On board the quarantine-ship as “floating hotspot”: Creeping externalization practices in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, migration was framed in Italy as ‘the emergency within the emergency’, leading the Italian Government to declare that its ports were not ‘‘safe places’ for people rescued from boats flying a foreign flag to disembark.’ As a result, under this guise of health and safety, in Italy migrants are now held in cruise ships repurposed as quarantine-ships for their sanitary isolation. We take this space as our analytic lens and draw on the experiences of the Elena Giacomelli whilst working as a caseworker for a humanitarian organization on board. In our analysis of the interactions of those working on board and the social relations produced therein, we unravel how these ships function as a form of Goffman’s totalitarian institution, where bio-political techniques are adopted that act on the body and mind of all on board, limiting access to asylum and functioning as a form of externalisation.