Dynamics and representations of migration corridors : the rise and fall of the Libya-Lampedusa route and forms of mobility from the horn of Africa (2000-2009)

The migration route towards Italy, which, from various African regions, converged to Libya to reach the Sicilian coasts, reached substantial proportionsbetween 2005 and 2009 and has been, on the Italian media, highly spectacularized and misrepresented at the same time. Migrants and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa formed an important part of this flow of people coming through this "Libya-Lampedusa route". The article questions the prevalent representations of this route and of migration corridors in general as unitary phenomena by highlighting their time-specific processes of formation, the social categories generated in them as well as the emerging socio-political dialectics of migration corridors from Africa to Europe.