The New Nomadic Age: Archaeologies of Forced and Undocumented Migration, edited by Yannis Hamilakis, published in 2018, contains many articles that I first read in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (JCA), published in 2016. The first thing that struck me when re-engaging with the volume in preparation for this book review is that many of its authors’ predictions about forced and undocumented migration—its trends, tropes, and persistence as a ‘social movement’ rather than a ‘crisis’ (Hamilakis, Introduction, p. 4; see also, Soto, Ch. 4, p.75; Harrison et al., Ch. 17, p. 213)—were not only correct but are happening so quickly that it is difficult for contemporary archaeology to keep up with the globalized pace of social, material, and political change, forces that shape and constrain the phenomenon (Agger, Reference Agger2016). For example, in his excellent contribution to this volume (Ch. 15, first published in 2016 in the JCA), Kourelis cites the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statistics to say that, globally, ‘65.3 million people are refugees or internally displaced’ (p. 108). Notwithstanding the fact that UNHCR statistics are estimations (and real numbers likely higher), the latest available UNHCR data, from mid-2022, puts the number of displaced people globally now at 103 million people (https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/). While statistics alone cannot comprehend forced and undocumented migration (Hamilakis, Introduction, p. xiii), they provide compelling validation for the need for critical engagement from a range of theoretical perspectives, as this volume ably attests.
The book comprises nineteen short chapters, including photo-essays, that traverse the material and visual culture of forced and undocumented migration across several continents and various historical contingencies. Contributions come from a range of disciplinary perspectives, yet the volume is skilfully curated in such a way that much is to be gained from reading the text cover to cover, as one would a monograph. A strong overall narrative emerges, weaving together the violent duality of ‘humanitarianism versus securitisation’ (Fassin, Reference Fassin2012) with material examples of how undocumented migration manifests in Greece, Pakistan, Jordan, the Mexico/US borderlands and the US, Albania, Finland, and Australia. Contributors include scholars at different points in their careers, from PhD candidates to professors, and collaborations with displaced people (Chapter 16 by Thomopoulos et al.), which enriches ontological perspectives. The last three chapters provide commentaries on themes which recur throughout the volume, to further theorise and contextualise ‘nomadic ethics’ (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti, Smith and Somers-Hall2012) and enable deeper consideration of how forced and undocumented migration is represented in public; how heritage value is created; and the role that museums and cultural institutions might play in countering increasing inequalities in relation to im/migration (Labadi, Reference Labadi2018).
Many contributions draw on Arendt (Reference Arendt and Robinson1994[1943]), Agamben (Reference Agamben1995), and Malkki (Reference Malkki1995) to define the refugee figure as a challenge to nation states because the ‘new nomad’ is unknowable, ungovernable, and therefore a threat (Mezzadra & Neilson, Reference Mezzadra and Neilson2013; see also, Byrne, Ch. 14; Kirtsoglou, Ch. 18). As Caraher, Weber, and Rothaus (Ch. 6) put it in their analysis of ‘man camps’ (temporary labour camps) in North Dakota, US:
‘the displacement of people is […] displacement of an individual's rights from the guarantees derived from status as citizens of a particular state to a new status dependent on a new set of political realities, definitions, and relationships’ (p. 89).
These new realities and relationships are co-constituted by material ‘things’, the scale of which is well represented in the volume, from territories and natural environments (Ch. 1, by Riggs & Rehman Jat; Ch. 2, by Stewart et al.; Ch. 4, by Soto; Ch. 11, by Seitsonen et al.), to places (Ch. 6, by Caraher & Weber; Ch. 7, by Pistrick & Bachmeier; Ch. 8, by Kourelis; Ch. 15, by Schofield), and objects—belongings, material and visual culture created by and with displaced people (Ch. 2, by Butler & al-Nammari; Ch. 5, by Radziwinowicźowna; Ch. 6, by Caraher & Weber; Ch. 9, by Tyrikos-Ergas; Ch. 10, by Arbelaez & Mulholland; Ch. 13, Breene; Ch, 14, by Byrne; Ch. 16, by Thomopoulos et al.).
Violence and suffering experienced by migrants are conceived in relation to hardened national borders and increasingly racialised citizenship (see Byrne, Ch. 14). Nation-states are products of modernity that developed from technologies of social and spatial control—the map, the museum, and the census (Anderson, 1983). The violent production of nation states involved large-scale forced displacement (Riggs & Rehman Jat, Ch. 1; Kourelis, Ch. 8; Kirtsoglou, Ch. 18). As Zygmunt Bauman observed, displaced people are ‘wasted lives’ (Bauman, Reference Bauman2003), caught up in the structural mess of ‘disaster capitalism’ (Klein, Reference Klein2007). Their bodies become ‘contact zones’ (Clifford, Reference Clifford1997), batted between violent interventions by border guards (Radiwinowicźowna, Ch. 5) and people traffickers, from the Sonoran Desert (Soto, Ch. 4; Stewart et al., Ch. 3) to Russian organised crime syndicates (Seitsonen et al., Ch. 11). The suffering of those defined by legal and political discourse as ‘undocumented’ becomes commercialised as art and informs intangible heritage understandings of local places (Tyrikos-Ergas, Ch. 9), while material traces that ‘illegal’ journeys leave in the landscape are repackaged and sold as ‘touristic performance’ (Seitsonen et al., Ch. 11, p. 141). Often, images of forced and undocumented people's suffering, which are intended to document hardship and elicit the demand for structural change, end up producing forced and undocumented people as powerless victims (Gomes Coelho, Ch. 12, p. 161); but they can also serve as forms of catharsis (Arbelaez & Mulholland, Ch. 10). Equally, refugee camps and informal spaces characterised by undocumented migration can function as sites of resistance and refusal (Butler and al-Nammari, Ch. 2; Thomopoulos et al., Ch. 16; Kirtsoglou, Ch. 18; see also, Kiddey et al., Reference Kiddey2021, Made in Migration, a digital public heritage exhibition, co-curated with documented and undocumented displaced people living in Sweden, the U.K., and Greece in 2020–2021). Counter-mapping emerges as an increasingly well-accepted method of Contemporary Archaeology, an effective way to ‘watch the watchman’ (Stewart et al., Ch. 3; Soto, Ch. 4) and to produce counter-archives which resist state-authority and offer alternative forms of social and political relations.
The rich diversity of chapters in this volume demonstrate that migration is more than individual people moving—it is a complex system of people and things, mobility and fixity, time, and duration. How museums and other cultural institutions might respond is considered variously, from strong urge for multi-lingual collaborations (Thomopoulos et al., Ch. 16) to thinking how stories of transnational migration might be incorporated into dominant national narratives, rather than marginalised as anomalous (Ang, Reference Ang2017; see also, Byrne, Ch. 14; Schofield, Ch. 15; Harrison et al., Ch. 17). The volume adds weight to calls for deterritorialized notions of transnational mobile heritage (Colomer, Reference Colomer2017).
My major criticism of the volume is that Black perspectives are notably absent from the volume, in terms of scholarly voices, research participants, and fieldwork locations (cf. Brunache, et al., Reference Brunache2021). Considering the numbers of Black people directly affected by global forced and undocumented migration, it is imperative that Black voices are centred in the debate, through scholarly collaboration and fieldwork taking place in or adjacent to countries from which people are fleeing. The volume does feature some ‘refugee producing’ countries, for example, Albania (Pistrick & Bachmeier, Ch. 7) and Eritrean migrant experiences are centred in the outstanding chapter by Morgan Lynn Breene, concerning the reframing of the Lampedusa cross (Breene, Ch. 13). The Lampedusa Cross is a Latin style Christian emblem, made by a Lampedusa resident, from wood salvaged from a ship that wrecked on the island in 2013, with the loss of 366 of the 518 (predominantly African) people on board. The cross was commissioned by the British Museum, the last object acquired in October 2015 by the director, Neil MacGregor. Breene provides firm critique of the choice to commission a Christian symbol, given the religious intolerance that characterises much contemporary migration into Europe, and to interpret it a way that emphasized European hospitality towards migrants (Breene, Ch. 13, pp. 170–72).
As I write this review, a rusted three storey ship called the Bibby Stockholm is a hundred miles away, in Falmouth harbour, being refurbished to accommodate 500 male migrants in the UK, with its self-proclaimed ‘hostile environment’ (Kirkup & Winnett, Reference Kirkup and Winnett2012) This will be the first time that undocumented migrants have been accommodated aboard a vessel in UK waters, the government having adopted Australian tactics (Byrne, Ch. 14). To my mind, there is additional cruelty in housing people who have likely experienced traumatic sea voyages on a boat, before deporting them to countries where they face war, ongoing conflict and instability, persecution, or starvation (Tyrikos-Ergas, Ch. 9). Further, adopting strategies from the EU-Turkey deal (Kourelis, Ch. 8; see also, Kiddey, Reference Kiddey2019) and Italy's ‘push back’ agreement with Libya (Breene, Ch. 13), in which poorer nations are paid to stop migrants from reaching wealthier European nations, the UK government is continuing to push ahead with plans to deport undocumented migrants to Rwanda (Explainer, 2023). Many contributions to this volume are important because they provide a necessary ‘counter-archive’ to national narratives of European hospitality towards migrants. Presented alongside case studies from the US, Australia, and Pakistan, this volume represents what might be achieved globally through the critical development of ‘webs of emancipatory practices’ (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti, Smith and Somers-Hall2012: 196), such as those afforded by archaeologies of forced and undocumented migration. The volume does not shy away from calling for archaeologists, museum practitioners, and heritage professionals to use our combined transdisciplinary skills to ‘rethink [our] prioritization of state-based and formalized political power and attempt to view informal and illegal actions as alternative politics’ (Soto, Ch. 4, p.75).
