Lampedusa

It is called the “lamp island” because in ancient times Phoenicians and Greeks — and maybe Sards — left some outposts on this tiny spread of land to light fires for the sailing boats. Other etymologies include  “the rocky island” and “the island of oysters.” Its ancient Greek name, Lapadoussa, has become Lampedusa in modern Italian.

Closer to the North African coasts than to Sicily and Italy — to which it belongs — its peculiar geographical position has made of it in the last 30 years the port of entry in Europe for many migrants sailing from Tunisia and Libya who risk their lives at sea in the hope of making it.

With about 25,000 dead since 1996, one can make the very approximate yet chilling calculation that more than 1% of those who try this route die in the sea. It is as if on any given flight, two passengers do not make it, and you know the statistics when you embark.

The year with the greatest numbers was 2023, with about 150,000 arrivals on an island 20 sq. km large and with 6,000 inhabitants. In 2024, the numbers went down to 66,000 and then kept diminishing. The first six months of 2026 saw the arrival of 13,000 people, mostly young men but also women and children, some a few months old. Lower numbers do not really mean fewer deaths, as the calculations for the deaths at sea in the Mediterranean for 2026 are already around 1,400 and a great portion of this number can be attributed to this route.

Most represented nationalities are Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Pakistani, Somalian, and a great many from sub-Saharan African nations such as Mali, Niger, and Cameroon. These are the kind of people that Italy — and Europe at large — is already employing for many heavy jobs in construction, road maintenance, and agriculture. Yet we prefer to make them suffer rather than organize their immigration from their countries to ours.

Europe and the West have gone mad — one thinks at first — as this is a quite irrational way of doing things. But then — on further thinking — one realizes that we have done things in his way at least since the slave trade became a basic staple of the economy of the American colonies. We prefer to make people suffer heavily before giving them a “job” from which they can hardly emancipate themselves. People who have suffered a lot will be much less prone to protest their working conditions. Such is the evil mentality of the colonial West, which does not need to be completely conscious to be active and operative.

In the years 2011-2015 especially, the people of Lampedusa offered the world a remarkably different image. As the number of arrivals increased and the system for rescues was not yet perfected — due to the blindness of politicians — the island was thrown into total chaos. Boats would arrive without warning and with hundreds of people severely dehydrated, frostbitten, or sunstruck. Shipwrecks meant that bodies would wash ashore, and the survivors walked like specters into the town. Fishermen would suddenly find their boats floating into a sea of desperate people, some still alive. Day after day, year after year, the population took the challenge. They organized shelter and food. Many migrants were welcomed into their homes. It was an epic moment, a deeply human moment.

The people of Lampedusa have been proposed a few times for the Nobel Peace Prize, although some decry this nomination as a hypocritical move by politicians. Many migrants who now live in Northern Europe have kept ties with their “saviors” building a strong net of solidarity and love across cultures, geography, and generations.

For years, Italian governments have underestimated the situation or have been paralyzed by the strong racist currents in Italian society. When such currents managed to get to the government, things, of course, worsened for the migrants. Under Meloni’s administration, the NGOs that save people at sea with their own boats are given very distant “safe ports” far from the Sicilian coast. This may mean four more days of navigation for people who are already in extreme conditions.

This kind of sheer cruelty is praised by the right-wing parties and by a large portion of the Italian population. Most recently, a new fascist movement claims that people “whose culture does not align with ours” should be expelled from the country. It is a call for mass deportation of workers who are essential to the economy. Its only meaning, therefore, is instilling fear and allowing for acts of cruelty towards others when they are perceived indeed as “others.”

At this time, the people of Lampedusa do not encounter migrants in their daily lives, though they keep landing on the island’s shores. The process has been placed under control and sanitized. Boats are intercepted at sea, but only when they are very close; migrants are escorted to a camp, and they are dispatched to other hubs on the mainland as soon as possible. Local humanitarian organizations talk about “the tunnel” to describe how the process works. One senses that the population misses the possibility of helping, of being involved as compassionate actors in the many tragedies which happen on their island, but under their eyes no more.

The lamp island remains a symbol of the culpable blindness of Europe — as EU politicians have spent only empty words in this regard — but perhaps also a symbol of the human capacity for compassion, despite the evil of current politics.

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Banner Image: Refugees being intercepted upon arrival at Lampedusa, 2008. Photo by the European Commission, on Wikimedia Commons.

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Queries for Contemplation

How do racism and racist views show up in your daily life? And what do you do on such occasions?

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Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

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Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ

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