Maldusa: A new project facilitating freedom of movement on land and at sea.

Press Release

Palermo/Lampedusa, 3 April 2023

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.

Maldusa is a project based on three main pillars: two monitoring stations and contact points in Lampedusa and in Palermo, and a small monitoring boat that will become operational in the coming summer. The two stations focus on research and encounter between local and transnational realities, in collaboration with activists, people on the move, and existing organisations in the North and South of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Lampedusa station seeks to support the critical documentation of the sea crossings from Libya and Tunisia to Malta, Italy and beyond, in order to facilitate direct intervention by, and solidarity between, existing actors. With its presence and work in Lampedusa, Maldusa aims at supporting campaigns and demands that challenge the existence and the logic of the hotspot and detention system.

In Palermo, the Maldusa cultural association seeks to bridge a multitude of 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.

With its presence at sea, Maldusa seeks to support people who might encounter difficulties in their journeys. The first aim is to support existing forms of self-organisation and solidarity among communities on the move at land and at sea. For doing so, Maldusa seeks to critically map and monitor what happens at the border by listening to those who experienced the crossing, by supporting them in telling their stories, amplifying their voices and their demands.

Maldusa: an imaginary nowhere and anywhere land in the Mediterranean Sea, an imagined destination of hope and freedom, a space that, every day, we try to build and to make real through our struggles, hand in hand with people on the move.