WHAT IS MALDUSA

Maldusa is a cultural association aimed at facilitating freedom of movement, supporting existing infrastructures for migrant solidarity, as well as researching and documenting border violence, on land and at sea, on the Mediterranean routes.

LAMPEDUSA STATION

Lampedusa has historically been narrated and understood merely as a border zone, with a binary representation between island of peace and island of violence. The spectacularization of crisis and emergency has oftenled to a lack of understanding of the local, continuous, daily struggles of people who inhabit and cross the island...

PALERMO STATION

In Palermo, the Maldusa cultural association seeks to bridge a multitude of local and transnational realities that derive from anti-racist struggles, migrant activism and solidarity, as well as building bridges between communities on the move and their places of departure...

PRESENCE AT SEA

The Mediterranean Sea is a contested space, inhabited by a variety of actors who struggle for and against freedom of movement. Every day, people who cross the sea, authorities who surveil and abandon them, NGOs who search and rescue, fishermen and merchant vessels crews, either attempt to defy borders or, willingly or not, reinforce them...

BUILDING BRIDGES, BURNING BORDERS - MALDUSA ONE YEAR BOOKLET

DOWNLOAD BOOKLET HERE

'BURNING BORDERS'

We dedicate this slogan to the daily struggles of people, who in North Africa are called Harraga - "border-burners" - while crossing the border without a visa and burning their ID documents afterwards not to be deported.

In this booklet, we narrate the first year of Maldusa, its vision and its projects.

With one station in Lampedusa, a second station in Palermo, a boat at sea and dozens of informal and formal relationships with solidarity infrastructures and people on the move, we created solid platforms for monitoring and reporting border violence, as well as for supporting and facilitating freedom of movement.

NEWS and PUBLICATIONS

No Shore to Land On: Dynamics of the Shipwreck on March 18, 2025

29/03/2025

On March 18, 2025, yet another shipwreck occurred just 15 nautical miles off the coast of Lampedusa. 10 people were rescued, 7 bodies were recovered, and 39 people are still missing. They departed from Sfax, Tunisia on the Night of March 16.[1]

ECHOES N°16- CIVIL MRCC

03/03/2025

CommemorActions took place on February 6 across dozens of cities in Europe and North and West Africa. Relatives of the disappeared participated in many meetings and demonstrations to commemorate their missing loved ones and to condemn the deadly EU border regime. For more than thirty years, the direct or indirect violence of border regimes has...

Burning Bodies, Killing Policies: The Violence of Border Regimes. Report on Porto Empedocle's Hotspot and Border Procedures

03/02/2025

Our report, the result of a joint monitoring by ASGI and Maldusa, exposes the contours of a system that confines more than it welcomes, selects more than it protects. A system the Italian government has also sought to export to Albania, further worsening existing criticalities. The hotspot of Porto Empedocle, through its dynamics of detention and...

ECHOES N°15 – 10 YEARS OF STRUGGLE

07/01/2025

In 2025, several civil sea rescue organizations will look back to the last 10 years of their fight for safe passage. 2025 is also 10 years since the historic summer of migration. The memories of these months of hard-won freedom of movement from Athens to Stockholm and with demonstrations of welcome all over Europe appear today as something from...

Updated - Mini-Guide for those who arrive to Lampedusa and Sicily

03/12/2024

[EN] Mini-guide for those arriving in Italy on the shores of Sicily or Lampedusa: basic information, legal support, what to expect in the first moments after landing.