The MotM Monthly
October 2023

Taking the longview on migration patterns.

Is migration a new thing? You might think so with the way the media speaks about it. But migration is the history of the world, all the way back to prehistory. For the past decade, European and North American governments have voiced increasing concern about the number of people coming from other areas of the world to their countries. From Brexit in the UK in 2016 to Texas Governor Greg Abbott sending buses of people from his state’s border to major cities across the US in 2023, people on the move have seen a lot of the spotlight. And it came to a head over the last few months with the number of arrivals recorded on Lampedusa.

No matter the context, the assumption underlying migration reporting is that migration is somehow a novel phenomenon–it couldn’t be further from the truth. Movement and migration is the story of humanity. As the Roman Empire expanded throughout Europe, North Africa, and Mesopotamia, migration between the imperial core and far flung provinces increased steadily for nearly 500 years. The same Mediterranean Sea that people are crossing today was once the sight of ships of the Roman Empire expanding its scale.

And people move for so many reasons. They might be seeking new opportunities, or fleeing persecution. From 1890 to 1920, over 4 million Italians immigrated to the U.S. The majority of whom were from southern Italy and Sicily, escaping rural poverty, and many were young men looking for work. It is estimated that 30-50% of immigrants returned to Italy within 5 years of moving to the U.S. If you read news about people on the move today, this might sound familiar. There have always been “economic migrants”–a term now used as a four-letter word.

Any person who traveled across the Mediterranean or the Atlantic had their own individual and complex reasons for leaving home that lies beyond a buzzword that dismisses them. At MotM, we believe documenting the Journey Story is key to fighting assumptions that media and politicians make about people on the move. Recently, the film Io Capitano was shown at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won a Silver Lion. This film is an example of a Journey Story, albeit fictionalized and on the big screen, but it’s a lot like what we do here at MotM. So as more attention turns again to ports of entry in the Mediterranean, we grow more committed to humanizing Journey Stories, and to help push them to the center of media reporting and political conversations.

Panic was the tone in the media covering the Mediterranean region last summer. In 2015, the influx of Syrian refugees to Europe was called a crisis. Now, the pendulum has swung again to Lampedusa. Lampedusa, an island of roughly 20 square kilometers, or not quite 8 square miles, is to be sure easily overwhelmed; and that might be said also with tourists in the summer season, when numbers of visitors have been known to outnumber residents by up to almost ten times on the island. But that does not mean Italy or Europe as a whole are being overwhelmed by new people. Instead, the flashy news stories of the day seem more to be a reflection of the business of news than it is news itself. It creates, in the end, unnecessary hysteria in the face of people that are always migrating in and out of Europe and North America.

Lastly, we know too that across history people have been forced to leave their homes after disaster or conflict. The recent violence that has erupted in Israel and Gaza has created at least 400,000 displaced persons in UN facilities. MotM mourns the loss of the thousands of civilians and its fellow journalists in the region who have died from the terrorist attack and ongoing bombardments. We continue to stand with humanity, wherever and with whomever that may be.

–Isa Rosario-Blake

“I leave the island with a sense of hope:
Lampedusa… is not a place of constant panic or crisis.
It is a place where migration is not the enemy but something that is faced and negotiated.”

(Source: Maurice Steirl)

A Sea of Stories.
Poetic reflections from the Journey Story Archive,
brought to you monthly.

"He didn't know that survival would taste like salty water. At 19, Promise embarked on a harrowing journey from Nigeria, traversing unforgiving landscapes through Niger and Libya in pursuit of Europe. The relentless Sahara sun was unforgiving, and the quest for food a constant battle. In Libya, a horrific tale of exploitation and hunger unfolded. The perilous sea crossing on a leaky boat embodied a blend of hope and despair. At 26, now working at Caputo, a flour mill in Naples, Italy, Promise reflects on a journey that highlights the realities faced by many people in the migrant community."

–Nora Alkhudhiri

JUST RELEASED: Promise’s Journey Story is now also available in German! Translation by MotM translator, Jacqueline A. Robinson. Read it here >

What's coming up.

#ILoveLA: MotM Founder, Pamela Kerpius, heads to Los Angeles for an in-residence partnership at Occidental College next week. Joining her in lectures designed to help drive new migration scholarship is long-time MotM community member, Andrew (Nigeria), remotely from Naples, Italy. It’s our biggest honor to be able to extend this platform to the people in our migrant community so that they may continue to tell their stories in their own words. MotM thanks Occidental for their generous $15,000 contribution in exchange for the partnership–funds which will take us back into the field for reporting in Italy and elsewhere this winter. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn to see those updates as they roll out–it’s just weeks away.

(P.S. It’s coming soon in November–the 5th Annual Holiday Fundraiser... See you next month!)

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