space on the ground floor and a circular balcony on the upper floor, which allowed for observation of the workers from above (IMG 23). While the Italian female labour force was entrusted to work in the factory, apparently the office employees were only Swiss Germans, who migrated from inner Switzerland, because they were considered more reliable. Today, the factory work is still primarily performed by Italian workers, while the factory’s property is also Italian.62
Large warehouses and sorting centres have sprung up all around the border area.63 But according to some rumours, things in Fashion Valley have changed since the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) started to be discussed. The BEPS entered into force in 2017 and is an action plan aimed at combating the fictitious transfer of multinational group profits to countries with a more convenient tax system, promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the G20.64 The BEPS requires companies to pay taxes in countries where they create so-called added value. In this framework, the mere presence of logistics activities is often not considered as added value. Therefore, the tax advantages for companies that did not have actual production in Canton Ticino were cancelled, and in 2016 some Italian fashion companies started to move back to Italy.
“Placing headquarters in Ticino only for tax reasons is problematic,” said one of the trade unionists I interviewed some time before coming to the border area. “When companies have no real ties with the territory, they do not bring an added value while occupying space and increasing the already critical mobility problem.”65 His statement seems to sum up many of the issues at stake, but others remain. Later, I will try to collect other points of view by interviewing someone from the Ticino fashion chamber or factory representatives, but without success. Hence I rely mainly on the newspapers’ rumours and interviews with trade union representatives, even if I know this is a partial vision.
Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson describe how in contemporary global processes, borders have become more and more open to the flows of goods and capital, but more closed to the movement of human bodies, even though labour is a commodity that cannot be separated from the body itself.66 In the Canton Ticino landscape, capital mobility is indeed guaranteed across borders, but the consequent movement of people generates local disputes and contradictions. One of these is precisely the regulatory and economic one linked to the positioning of the production sites. Another is that between people. For example, an Italian worker complained to me that he is paid much less as a qualified frontaliero than the unskilled labour hired locally in Switzerland, something that he perceives as a contradiction arising from the border situation.
But the border also provides job opportunities and points for encounters. With its two-sided character, the border unites and separates.67 In another conversation, a Swiss worker told me she has no conflicts with her frontaliere colleagues.
“I’m delighted with the social life that developed with my Italian colleagues,” she said.
“Do you ever cross the border into Italy?” I asked.
“Well, yes, to go out for dinner with them, for example. Crossing the border for me means going to visit friends or to eat in Italian restaurants.” She pauses. “And more, I have other reasons to move south. I always cross the border on holidays to go to the sea, because there is no sea in Switzerland.”
I stop for a moment in my car on the side of a road before the beginning of the Stabio industrial area. The warehouses that I have seen so far look to me all quite the same. Here, however, I’m surprised by the contrast between one of these giant architectural boxes and a group of horses grazing in a nearby field with the backdrop of the mountains further north. This image stays in my memory like a photograph I didn’t take, an image that makes me think of the overlap between industrialised and postcard Switzerland scenery—one more contradictory view of a layered reality.
IV Walking at Dawn
I’m driving towards the city of Como. It’s almost evening, and I’m going for dinner at the Rebbio migrant centre. This non-institutional centre provides housing and other forms of help to people on the move and is managed by a priest, Don Giusto. When I enter the common room used for dinner, the tables are arranged to meld into each other. The men eat there all together and take turns cooking, while the women eat in another space, where they can cook according to their children’s needs. On all my visits to the centre, I always eat with the men in the shared room and never come to meet any of the women. The volunteers explained to me that many migrant women are victims of trafficking or other forms of violence. This makes them very wary of the people they come across, including the volunteers themselves, so they usually prefer to avoid any sort of encounter.68
“Today we have a guest. Could you introduce yourself?” says Don Giusto. All eyes turn to me. Everyone sitting at the tables is looking at me with an inquisitory gaze. Fair enough, I think, for once the observant-observer relation typical of the researcher is reversed. I feel slightly embarrassed, but I put together some words to explain my work and the research on the Swiss-Italian border. Then I take a dish and sit down.
The Rebbio centre opened following the unprecedented number of arrivals of people on the move in Como in 2016. At first, many were Ethiopians and Eritreans who came from a similar geographical area. “People on the move often travel based on word of mouth,” a volunteer from the association Como Senza Frontiere [Como Without Borders] tells me. Networks of acquaintances and community ties play a central role in guiding migration flows.69 Como Senza Frontiere facilitate by providing not only financial support, but also information. “The rumour had spread that it was possible to cross the border in the Como area, and so many came along,” the volunteer explains.
Because of the lack of adequate institutional response to these arrivals, Don Giusto decided to open his parish door to host people on the move. A spontaneous reaction to an emergency has since become an autonomous centre that hosts those who remain outside the governmental circuit of assistance.70 Different volunteers now help people on the move to learn Italian or deal with the legal issues of their status.
“It is peculiar that one of the wealthiest cities of Italy, also due to its proximity to Switzerland, doesn’t find the money for a long-term solution for homeless people,” says the priest. Thus, the centre’s volunteers also support the many homeless people in the town, both Italian and foreigners.
During this first dinner at the Rebbio centre, I have a chat with Y., a young man from Gambia who has been in Italy for four years and who sits next to me. He hardly speaks Italian, but we manage to communicate, while eating chicken and rice. On the weekends, he works on a farm to replace permanent workers on their days of rest, milking cows.
“Animals don’t stop on holidays,” he says.
I nod. I’m thinking of my grandfather, who was also a farmer. He goes on.
“I tried to cross into Switzerland many times. The first times, I had just arrived in Italy and I went with five or six other boys. When moving that way in groups, police always caught us right away. I didn’t understand anything about Italy at the time.” We keep on eating.
It must have been during the so-called crisis of 2016, as he points to a picture of himself playing football in front of Como train station, which hangs on the common room wall. That year, people on the move started to camp in tents placed in front of the San Giovanni train station (IMG 53). Later, an institutional camp managed by the Red Cross opened in a parking lot next to the train tracks.
“That time I almost managed to cross the Swiss-Italian border; I was alone. I had already been in Italy for a while, I knew better how to move and also managed a bit of Italian. That time, I woke up at five a.m. in the morning and walked until Lugano,” he adds.
“How long did it take?” I ask. It seems quite a distance to me.
“About four hours. Taking the train from an inner train station, rather than in Chiasso, is safer as there are fewer controls. This is also why I walked before dawn, when fewer people are around. I didn’t have any maps to orient myself. I moved into the inner areas rather than on the main roads. I looked at the road signs. I also asked people. Without people helping you, even with small information, you cannot make it,” he says, and he smiles. I perceive he thinks it is crucial that I know this: There are those providing a little help simply by giving directions.
Yet I know from conversations with the volunteers that there are also those who report the presence of someone who appears foreign to the police, especially based on their skin colour. If you are an Ethiopian woman walking alone in the woods on the border, you are likely to be reported, they told me. One thing that makes a difference in managing to move across the border is the possibility of remaining invisible. Besides often getting reported, those with black skin are more likely to be stopped for checks than those with white skin. The apparent belonging to one ethnic group rather than another creates a disempowering visibility, as the human body has become a sort of national marker for the control system of a nation-state.71 I’ve also been told the story of a Syrian with white skin who managed to cross by means of camouflage in the midst of the morning traffic of frontalieri. Following this strategy, he managed to travel across Switzerland to another European country. The possibility of paying for a ride organised by smugglers (the so-called passatori) who come to pick you up or show you where to hide also makes a difference.72
After walking to Lugano that time, Y. proceeded with the train until he arrived in Zurich. “I wanted to go to Germany. I needed to change train for Basel. The police stopped me for a check. I was sent back.” After verifying that he was dublined, meaning that he had been registered in Italy upon his first entry into the country, he was returned to Italy. It seems he has given up on trying to cross, after those many trials, like many of the young men staying in the Rebbio centre. Now he has his farming work and wants to make himself autonomous where he is. We chat a bit more about his plans. The noise of cutlery comes from the kitchen. Dinner is over and they are clearing away.
I move to the kitchen and help one of the volunteers who is sorting out some food that has been donated. It will be distributed the next morning to those who pass by. We chat about different things and begin to talk about the time horizon for young people at the centre.
“Having a future horizon is problematic for many of them. Some remain in limbo, waiting without going forward or back. Others, once the impossibility to cross the border is accepted, begin to make different plans to stay in Italy,” she says. We throw away a pile of peaches that seem rotten and start putting bread into separate paper bags. “It is essential that a future horizon exists in their minds. If you don’t have a future horizon, you don’t look for a job and don’t build anything. Don Giusto doesn’t accept this attitude,” she adds.
“Which kind of jobs do they find or look for?” I ask.
“One was working part-time in a supermarket. Another was doing an internship as a waiter in a restaurant. Still, those who wish to work sometimes simply can’t find opportunities.”
In being extremely dilated and marked by uncertainty, the time horizon of people on the move seems to radically differ from the everyday reality of those who are “rooted.” I think of something Don Giusto mentioned during our first phone conversation.
“Sometimes people who have been in the centre for months disappear overnight, without saying a word. Then they may reappear after a while. For example, a woman with a child who had managed to stay in another European state for a couple of years suddenly reappeared in the centre because she was returned to Italy after a police check,” he said. A local support network of relatives guaranteed the two-year invisibility abroad that allowed access to informal solutions for home and work.
There is a specific day temporality in these movements around the border that I was told about. Most of them take place in a time of the barely visible, when night changes into dawn. It is precisely in the astronomical time of dawn, according to Javier Marías, that we are able to perceive “the other side of time” or the “dark back of time.”73 That time remains mostly hidden from us, a time that may have been but has not been, a time that may be in the future but has not yet been. Or again, a time of something that happened but we have entirely forgotten. Reflecting on the ability of photographs to offer a glimpse of what remains almost completely out of sight, Van Gelder wrote that some photographs can suggest that hidden temporality: “Through them, a time might be felt that once existed in all its full potentiality, as if the photograph somehow is still pregnant with the unrealized possibilities of that temporality or, at least, bears its traces.”74 Such photographs can allude to what is mostly invisible.
Some of the people on the move of the Como centre had managed to remain invisible and pass. Don Giusto told me I should speak with M. about his experience of travelling to France. M. is a person on the move who has obtained political asylum in Italy and now lives in the Rebbio centre. A few months ago, he had decided to visit a friend who lived in France, but he could not leave the country where the asylum was granted to visit friends or relatives within Europe. M. went anyway, and then returned to Italy because he prefers to live here. On the way back, he was stopped for a check and fined for his irregular holidays. I met M. at the end of another dinner in Rebbio.
“How did you manage to go on vacation to France?” I ask. However, information is a precious resource and people on the move often prefer to protect this resource from strangers. Indeed, some of the volunteers I have been talking with also tell me that it is important not to reveal too much of how crossings take place. I am aware of this and I have removed relevant details, so that neither the people on the move nor their crossing strategies and their associated places are easily identifiable. After my question, M. laughs and smiles, but he doesn’t say anything. Then we go on chatting about other things.
V Train to the North
I sit between two white collars on the train crossing the border. They seem to know each other; they probably take this train every day. All the other seats are taken. The TiLo (Ticino-Lombardy) is the train of frontalieri, connecting Milan, Varese, and Como with Lugano and Bellinzona. The Milan-Lugano route takes about an hour and a quarter. From Como, it is only 40 minutes. I peer through the train window. After a while, the train emerges next to Lake Lugano. The water flows next to us, blue. I remember mentally associating this view with being in Switzerland, but the train crosses the border much earlier. Some seats become free, so I move. I meet a worker living in the Como area who seems keen to talk. I introduce myself.
“How does it feel to cross the border on the train?” I ask.
“Well, my quality of life increased a lot when I started to use it instead of the car to commute. The queues are terrible when driving. And I finally had some time to read,” he says. “I could also look around more. Yet I recall that sometimes in the past when the train entered Switzerland, I felt unease.”
“How so?”
“It’s mostly connected to the sight of a political manifesto of the right party UDC [Unione Democratica di Centro] hanging around. The manifesto shows three rats eating pieces of cheese taken from a big rounded cheese with the Ticino flag on it. It’s a manifesto against Italian workers,” he says.
I search for it on the web. One rat carries the symbols of the European flag, another of the Italian one. The third rat is dressed like a bricklayer. Below the image is an invitation in dialect: “bala i ratt” [chase away the rats …]. The visual discourse of the UDC political party repeats the message exemplified in the motto “prima i nostri” [our people first].75 I learn that rat manifestos have been used for many years in Ticino, starting in 2010. This one refers to the necessity of getting rid of frontalieri, as the bricklayer rat represents them. It was probably more visible in 2014, when the referendum “against mass immigration” was held in Switzerland.76 In Canton Ticino the proposal to establish a maximum quota of frontalieri won a large majority of votes, but the quota was unenforceable, because it violated the European agreements on the free movement of people within the Schengen Area.77
Precisely on time, the train stops at the city station, which is positioned on the top of a hill that drops steeply into town. From the station, you can catch a cable railway that descends into town. I make my way towards one union’s headquarters, where I meet a trade union representative who deals with both Swiss and Italian workers.
“Trade union representation is a peculiar thing for frontalieri,” he begins explaining to me. “The Italian trade unions cannot sit at the consultation tables, while the Swiss ones must also represent a part of Swiss workers who are hostile to frontalieri,” he goes on. To summarise this problem and that of the poor integration of frontalieri, an Italian trade unionist had told me a few days before that the border poses a problem of citizenship, because these workers are not positioned inside the political space where they carry out their activities.78
“I was looking for information on women workers among frontalieri. Can you tell me anything?” I ask the Swiss trade unionist.
“There are quite a few, just like men. Today, the main sectors of women frontaliere are that of care, tourism, and shopping, besides factory work. This latter is the historical sector in which they used to be employed,” he answers.
From that conversation, I find out about the Camiciaie di Arzo, the women shirtmakers of Stabio, who were active in the first half of the twentieth century.79
“Strikes are hardly contemplated in Switzerland, yet in 1941 there was a historic strike by these shirtmakers—both Italian and Swiss—to ask for a collective labour contract,” he adds. Later, I find a photograph of that event (IMG 39). It shows the workers marching on a road in Mendrisio. They were wearing a light blue handkerchief, according to the photograph’s caption.
After this interview, I walk in Lugano’s central streets, full of luxurious window shops similar to those in the centre of Milan. The city is known for its financial sector, and qualified frontalieri, who occupy prestigious positions—a novelty compared to the past—also work in the city centre: bankers, doctors, and professors.80 I have some more time to spend before catching the train back to Italy, so I enter a shop, where I end up chatting with another worker, telling her I’ve just come to the city with the transnational train. She is also an Italian commuter.
“I mostly come with the car,” she says. “The Lugano highway though is constantly undergoing construction works, so it is quite stressful.”
I explain that I came because I’m doing research on the border landscape.
“Well, from the highway you see the mountains while driving. This is believed to be the true Swiss landscape. But the areas surrounding the freeway are completely urbanised and seem a contradiction with respect to the presence of many other substantial portions of inner Switzerland still largely unbuilt and mountainous,” she says.
“I see. I’ve just spotted a Swiss travel guide in a shop window with mountains and lakes on the cover, actually.”
“That’s exactly what is believed to be the native landscape. I feel that especially the nationalist political discourse points to natural areas as its only reference,” she adds.
I read that the Swiss landscape has undergone significant urbanisation within the last century, so some believe that Swiss society is today wholly urbanised. The movie Traveling Warrior (1981) showed this urbanisation trend for the first time.81 As the movie’s main character meanders in the landscape with his car, we see the infrastructure that runs through the territory, such as those train lines that also facilitate the arrival of new workers for the new industrial areas.
“What else are you looking to for the research?” she asks.
“I’ve started with the landscape, and now I’m looking into forms of movements across the border, mostly labour and migration fluxes,” I say.
“Well, I feel that the problem of migrants is almost ignored here in Ticino, and this is peculiar because it is a border region. The issue was visible to me especially when I took the train from Como. In 2016 I saw many [people on the move] on it. Often, they were young kids,” she pauses for a while. “Once, I tried to explain to a boy that he couldn’t cross the border. He didn’t believe me. He said he would run fast in the woods when he arrived in Switzerland.”
“And then he was made to get off the train after the border check?”
“Yes. And that was it.”
D., a person on the move I met at the Rebbio migrant centre during one of my dinners there, told me a similar story. When he tried to pass on the train, border guards simply brought him back. It was night. They drove for a while, then they stopped the car and left him somewhere on the Italian side, telling him that he should go now. “Where? Where should I go?” he asked, and opened his arms symbolically as he recalled this. Pushbacks would not be possible for unaccompanied minors, as he was at the time. Yet it is difficult to verify the age of an undocumented migrant. Hence this international law is often applied arbitrarily, as journalistic inquiries and local activists denounce.82 People on the move are rarely aware of these rights provided by international regulations.
Besides taking the train, some walk on the tracks trying to cross, as this infrastructure clearly indicates a direction to follow. The train itself is a sort of movable and scattered borderscape representing and reproducing the border.83 Williams Walter used the term “viapolitics” to describe how the iterative movement of bodies travelling via vehicles, such as transnational trains and buses, performatively constructs and deconstructs the space of the border.84
On 27 February 2017, a person on the move named Diakite Youssouf decided that he would try to cross literally on the TiLo train. I read his story in a local newspaper. He climbed onto the roof of the train, probably at the Como San Giovanni station, and waited. After the train passed the Como-Chiasso border, he was electrocuted. The change in electrical voltage of the cables, or possibly a clumsy gesture, were fatal. Later, authorities discovered he had already tried to cross the Italian border several times in Ventimiglia at the frontier with France. Border guards had checked his fingerprints several times there, as it emerged from the records.85 It seems that Diakite aimed to reach some of his family in Paris.
Diakite’s was the first accident on a transnational Swiss-Italian train, but not the only one. The railway companies managing the line have set out to ensure no migrants climb onto the roofs, while WelCom migrant observatory in Como has circulated warnings on the risk of death.86 After his fatal crossing, Diakite was buried in Swiss soil in the cemetery of Balerna, the small Swiss city right after Chiasso.
During that time, many persons on the move were stuck at the Como San Giovanni station, living in tents quickly put up in the gardens in front of it, or simply in the streets. In 2016, people on the move wrote an open letter to Como inhabitants.87 Later, they organised a march to protest against the closure of the border.88 It is perhaps an image of that demonstration that I saved on my computer while doing research in March 2020 (IMG 45). The file title says, “Protesta contro la chiusura della frontiera” [protest against the closure of the border], followed by the name of the Italian news agency ANSA. I went back to look for this image on the web, but it had disappeared. It remained saved on my laptop, and I photographed it from the screen.
VI Parking Lots
I turn the key and switch off the car. I sit for a moment before opening the door. The gravel crunches under my steps. I look around: The parking lot looks anonymous, like many others, except for the fact that it is particularly large for the place and town in which it is located. It is a piece of land bordered by some temporary fences, not even asphalted. The bartender of La Frontera told me Italian women workers land here from a variety of inner towns, park their cars, and leave again for Switzerland with shuttle buses. Those who cannot use the shuttles are urged to share the car with other workers. Despite the accumulation of capital, there is a scarcity of space in the industrial area.
“Parking lots and factories are usually the only places workers know of the other nation,” a trade unionist told me.89 Car parks, together with the driveways that connect them to factories and other new workplaces of the tertiary sector, are a material dimension of frontalierato that extend throughout the border territory. They are fragments of the border that are activated and de-activated according to the border’s temporality, constituting the basis for frontalieri’s movement.
I’m reminded of a documentary on women cross-border workers from the 1970s. In 1969, Giorgio Pellegrin made Le frontialiere. L’altra metà [Female cross-border workers. The other half] for the Swiss broadcaster RSI. It was primarily shot on driveways.90 Long queues of workers’ cars are shown. The “other” of the documentary title is both the other nationality and the other gender. At the opening of the film, the interviewer asks a worker,
“What time do you leave home? … Wouldn’t you prefer to be next to your child?”91 He seems to hint that a reversal of roles may arise when women began to find new job opportunities, despite frontalierato being highly tiring due to the home-work commuting times. Many of the interviewees answer that working is an opportunity, despite the impossibility of being at home with their children. Having a job is already something, they say.
Problems of women workers in the 1970s seem similar to those of today: the long journeys, the scarcity of transport and nursery schools, the salary lower than that of men. And finally, the double taxation, a problem which was later solved. Besides working in the factory, we see women doing housework on the weekend, catching up on the week’s backlog (IMG 35).
“[The frontaliere end up being] a kind of working machine harassed by timetables … [and] congested roads, where there is no time left to develop a social and labour self-awareness,” states Pellegrin at the end of the documentary.92
I hang around aimlessly in the parking lot for a while, meeting no one. The sun peeks out and filters through a car dashboard covered in morning dew, reflecting off me. Time to go, I think.
I’ve read that in Como, coincidentally, one frontalieri car park was also the home of people on the move for a while. In 2017, the Val Mulini multistory municipal parking silo was occupied for a few months by migrants and local activists as a form of protest against the lack of an institutional response to the number of people on the move blocked at the border and left on the roads.93 People on the move had placed tents in a part of the ground floor, open to the outside but covered by the upstairs ramps.
I visit it in the afternoon. The car park has a round structure made of a helical ramp and reminds me of a fortress from the outside, perhaps due to the spikes that protrude from the roof covering. Something visible on the bare concrete walls near the formerly occupied area catches my attention. I go closer. There is a trace of the presence of people on the move, and a myriad of handwriting in languages that are unknown to me but look like Arabic (IMG 26). Later, I’ll send a photograph of the writings to a student who speaks Arabic. He writes me back:
Dear,
… the upper part says “In the name of Allah (god) the merciful,” a formula used before reading anything from the holy Quran or before starting any action to get god’s blessing. For the lower part I was able to translate it to “And god …” but the last word is not clear enough … I think it might be meaning “and god is enough,” as to mean that you only rely on God as God is enough and he will help you.94
Next to the formerly occupied area of the parking lot there are also some metal grids inserted into large concrete blocks, which the city administration put in place, after clearing the area, to prevent any possible future use by people on the move.95 A local activist told me that a tensile structure previously used to house the evacuees of an earthquake was finally provided by a charity. For three years, it was put in place on 8 December in winter to deal with the cold emergency.96 The cold winter is the main problem for the homeless in Como.
I move to the Como train station and walk from there for about two kilometres following the railway. I feel like I’m in a long, open-air tunnel, because the road is entirely closed in by the rail tracks raised above street level on one side and a series of buildings on the other side. I reach another car park in Regina Teodolinda street. It is a former car depot that was acquired by the prefecture and managed by the Red Cross as a camp to house people on the move during the peak of arrivals in 2016.97 The lot is not in a central position in the city, and it is space in a certain sense confined. Perhaps it was decided to host people on the move where they could be hardly visible.
Because these camps are under surveillance and externalised, some believe that they are a way to protect the nation-state from those who may represent a danger to the purity of the nation.98 Camps are placed outside of society, not only in a material sense.99 In her doctoral thesis, which researched the Como migrant camp, Arianna Jacqmin aptly described the bordered condition of this lot, which is enclosed by a cemetery, a private building, and the railroad tracks. She writes,
Although random, the places surrounding the Campo are particularly evocative on a symbolic level. The road and the railway … seem to remind the guests of their condition of passage, and perhaps to suggest them to continue further; the cemetery, distressing “neighbor,” lends itself as a memento mori to subjects whose existence is already highly precarious. Their place is in the middle, between the dead on their right and the “private citizens” on their left: the inhabitants of this and other camps … remain symbolically waiting to pass on either side.100
On the Swiss side, one of the spaces used to house arriving non-dublined asylum seekers was the bunker of Camorino, a former military compound underground and windowless, even more confined than a standard camp.101
The Como camp closed in 2018, following the drop in arrivals of people on the move, and was turned into a parking lot.102 From September 2016 to October 2018, the camp welcomed 7,019 asylum seekers, with a maximum of 200 at a time.103 During the peak of arrivals, only unaccompanied minors and women, being the most fragile subjects, could enter the camp due to lack of space. The reception spaces were built with containers, which were then removed, so now the place bears no trace of this former use. Perhaps due to its slightly decentralised position, the parking lot remains little used by the inhabitants of Como. Plants have made room in its soil. When I visit the lot, some had blossomed. The sprouts stubbornly emerging through the pebbles reminded me of Gilles Clément’s concept of third landscape, that landscape made of spontaneous nature that blossoms as a reserve of biodiversity in the interstitial spaces forgotten by human beings (IMG 49).104
In the former Como camp, nature moves indifferent to the border, while people are prevented from doing so. I read that the camp may be re-activated if the number of arrivals grows again, as landings come and go in waves. Meanwhile, some people on the move are informally inhabiting the former Ticosa silk factory in Como (IMG 47), which closed in the 1980s, like many textile companies on the Italian side of the border (IMG 40).105 While the labour market in the area has changed, this inactive production facility has entered the network of people on the move. Here, labour and migration seem coincidentally to intersect.
VII Walking at Night
“I was a smuggler many years ago,” the guide A. tells me on a hike to the peak of Monte Generoso, in which I’m participating. We are walking in Val d’Intelvi, a mountainous valley that the border separates from the adjacent Val di Muggio. I signed up for this trip, organised by an association from a border town. We met in the late afternoon so that we could be on the peak at sunset (IMG 15).
“Were you really a smuggler?” I ask. I’m short of breath from the climb but eager to know more.
“Yes. I started as a child. It wasn’t that uncommon in this area. I was in elementary school when I was taught to sew bricolle. Do you know what they are?” he asks.
“No.” I’ve never heard that word before.
“They are rudimentary backpacks made of canvas that were used to transport smuggled cigarettes. Le bionde [the blonds, i.e., the cigarettes] were bought in Switzerland and resold in Italy, where the regular price was higher due to higher taxes. The petty trade was also performed with coffee, sugar, and rice.” In the weeks following this first conversation, A. will become one of my main guides to the border area’s trails (IMG 18).
Positioned close to the border, cigarette and cigar factories employed female border workers called sigaraie.106 These factories were part of the border economy, emerging together with the textile factories but disappearing sooner. Some of the former tobacco factories, now house companies that employ frontalieri and are back into the border economy cycle.107
Smuggling is a type of border work common to many frontier areas, especially in the pre-Schengen era of internal European borders, and it is often described as a process of everyday bordering.108 Indeed, smuggling was part of everyday life on the Swiss-Italian border, and it is now part of the collective memory (IMG 36).
The language of smuggling permeates local society on both sides. The sfrosatore [smuggler] is an almost mythical figure who has entered folk tales and songs, especially in the areas around the lakes of Lombardy.109 In such tales, he often incorporated the resistance to the arbitrary and abstract rules of the nation-state. In “Ninna Nanna del Contrabbandiere” [Smuggler’s Lullaby] (1999), local songwriter Davide Van De Sfroos sings:
Smuggling activities constituted a concrete and pragmatic supplement to the income of the mountain areas, so much so that many local cheese-makers had managed to accumulate a real fortune, it is said, which did not come from cheese. Sfrosatori came up with a number of small but inventive ploys to avoid controls, A. tells me.
“Men retouched the cars with self-made recesses and hiding places.”111
“Did women have any role in it?” I ask.
“Yes, they were also part of the trafficking, although this is less present in the smuggling tales. They hid things under their clothes. They entered Switzerland thin and left after a few hours fattened!” A. laughs. He explains to me that some kinds of pouches could be tied at the waist under the skirt, to be filled with rice, a sort of border clothing.112 Thus the ramina, the wire mesh built by Italy on the boundary line, has never been able to stop people, not to mention goods.113 In different ways, both women and men performing smuggling embodied the border. The border came to identify with their own body, became mobile, and entered homes and daily life. Similarly, today the bodies of people on the move are borders.114
“How did it work, in practice?” I ask.
“We tried to always cross the border at night. We walked in the woods, without a torch, preferably in times of no moon. The less light there was, the less chance there was of being seen. And if the stones were not visible, and there was a risk of stumbling, it didn’t matter. In the silence of the night, any noise is amplified, even the feeble trampling of leaves. So we covered the soles of our shoes with canvases. The backpacks weighed tens of kilos to optimise the trip.”
Later, I discover that special rules applied to the selection of customs officers and border guards. They had to be people coming from outside the territory, without local ties. If they married local women, it was thought they might be corrupted, and they were often invited to relocate. I ask A. to introduce me to some former smuggler women. He knows one, an old lady. He phones me some days later.
“I asked her if she wants to meet you, but she doesn’t feel like it. You know, even if the activity was common, perhaps it is considered unbecoming for a woman to talk about it today. There is a sort of a stigma,” he says.
The smuggling of the past was a romantic thing, or at least it has been romanticised in its narration. Also, it was extremely visible in the territory. Contemporary smuggling is different. It is invisible and made up of activities involving drugs, weapons, or consumer goods such as meat.115 Organised crime networks on the border also include the trafficking of human beings, a business that has become more and more profitable. From small local operators who give directions for 50 euros, it scales up to international associations of multiple members far beyond the Italian area. In 2015, the Swiss police opened a special department called Gruppo Interforze per la Repressione dei Passatori [Joint Forces Group for the Repression of Passatori], specifically to counter this trafficking.116 The passatore is the one who facilitates the passage.
Another person hiking in Val d’Intelvi joined my first conversation with A.
“Thinking about smuggling events today may seem strange for a non-local because of its illegality. Still, this informal illegality was the norm and hence it was not perceived as proper illegality. Hearing helicopters flying over the border area for checks was also ordinary,” she says.
I’ve read that today drones are used to patrol the border, mainly to control the passage of migrants at night.117 This gives rise to a specific visuality of control: The state sees from above, with a view based on an aerial photography perspective, that might resemble that of maps. Reflecting on “how the state sees,” Lars Willumeit described the content of an email he had received from a Swiss official working with drones.118 The signature logo featured a promotional phrase that presented Switzerland as the “home of drones.” This claim followed:
“Discover our most innovative Swiss birds in the Swiss Aviary!” thus re-presenting the aviary (IMG 24), an entity traditionally part of the Alpine landscape and its identity, in a completely different context, that of securitisation. Local newspapers report that some residents of the Swiss-Italian border area complain about hearing drones passing over their homes and trees at night.
After that hike with A., I walk a mountain path myself at night (IMG 30). Although I think it is not a dangerous place, since it is frequented mainly by tourists, I ask someone to accompany me, so that I’m not alone. Being extremely difficult to reach, it seems strange that this path could be used by people on the move, while some areas of the flatland are much more accessible, albeit probably also more patrolled. However, a former border guard I met in a local village told me that sometimes people on the move pass by at night.
It is a night with a moon. Its light filters faintly through the foliage of the trees surrounding the path (IMG 56). The view of the valley is beautiful, if a little scary. We proceed slowly. At one point we hear a bizarre sound in the trees. We stop. My heart is in my throat. I shine my flashlight all around, but there is nothing there. It was probably an animal. We proceed with alert senses. In that darkness, everything takes on a different dimension. Yet I’m aware of my positionality as a tourist. It is a privileged one, which could never give back the experience of a person without a passport like mine. In the photographs of that night, however, you cannot see who took them. You only see the path, the trees and the darkness.
In his migrant auto-ethnography, published in Italian in 2019 with the title Io sono confine [I am border], Shahram Khosravi tells of his numerous nocturnal crossings in escaping Iran. A passage in the book describes his very first crossing. In the dark of night, he waits for his guide, named Homayoun, who has gone on to check that the border is clear:
the clear, dark sky offered an amazing spectacle of stars. I tried to find my position by those stars in case Homayoun did not show up, so I’d be able to go back. But he did; it was safe and we hurried towards the border. With a few steps, I crossed the border and so began my odyssey … There I was, on the other side of the border—without papers, on the same earth, just a few steps away, yet the soil was not the same. I, my body, identity and culture were “out of place,” out of their place … I had become “uprooted.”119
VIII Brothels
As I drive along the Lugano motorway, a bright neon sign glowing in the dark on the left catches my attention. It is attached to the top of a square building. It says, “Oceano” (IMG 51).
It reminds me of the architectural style described by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour in Learning from Las Vegas (1972), a book that collects their spatial and photographic investigation along Las Vegas’ main commercial road, the Strip. The Strip is surrounded by anonymous buildings with gigantic signs that tell what they hold. This is the architectural style of a box with an icon.
I get off the motorway. I search for information on my phone. The Oceano is one of the brothels constructed in Canton Ticino’s border area, especially near the Como-Chiasso border. Brothels are positioned right on the boundary line, next to the commercial port where the trucks carry out customs procedures, or a little further on. Others are placed along the Lugano motorway. The proliferation of case chiuse [literally “closed homes,” i.e., brothels], as they are informally called in Italian, is linked to the different legislative conditions that exist on the two sides of the border.120
Ever since the Legge Merlin of 1958, prostitution is not legal in Italy, while it is in Switzerland, albeit with specific regulations and limitations. Consequentially, different nightclubs have sprung up in the border area to respond to the demand of a mostly Italian clientele. Brothels are one of those elements common to many borders which share similar status, almost a marker of borders and their condition of alterity and marginality.
Where to build brothels has always been a controversial issue in Ticino. Nobody wants them in the city centre, so they have often been pushed into marginal or industrial areas, or right onto the border itself.121 All the names here seem to refer to distant and almost exotic places: the Maxim (imbued with a certain French aura), the Pompeii (pointing to ancient Rome), or the Oceano (referring to the vastness of the marine environment). These names create a kind of memorableness. The Oceano is a rather anonymous building next to another erotic club called Iceberg.
I drive back towards it. I arrive in a parking lot, where I can stop. I’m alone in the car and I’m feeling unsure that it is safe for me to get out and move around the place at this time. I know it is mostly an irrational thought. I take some time to look around: Besides the giant luminous sign that stands on the Oceano, the nearby club Iceberg has balconies that are also illuminated by artificial lights, which periodically change colour. Mannequins of women in inviting poses are put in place on the same balconies. I guess it is a strategy to attract potential customers. These plastic bodies are used as a form of visible call, an advertisement.
A few days later, I email one of these brothels to ask if I can visit it and take some photographs. I decided to photograph a brothel, as it seems to be a clearly visible material piece of the border dynamics. They answer me straight away, “No problem, come.” Having access to take pictures was extremely simple compared to other places, like factories. I visit it in the afternoon, on another day (IMG 29). When I arrive, I am advised not to photograph the girls, and I do not intend to. Yet, the brothel is closed at this time of the day, so I shouldn’t encounter either them or customers. I find myself in the dark bar space with a couple of employees.
“I will turn up our lighting system for you,” says one. Blue, purple, red, and an infinite range of shades come out from a complex system of illumination that varies in time with the music. “We have a fantastic lighting system,” he adds, and smiles. We chat for a while. “Our position is strategic, you know.”
“I thought so because you are literally located on the boundary line in Como-Chiasso,” I say.
“Yes, here smartphones are still connected to the Italian telephone network. When customers receive a phone call, if they don’t pick up, the answering machine that clicks speaks Italian. With the more internal brothels placed into Ticino territory, the secretary’s voice speaks German if an Italian cell phone is called and there is no answer. This reveals that the mobile owner is in Switzerland, and customers don’t like that,” he says. I understand that the Swiss phone system creates a kind of visibility that annoys Italian customers of border brothels, who wish to keep their whereabouts private.
Before that visit, I had looked into the legislative status of these places and that of their workers. The sex workers in the Ticino case chiuse must have either European citizenship or the citizenship of one of the states adhering to the Schengen Agreement. If one has the correct nationality, then starting to work is quite easy. You simply need to announce yourself to the authorities and declare that you want to work as a self-employed person to obtain the necessary residence and work permit.122 Night bars provide a place to meet customers, but street prostitution is prohibited in Canton Ticino.123
It is difficult to estimate the number of sex workers in Switzerland and where they come from because many change workplaces after having announced themselves. However, women of foreign origin are the large majority. With the extension of free movement to eastern and southeastern Europe, there was an increase in prostitutes of Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian origin in the early 2000s. Since the 2008–2009 crisis, there has also been a rise in Italian and Spanish citizens, or foreign citizens who have obtained EU nationality in those countries, who then come to Switzerland to be sex workers.124
On the other side of the boundary line, in Italy, prostitution is linked to informality, and this subjects the most fragile women—often those who do not have documents—to risks of exploitation related precisely to their illegal status. Many of the women on the move who come to Italian soil are victims of trafficking.
“Ever since they start their journey to Europe, they are destined to the roads to be prostitutes, as they will be asked to repay for their travel and forced to do so upon their arrival,” a volunteer working with people on the move in Como told me. She was giving me a lift to the Rebbio centre on one of my visits to the city.
“How many women does this happen to?” I ask.
“From my experience, I can say this is the reality for at least half of women on the move who arrive at this border,” she answers. I went looking for data but couldn’t find any official numbers about the phenomenon in this context. Yet given this framework, in the Como area some non-profit organisations are taking care of women on the move who end up in prostitution. One of these organisations is Coop Lotta.125 Sex trafficking is not absent on the Swiss side either, although it can be assumed that the numbers are smaller.126
Border brothels are a visible materialisation of the sexualised dimension of borderscapes, or how they can be ethno-sexually differentiated depending both on status and gender. Yet the discourses on gender and on nation intertwine in many invisible ways, because they are constructed by each other.127 Women reproduce nations biologically, culturally, and symbolically, since it is first through biological birth that citizenship is preferentially acquired. Citizenship is what allows or not the trespass of specific borders. Citizenship is then involved in protecting the nation until the point of death, as in wars and military defence of the homeland territory. In this frame, the symbolic role of gender and sex in the construction (or de-construction) of nationhood is exemplified in the systemic use of rape during war.
Rape is also systematically used on the routes that people on the move travel from Africa into Europe, almost as a form of control that establishes a hierarchy of power. While this is informally known among volunteers who work with people on the move in the Como area, no specific study about the abuses suffered along the route exists for migrants who transit the Swiss-Italian border. As far as the border with France in Ventimiglia is concerned, a report from Médecins Sans Frontières testifies that after medical visits conducted on women on the move, 3% of women had signs of sexual violence.128 At the same time, 19% of women on the move were pregnant, a particularly fragile condition for a transnational journey of this magnitude and under these conditions. The rates of abuse might be even higher but remain hidden, since associations report that abuses are systematic in Libya, the final country of travel from within the African route.
Being a woman also places those who work with people on the move in a specific situation. I chatted about this with a woman who works in Como with people on the move, discussing her experience of situations in which she felt exposed as a woman in dealing with those who pass by.
“Episodes of harassment for women who work with people on the move can happen,” she said. “To prevent such events, I need to impose myself and appear strong. And that’s what I do. Besides, I build a relationship of trust with some of the people who are here more permanently, and I know they will protect me.”
IX Bus to the South
Thinking of arriving in the southern Italian city of Taranto reminds me immediately of a landscape in motion. Perhaps because that is what it is like when I arrive there by train. I see a blurred landscape from the window of my cabin, a scene where the giant industrial plants for which the city is known are already visible in the distance and gradually come into focus as the train approaches the city. Mechanical cranes look like rare animals. To the side, some pipes run along with the train towards the plants.
The Mediterranean Sea is further on the right. Between the train and the water lie some scattered parts of the different industrial plants of the area. And then there is the colour red, intense and unique, a red that comes from the iron powder used in the production process of the former Ilva steel plant, which the sea wind has spread a bit everywhere around. Next to the train, the powder also covers the road guard rails, which become deeper red as you get closer to the town. The arrival in Taranto feels memorable to me, like landing in some strange and alien landscape.
I never thought that my research would bring me this far from the border, yet it seemed necessary to move south at a certain point. There is a dynamic link between the north and the south margins of Italy which is historical as well as present in contemporary reality.129 One might wonder what the city of Taranto has to do with the Swiss-Italian border, being 1,000 kilometres away from it, on the other side of Italy. What links them is the presence of a hotspot, an identification centre for unauthorised people on the move who enter the country, put in place to complete the procedures necessary for applying the Dublin regulations to asylum requests.130 For this reason I decide that my travelogue must end here, far away from the border itself.
During the peak of arrivals at the northern border after the 2016 crisis, buses were organised by the government to pick up people on the move found at the northern border and transfer them to the Taranto hotspot for identification operations. Within a couple of days, the people on the move were released in the Taranto area. I first heard about this from some volunteers in Como and then went to look for information online. This practice, which was put in place to “lighten the border” by decreasing the presence of migrants at the northern Italian border, was originally designed by then foreign minister Angelino Alfano in 2016, but it remained in use afterwards.131
“How did these transfers work?” I ask a local activist who deals with people on the move in the Como area.
“They were deportations, I would say. Migrants were taken on the buses coercively, without being given information about their destination, and often without the presence of an interpreter. This means that they were usually unable to communicate,” she said. “Some of the people taken did not need to be identified because they had already been identified in another centre. Others had previously applied for asylum or even had an Italian residence permit,” she added.
“What happened once the identification operations in Taranto were completed?”
“Well, depending on each person’s legal status, migrants were either transferred to other centres or released on the territory with an expulsion order, within a day or so. Those who were released in the Taranto area usually returned to the northern border, crossing Italy once more by taking multiple trains. Some of the people stranded in Como have been brought back to Taranto five or six times. I can tell you this is true because I know them personally,” she said.
While hotspots should be used to identify migrants from maritime landings along the southern coasts, from 2017 to 2019, the one in Taranto was used exclusively for identifying, or re-identifying, people on the move coming from the internal European border to the north.132 In Como, people on the move were picked up at the border of Ponte Chiasso, after being pushed back from Switzerland, or at the station of Como San Giovanni and its surrounding areas.133 The transfers continued from Como until 2019. After 2019, they stopped because of the lower number of arrivals in the city.134
A video made by two Italian journalists, Pietro Barabino and Matteo Pucciarelli, in 2018 shows them following the long journey of seventeen hours one such bus made to the hotspot of Taranto from the northern Italian border city of Ventimiglia.135 The journalists leave at three o’clock in the afternoon and, driving after the bus, arrive in Taranto at the first hours of dawn. On the bus are travelling people on the move.
Taranto hotspot is visible from the train arriving in the city from the north, while it is not directly visible for those arriving by bus. It is a rather anonymous structure, and only the eye of a person informed of its presence can see it. Some white tensile structures are mounted between the train tracks, the industrial port, and the beginning of the newly re-named steel plant Acciaierie d’Italia. Those giant tents (IMG 52) are surrounded by grates embedded in concrete blocks (IMG 42). The area that hosts the hotspot used to be the parking lot of one of the merchant gates of the port.136
The centre cannot be visited or photographed, not even from outside. I’m aware of this inaccessibility, and I look for other ways to get closer to it, to get some hints of it. The maps reveal the existence of a big plot next to the railways and the hotspot. It looks abandoned. I plan to visit it at the end of a summer day. I reach it from the road when the sun is already low. It’s a sort of large clearing on the side of the steel plant, completely covered with red dust, that reveals the traces of some truck tyres (IMG 38). I step on the edge of the plot, fenced with some low barriers, and stand still. In the background, I can hear the intense noise of the steel plant’s machinery, which operates 24 hours a day and never stops. I move on. A tangle of brambles and uncultivated plants does not allow me to get any closer, but from afar I can see the roofing of the migration hotspot tents, and in the background, the sea (IMG 31).
While I am there, a person comes. He looks like he may be a caretaker.
“What are you doing? You can’t stay here,” he says.
“I’m studying the area for a thesis, and this was the only way to take a photograph towards the port,” I say.
He asks me where I come from and we chat for a while about Milan.
“OK, you can stay, but only two minutes,” he says kindly, in the end.
I quickly mount the camera on my tripod and I take a couple of pictures of that scenery, feeling a sense of urgency. I turn from the sea to the steel plant. Meanwhile, the sun has set.
Those lights of the day ending, the only time of day I could visit the area amid one of the hottest summers ever, reminded me of the early morning lights that the passengers of the buses coming from the northern border must have seen when arriving in the city. Thus the following day, I visit the bus station at dawn. Some workers are leaving on the first morning buses. Some non-Italian looking boys walk on the overpass road above the bus station, coming down towards it. I wonder if they are leaving the city to go into the countryside for vegetable or fruit picking. I learnt during the time I spent at the Osservatorio Migranti in Como that many people on the move head south in the summer to collect agricultural products in the fields, routinely coming back to Como in the winter season. Right in front of the bus station is the entrance to the port, which also leads to the migration hotspot. From there, however, the hotspot remains invisible.
People on the move who need to go to the city from the Taranto hotspot must walk three kilometres of state road, without sidewalks, as there is no connection between the city and the identification centre.137 The plot that hosts the centre is one in which no one would want to stay. The giant steel plant that borders it is known for the pollution and health risks to those who live in the Taranto neighbourhoods closest to it. The location is also inhospitable, a large asphalt expanse with no trees or green areas. Besides a few media reports, mainly from local newspapers, the operating mechanism of the hotspot has never achieved full visibility in the national media. The peripherality of the centre with respect to the city is a position that invisibilises it.
“The hotspot is an abstract entity for the inhabitants of Taranto,” an activist of the Babele association tells to me.138 “Not only because it is so far away from the town centre and disconnected from the urban fabric, but also because no one in the city ever talks about it, not even the authorities,” he says. The hotspot appears to be a sort of platform of displacement, as if the function of transfers of people on the move to its peripheral location were a strategy of the authorities to make the crossing more complex and tiring, and to practically move the border further south. As highlighted by many activists, the identification operations of the hotspot could also be carried out near the northern border, without incurring the costs of transporting people for such a long journey escorted by the police.
In the Swiss-Italian borderscape, there is a loop dynamic between the north and the south, of which the Taranto hotspot appears to have been only one symbolic element of something larger. For those who live in inner Switzerland, and for the associated political discourse, Ticino is “the south” of Switzerland. It is less rich, as well as being a few degrees parallel further down. For the political discourse of Ticino, Lombardy is “the south” from which those who steal jobs come. I happened to hear conversations in a Ticino bar where these ideas were discussed during the lunch break. In Lombardy, “the south” is still another, as the Italian right-wing political parties employ the same discourse as the Ticino one, but identify other threats coming from the south. People on the move land there where frontalieri came from, try to reach northern Europe, and are often pushed back to the south.
The political discourses on the south and the north seem to be linked to an identitary conception of the land, which the borderscape is imbued with. The nationalist movements turn to the land as the element that creates the conditions of belonging to a certain community, something that gives rise to a specific earthbound vision, as the homeland is something to possess. This identitary attachment to the land that, when pushed to its extreme, leads to the continuous establishment of a new “south” is relative, mobile, and always displaced, as Hilde Van Gelder noticed when proposing the expression “Ground Sea” to point to a different attitude that may overcome binary divisions.
The national border itself moves along with these immaterial imaginaries and through material structures designed to mobilise its functions elsewhere from the boundary line. It seems that the national border has a thickness that not only extends to this margin on the sea of the peninsula, but that even coincides with the entire Italian territory, if not with Fortress Europe. I find myself in the middle of these thoughts here, on this southern margin from which many invisibles used to arrive, and still arrive today.
Marin, “Frontiers of Utopia.” The concept of “travel narrative,” taken from Louis Marin, is used by Hilde Van Gelder to define her method, which combines field observations and photo-theoretical insights. See Van Gelder, Ground Sea.
Marin, “Frontiers of Utopia,” 413.
Ibid.
Ibid., 414.
Ibid., 415.
Ibid.
Brambilla, Laine, and Bocchi, Borderscaping.
Lerm Hayes, Post-War Germany and “Objective Chance.”
Ibid., 30.
Ibid.
Gaeta, “Questioni Di Metodo.”
Yuval-Davis, “Situated Intersectionality and Social Inequality”; Cassidy, Yuval-Davis, and Wemyss, “Intersectional Border(Ing)s.”
McCall, “The Complexity of Intersectionality.”
Cassidy, Yuval-Davis, and Wemyss, “Intersectional Border(Ing)s,” 139 (my emphasis).
Yuval-Davis, “Situated Intersectionality,” 94. Yuval-Davis is quoting Haraway here; see Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 189.
Fournier, Autotheory as Feminist Practice.
Frontalieri earn less than Swiss and less than resident foreigners, and among frontalieri, women earn even less. According to a trade unionist from Unia, women cross-border workers often perceive their work only as a supplement to their husbands’ income. This information was provided to me during an informal conversation on the day of the women’s strike on 14 June 2021 in Bellinzona.
Yet, as seen, women are also historically involved in the birth of the Swiss-Italian labour market. Frontalierato came about precisely because of women’s work in the textile sector.
For references to these data, see section “Brothels” in the travelogue.
Cavarero, Tu Che Mi Guardi, Tu Che Mi Racconti.
Including Italian trade unionists representing frontalieri of the CGIL trade union and Swiss trade unionists of the Unia trade union; architects of the technical office border town; an employer of Mobitrends SA, the company which manages bus shuttles between the Italian towns and the industrial area of Stabio and Mendrisio; relatives of the owners of old factories of the border area, such as the former Realini shirt factory in Stabio and the former cigar factory Polus in Balerna, Switzerland; the priest who manages the Rebbio migrant centre in Como, Italy (Don Giusto); Italian volunteers and workers from Osservatorio Giuridico per i Migranti in Como (lawyer Alessandra Migliore and others) and the association Como Senza Frontiere (spokesperson Fabio Cani); Swiss volunteers who cooperate with the Rebbio migrant centre (Willy Lubrini and others); members of Centro di Prima Accoglienza Casa Astra in Mendrisio, Switzerland. This is still a limited view of the border, as some actors in the border area are missing. For example, I tried to contact owners of factories currently in operation in the border area, but they preferred not to be interviewed. Accessing institutional actors from public bodies has proven equally difficult.
I spoke with frontalieri casually encountered in the area and also with workers I contacted through trade unions, as well as with people on the move whom I mostly met at the Rebbio migrant centre.
For example, the EU documents related to the Dublin regulations, or the bilateral agreements that regulate the taxation of frontalieri. A review of the news on issues related to frontalierato and migration, both in national and local newspapers, was a key part of my preparation before the fieldwork. Among the local newspapera, I particularly point out as sources Corriere del Ticino, Tio.ch, Ticinonews.ch, La Provincia di Como, Il Giorno—Como.
See sections “Brothels” and “Parking Lots” of the travelogue, IMG 29 and IMG 26.
The historical photographs come from research carried out in the online catalogue of the State Archives of Canton Ticino and RSI (Radio Svizzera Italiana). I later contacted by email the Centro di Dialettologia of Bellinzona for specific materials contained in their non-digitized archive. Online research in the Italian catalogues didn’t prove effective in terms of topics covered. Some historical photographs were also provided to me by local people.
Interview with Francesca Scalise, Unia trade union representative, on 19 December 2019.
Rino Scarcelli, “Quei figli di immigrati costretti a vivere sottovoce,” Tv Svizzera, 2018, 11 June 2018, https://www.tvsvizzera.it/tvs/-bambini-proibiti-_quei-figli-di-immigrati-costretti-a-vivere-sottovoce/44139960 (accessed 27 July 2023).
After elementary school, they would be asked to pay specific taxes, as I learned from a discussion in one of the Facebook groups frontalieri use. Frontalieri Ticino is the biggest group of frontalieri on facebook, with approximately 35,900 subscribers in November 2023. See https://www.facebook.com/groups/sgrazianos.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 77.
Those are the so-called panelvetic triplets. “Buralista” means “postal employee who is at the counter.” See Lurati, Dialetto e Italiano Regionale Nella Svizzera Italiana, 169; Bruno Moretti, “Svizzera, italiano di,” Enciclopedia dell’Italiano, 2011, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/italiano-di-svizzera_%28Enciclopedia-dell%27Italiano%29/ (accessed 27 July 2023).
The five lines that depart from Italy, managed by Mobalt service, arrive in the industrial areas of Stabio and Mendrisio. They depart from Varese area, Como area, and Olgiate Comasco.
Mobalt SA is a private company that stipulates agreements directly with other private companies placed in the Swiss industrial area to provide shuttles for their workers. The information here and above was given to me in an informal conversation with a Swiss worker and was later confirmed in an interview with an employee of Mobalt SA; see https://www.mobalt.ch/ and http://www.centralemobilita.ch/servizi.
Hermann, “Alcune Problematiche.”
Email conversation on 7 July 2020 (my translation).
The issue of proper emigration to Switzerland has been studied more, and there are a few cultural works that confront the topic. One example is the movie mentioned earlier, Pane e cioccolata (1974), by director Franco Brusati.
Conversation with Fabio Cani on 18 June 2020.
Codoni, Storie Di Ramina. The line only remained in operation for a couple of years.
The Interreg project “Ti-ciclo-via” proposed to transform the disused train line into a transnational bicycle and pedestrian path.
The purpose of the line is to ensure emergency resources in the event of a blackout and to provide extra access to power lines to sell electricity from Canton Ticino to Lombardy. Interview with architect Fabrizio Donadini of the municipality of Valmorea on 20 July 2020. Also see “Una ferrovia ‘energetica,’” Varesefocus, 27 March 2003, https://www.univa.va.it/varesefocus/vf.nsf/web/BEA4FA91F8C71AFAC1256CFC0029C17A?OpenDocument (accessed 27 July 2023).
Codoni, Storie Di Ramina.
Codoni and Della Casa, Il Gaggiolo Sulla via Della Salvezza.
The story of this transnational procession was told to me first by local historian Guido Codoni, and then recounted two other times in informal conversations with local inhabitants. See also R. Caimi, “Dalla Svizzera a Uggiate. Sulla collina dei morti,” La Provincia di Como, 16 March 2020, https://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/Homepage/274976_dalla_svizzera_a_uggiate_sulla_collina_dei_morti (accessed 27 July 2023).
Khosravi, “Illegal” Traveller.
Agius and Edenborg, “Gendered Bordering Practices.”
Didi-Huberman, Survival of the Fireflies, 5.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “‘Il Vuoto Del Potere’ Ovvero ‘l’articolo Delle Lucciole,’” Corriere Della Sera, 1 February 1975, https://www.corriere.it/speciali/pasolini/potere.html.
Didi-Huberman, Survival of the Fireflies.
Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All.
Leonardo Spagnoli, “Frontalieri, ‘molti Stati stanno violando Schengen,’” TvSvizzera.it, April 20, 2020, from https://www.tvsvizzera.it/tvs/qui-mondo/confederazione-europea-dei-sindacati_frontalieri---molti-stati-stanno-violando-schengen-/45698336?itm_source=parsely-api??utm_campaign=swi-nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=o (accessed 27 July 2023).
In 2021, approximately 65,000 vehicles per day crossed the border into Ticino from Italy. See the report “Mobilità transfrontaliera. Rilevamento presso i valichi di confine. (2022),” Dipartimento del Territorio, Sezione della Mobilità, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DT/temi/conteggi_traffico/documenti/TrafficoTransfrontaliero_Rilevamento_presso_valichi_confine_2021.pdf (accessed 10 January 2024). However, the surrounding villages are all relatively small, with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, according to data from ISTAT, The National Institute of Statistics. See http://demo.istat.it/bilmens2020gen/index02.html (accessed 4 April 2021).
Strüver, Stories of the “Boring Border.”
I am paraphrasing here the words of a worker.
These are a typical markers of border areas that seem to be quite popular here. Since frontalieri are paid in francs, they need to change their salary into euros.
Although young Swiss couples are indeed moving to Italy for economic reasons, the houses’ designs may only depend on the style with which new homes are being built in general. On the dynamic movement of young Swiss couples into Italy see “Ticino addio, vado a fare il frontaliere in Italia,” Corriere del Ticino, 9 September 2019, https://www.cdt .ch/ticino/ticino-addio-vado-a-fare-il-frontaliere-in-italia-YD1665652?_sid=ppEh5Omb (accessed 15 March 2021).
The plan was provided to me by email for consultation on 17 June 2020 by Bora Uzakgoeren on behalf of the Republic and Canton of Ticino Department of the territory.
Simona Guatieri, “La ‘Fashion Valley’ è arrivata alla fine?” Tio, 7 October 2018, https://www.tio.ch/ticino/focus/1310700/la-fashion-valley-e-arrivata-alla-fine (accessed 27 July 2023).
Krummenacher, Lo Sviluppo Economico Del Canton Ticino Nel Confronto (Inter) Nazionale.
Tax rates were covered by banking secrecy but were believed to be between 5% and 13%. See Federico Franchini, “Moda made in Ticino: poche tasse, tanti utili,” Area, 22 January 2016, https://www.areaonline.ch/Moda-made-in-Ticino-poche-tasse-tanti-utili-bb260200 (accessed 27 July 2023). Brands that moved to the area included Guess, Armani, Gucci, and that of the VF International group. The Ermenegildo Zegna group is an exception. The company opened some branches in Ticino in 1976 and has remained on an ongoing basis. See Consitex SA at http://archiviozegna.com/it/family_tree/195/detail (accessed 4 April 2020).
In 2016, around 77% of the workforce of these companies were frontalieri; see “76,9% di frontalieri nel settore tessile,” Ticinonews.Ch, 30 December 2016, https://www.ticinonews.ch/ticino/769-di-frontalieri-nel-settore-tessile-FKTCN340432 (accessed 27 July 2023).
Swiss political stability is opposed to the continuous changes in Italian governing bodies, which companies have to cope with. Interview with architect Fabrizio Donadini of the municipality of Valmorea on 7 July 2020.
Interview with Enrico Borrelli, Unia trade union representative, on 11 November 2019.
See Consitex S. A. at http://archiviozegna.com/it/family_tree/195/detail (accessed 4 April 2020). No official numbers on workers and their nationalities are available. Information about the large presence of Italian workers is derived from interviews with trade unionists and conversations with people on the ground.
Logistics is a mobile, contemporary form of production. Here, it can be moved from one side of the border to the other depending on economic convenience. Interview with Prof. Gian Paolo Torricelli, Accademia di Mendrisio, 28 November 2019. Also see Gian Paolo Torricelli and Simone Garlandini, “Nuove Geografie Della Logistica Nel Cantone Ticino,” Osservatorio dello sviluppo territoriale (OST-TI), Dipartimento del territorio, Bellinzona—Università della Svizzera italiana, Mendrisio, 2018, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DT/temi/piano_direttore/osservatorio_sviluppo_territoriale/rapporti/OST_Nuove_geografie_logistica_TI_03.2018.pdf, (accessed 10 January 2024).
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Background Brief. Inclusive Framework on BEPS.”
Interview with Enrico Borrelli, Unia trade union representative, on 28 November 2019.
Mezzadra and Neilson, Border as Method.
Gaeta, La Civiltà Dei Confini.
Conversations with Fabio Cani, local historian and spokesperson of the association Como Senza Frontiere, and with Don Giusto took place on 8 June 2020; conversations with Swiss volunteers of the Rebbio centre on 7 July 2020.
Boyd, “Family and Personal Networks in International Migration.”
Yet unaccompanied minors can stay only in governamental centers, thus not in the Rebbio one.
Van Houtum and Spierings, “The Mask of the Border.”
Federico Franchini, Francesca Sironi, “Ieri sigarette, oggi migranti: il nuovo business dei contrabbandieri,” L’Espresso, 14 April 2016, https://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste/2016/04/14/news/ieri-sigarette-oggi-migranti-il-nuovo-business-dei-contrabbandieri-1.260170 (accessed 15 March 2021).
Marías, Dark Back of Time, 333, quoted in Van Gelder, Ground Sea, 77.
Van Gelder, Ground Sea, 77.
Maire and Garufo, “Prima i Nostri.”
See “Iniziativa popolare federale ‘Contro l’immigrazione di massa,’” Cancelleria Federale Confederazione Svizzera, https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/i/pore/vi/vis413.html (accessed 4 April 2021).
Putting limits on incoming Europeans would mean Switzerland having to withdraw from European agreements that are also advantageous for the country, such as those on free trade.
Interview with Giuseppe Augurusa, CGIL trade union representative for frontalieri, on 26 November 2019.
Interview with Enrico Borrelli, Unia trade union representative, on 28 November 2019.
Interview with Vincenzo Cicero, Unia trade union representative, on 4 April 2020.
Schmid, “Traveling Warrior and Complete Urbanization in Switzerland,” 138.
See the reports “Le riammissioni di cittadini stranieri alla frontiera di Chiasso: profili di illegittimità,” Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sulla Migrazione, 29 August 2016, https://www.asgi.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Report-Riammissioni-Chiasso_ASGI_31.8.16_def.pdf (accessed 5 December 2023); and “Migranti respinti in Italia dagli svizzeri, Salvini: ‘Non siamo un campo profughi,’” La provincia, 18 November 2018, https://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/como-citta/migranti-spinti-in-italia-dagli-svizzeri-salvini-non-siamo-un-campo-profughi_1294751_11/ (accessed 14 March 2021).
Teunissen, “Border Crossing Assemblages.”
Walters, “Migration, Vehicles, and Politics.”
Information from a report of the Open Migration platform. See Andrea Quadroni and Michele Luppi, “Morire di confine a Como,” Open Migration, 19 July 2017, https://openmigration.org/analisi/morire-di-confine-a-como/ (accessed 2 March 2021).
This transnational train line is jointly managed by the Italian service Trenord and the Swiss service Ferrovie Svizzere.
“I migranti scrivono una lettera aperta alla città di Como,” La Regione, 17 August 2016, https://www.laregione.ch/estero/confine/1204437/i-migranti-scrivono-una-lettera-aperta-alla-citta-di-como (accessed 20 July 2021).
“Conclusa la protesta con i migranti a Como,” La Provincia, 15 September 2016, https://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/como-citta/al-via-la-protesta-con-i-migranti-a-como_1201716_11/ (accessed 20 July 2021); “Corteo dei migranti: nessuna solidarietà, solo imposte chiuse,” Il Giorno, 16 September 2016, https://www.ilgiorno.it/como/cronaca/migranti-corteo-1.2514573 (accessed 20 July 2021).
Interview with Vincenzo Cicero, Unia trade union representative, on 29 April 2020.
Documentary by Giorgio Pellegrini, produced by Edda Mantegani, for RSI—Radio Svizzera Italiana, first broadcast on 6 December 1969. See Giorgio Pellegrini, “Le frontaliere. L’altra metà,” Radiotelevisione Svizzera, 6 December 1969, https://www.rsi.ch/speciali/pei/donnestorie/audio-video/Le-frontaliere-Laltra-met%C3%A0-06121969-9834751.html (accessed 2 April 2021).
Pellegrini, minutes 0:00 to 0:23 (my translation).
Ibid., from minute 21:10 (my translation).
Reference is made to different conversations with local activists on migration in the city of Como.
Email conversation with Yousef Ali Abuzeid in November 2022.
“Como, in val Mulini recinzioni anti migranti,” La Provincia di Como, 15 December 2017, La https://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/como-citta/como-in-val-mulini-recinzioni-anti-migranti_1264629_11/ (accessed 3 March 2021).
Since the coronavirus pandemic, an indoor facility has been set up.
“I migranti bloccati a Como,” Il Post, 21 August 2016, https://www.ilpost.it/2016/08/21/migranti-como/ (accessed 23 March 2021).
Douglas, Purity and Danger.
Agamben, Means without End.
Jacqmin, “La Risposta Umanitaria,” 134 (my translation).
Simone Berti, “I medici: ‘Via i migranti dai bunker,’” Corriere del Ticino. 21 March 2019, https://www.cdt.ch/ticino/bellinzona/i-medici-via-i-migranti-dai-bunker-XX1011202?_sid=ED4TywJ6 (accessed 4 March 2021).
Roberto Canali, “Como, un parcheggio al posto del centro migranti,” Il Giorno, 15 February 2020, https://www.ilgiorno.it/como/cronaca/parcheggio-centro-migranti-1.5031331 (accessed 13 March 2021).
On the camp numbers, see Roberto Canali, “Como, in due anni accolti settemila migranti,” Il Giorno, 1 March 2019, https://www.ilgiorno.it/como/cronaca/parcheggio-centro-migranti-1.5031331 (accessed 2 April 2021).
Clément, Manifesto Del Terzo Paesaggio.
Silk from the Como area is renowned.
Cavadini, ed. Tabacco e Arte.
Information from a site visit on 20 January 2020.
Cassidy, Yuval-Davis, and Wemyss, “Debordering and Everyday (Re)Bordering in and of Dover.”
Bellosi, Con i Piedi Nell’acqua.
“Sleep son. / Your father has a sack on his back. / He climbs at night. / Pray to the moon not to let him be caught / Pray to the star to look where he goes [that is, to protect him] / Pray to the trail to take him home” (my translation). The first verse of the song “Ninna nanna del contrabbandiere” was recorded in 1999 on the album Brèva e Tivàn by Davide Van De Sfroos. The song is written in the local dialect of the Lake Como area, called tremezzino or laghée. Davide Van De Sfroos is the pseudonym of Davide Enrico Bernasconi. The words van de sfroos refer to the expression [essi] vanno di frodo, that is, “they go smuggling.” See “Testo Ninna nanna del contrabbandiere—Davide Van De Sfroos,” Rockol, https://testicanzoni.rockol.it/testi/davide-van-de-sfroos-ninna-nanna-del-contrabbandiere-45218440 (accessed 27 July 2023).
This information was also provided to me during an interview with a former border guard in Erbonne on 1 February 2020.
The video by Yto Barrada, The Smuggler (2006), shows a Moroccan woman similarly dressing up with smuggled goods, thus revealing a common characteristic of distant borders.
Codoni, Storie Di Ramina.
Khosravi, “Illegal” Traveller.
Information on meat smuggling was gathered from informal conversations on the ground.
“Passatori braccati in Ticino,” RSI News, 2016, 19 June 2016, https://www.rsi.ch/news/ticino-e-grigioni-e-insubria/Passatori-braccati-in-Ticino-7636004.html (accessed 13 February 2021).
“Perché si parla tanto di ‘droni anti-migranti’ sul confine fra Italia e Svizzera,” VICE News Italia, 22 July 2016, https://www.vice.com/it/article/wj9jbz/droni-migranti-confine-svizzera-italia (accessed 13 February 2021).
Willumeit, “Seeing the State vs. Seeing like a State,” 19.
Khosravi, “Illegal” Traveller, 24.
Brothels are called case di tolleranza in the government documents of Canton Ticino.
“Novità a luci rosse in Ticino. A Chiasso licenzia edilizia ad un postribolo di lusso, a Cadenazzo continua la lotta attorno al bordello nella zona industriale,” RSI News, 3 May 2019, https://www.rsi.ch/news/ticino-e-grigioni-e-insubria/Novit%C3%A0-a-luci-rosse-in-Ticino-11720915.html (accessed 13 February 2021).
According to the regulations in force, people from third countries cannot be admitted to Switzerland for prostitution. See “Prostituzione e Tratta Di Esseri Umani Finalizzata Allo Sfruttamento Sessuale. Rapporto Del Consiglio Federale in Adempimento Dei Postulati 12.4162 Streiff-Feller, 13.3332 Caroni, 13.4033 Feri e 13.4045 Fehr,” Confederazione svizzera. Dipartimento federale di giustizia e polizia DFGP, 2015, p. 23. https://www.ejpd.admin.ch/ejpd/it/home/aktuell/news/2015/2015-06-05.html (accessed 7 July 2020). I follow the same report for the information provided later in the paragraph.
See “Modalità di annuncio per esercitare la prostituzione,” Polizia Cantonale, sezione TESEU, https://www4.ti.ch/di/pol/autorizzazioni-e-permessi/annuncio-esercizio-della-prostituzione/ (accessed 7 July 2020).
Luisa Spagnoli, “In Ticino una prostituta su cinque è italiana,” TvSvizzera.it, 19 April 2017, https://www.tvsvizzera.it/tvs/frontaliere-del-sesso_in-ticino-una-prostituta-su-cinque-%C3%A8-italiana/43120678 (accessed 13 February 2021).
Cooperativa Lotta Contro l’Emarginazione Onlus [Cooperative to Fight Against Marginalization Onlus], see http://www.cooplotta.it/contatti/sede-como/.
One organization involved in combating human trafficking and providing health support to people on the move in Canton Ticino is Antenna MayDay, SOS Soccorso Operaio Ticino, see http://www.sos-ti.ch/mayday.html.
Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation.
Medici Senza Frontiere, “Fuoricampo. Insediamenti Informali. Marginalità Sociale, Ostacoli All’accesso Alle Cure e Ai Beni Essenziali per Migranti e Rifugiati,” (Medici Senza Frontiere, 2018).
For further discussion of this south-north dynamic, also see chapter 3, “Bodies Labouring at the Border,” and chapter 4, “At the Southernmost Point.”
As already mentioned, hotspots are identification centres established in 2015 by the European Union to complete the procedures necessary to apply the Dublin regulations to asylum requests.
Medici Senza Frontiere; Pietro Barabino, “Ventimiglia-Taranto Sprechi e misteri delle trasferte al sud volute dal Viminale,” La Repubblica, 23 September 2016, https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2016/09/23/ventimiglia-taranto-sprechi-e-misteri-delle-trasferte-al-viminaleGenova02.html (accessed 20 February 2021).
These different uses took place without specific reasons being given by governmental authorities. For this information, I rely on the report “Visita all’hotspot di Taranto. Un resoconto di Oxfam, ASGI e Actionaid” (2019), https://www.asgi.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/articolo-missione-taranto-rev-ap-1.pdf (accessed 17 February 2021). In the subsequent discussion, I rely on the same report, along with firsthand information from interviews and conversations I carried out with operators who work with people on the move in Como and with members of the association Como Senza Frontiere. I have not been able to determine precisely when this type of use and practice ended.
Rizzo, “Immaginari Del Governo Della Mobilità.”
Meanwhile the Taranto hotspot has been used for COVID-19 quarantines of those coming in on new landings. Local activists in Como expect that this form of forced movement to the southern hotspots may come back in the future in case of an increase in arrivals.
Pietro Barabino, Matteo Pucciarelli, “Migranti, odissea Ventimiglia-Taranto: l’inutile e costosa deportazione,” La Repubblica. Gedi Visual, 22 December 2018, min. 6:08 https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/migranti-odissea-ventimiglia-taranto-l-inutile-e-costosa-deportazione/323113/323734 (accessed 18 February 2021).
Phone interview with a member of Associazione Babele in Taranto on 9 June 2021.
This is the case of people on the move who are released from the hotspot, or who need to go to the Questura [preccint] for legal procedures related to their asylum request or their legal status. The few videos online about the Taranto hotspot, filmed by media operators or activists, often show people on the move walking on the state road. See for example the video reporting on the migration hotspot of Taranto “Hotspot Leaks: (video) dossier alla frontiera di Taranto,” Dinamo press, 26 June 2017, min. 12:09, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4BnTI5wjLs&t=382s (accessed 17 February 2021).
Babele Associazione di Promozione Sociale, Taranto. The association is active in the protection of migrants, asylum seekers, and holders of international and/or humanitarian protection documents in the Taranto area. See http://www.babeleaps.it/.