Ex-Centric Migrations: Europe and the Maghreb in Mediterranean Cinema, Literature, and Music by Hakim Abderrezak (review)

The book cover of Ex-Centric Migrations: Europe and the Maghreb in Mediterranean Cinema, Literature, and Music portrays a burning boat floating on a sea crossed by a wall fortified with barbed wire. The painting Burning the Sea by the author Hakim Abderrezak immediately conveys the idea of a twofold oxymoron: the fire/water elements combined in a purple-red burning sea, and the fluidity/liquidity of the sea interrupted by a solid iron fence, which points ultimately to a war scenario. As Abderrezak declares, the painting clearly illustrates the major topic of the book: clandestine North African migrations from the Maghreb across the Mediterranean Sea, on the backdrop of the worst migration crisis in Europe since World War II. Significantly, 'Burning the sea' in Arabic refers to the practice of burning identification papers by undocumented immigrants in order to prevent border patrol authorities from returning them back to their country of origin. Also, the term refers to an insatiable desire to leave by crossing the sea, which the author defines as 'leavism' (p. 9), an all-human inherent desire to migrate to change one's condition.

As a response to the massive influx of 'hordes' of migrants and refugees putting 'under siege' the doors of the West, 'Fortress Europe' has further stressed familiar discourses of invasion and threat from the outside by creating an invisible administrative wall of borders and securitarian measures aimed at criminalizing migrants. For them, however, clandestine channels of immigration prove to be the only possibility to flee warfare, persecutions, or economic hardships. The Mediterranean takes center stage in this book, as it is rethought in light of transnational migratory movements that set it free from discoursive constructions of appropriation and domination, while repositioning it from a southern perspective as an un-fractured common space to share (p. 7, 216).

Implicit in the concept of "ex-centric migration" is the idea of transgression: on the one hand, it points to a deviation from the normal migratory pattern form the Maghreb to France, the former motherland; on the other, it refers to a divergence from mainstream media portraying clandestine migrants as inhuman and criminal. Ex-centric migrations offers a valuable contribution to the growing field of Mediterranean Studies by examining contemporary literary, cinematic and musical representations of clandestine migrations from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria to European countries in ways that differ from standard migratory routes and means. Also, the book shows how these artistic productions try to contest conservative and often derogatory representations of the figure of the migrant by unveiling its humanization.

The book presents a compact thematic structure. The first and last chapters discuss respectively diverging and reverse forms of migration through the analysis of several movies produced by Moroccan filmmakers. Focusing mainly on Western Mediterranean migrations, Abderrezak shows how these cultural productions undermine the traditional migratory route along the South-North axis, according to which France, the land of the ex-colonizer, would be the main destination for Maghrebi migrants as an outcome of post-independence movements and postcolonial relocations. Instead, the book shows how North African migrants move toward other European countries, such as Spain and Italy.

Specifically, chapter 1 discusses new examples of emigration from the West to the East through the analysis of the road movie Le Grand Voyage by French-Moroccan filmmaker Ismaël Ferroukhi, where an immigrant man and his Beur son, a French-born of North African descent, undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca. As Abderrezak argues, this movie represents an act of 'disimmigration', a return to an essential belonging for North African immigrants, a symbolic return home to their Arabic origins insofar as the father succeeds in de-Westernizing his reluctant son by teaching him his roots.

Likewise, chapter 6 rearticulates the classic myth of return by analyzing Maghrebi immigrants' desire to be buried in their countries of origin negotiated with French-born children's...