The Metal Boat Revolution: The Viapolitics of the Tobà and the Iron Age of the Migration Industry on the Central Mediterranean Route

Titolo Rivista MONDI MIGRANTI
Autori/Curatori Ivan Bonnin, Camille Cassarini
Anno di pubblicazione 2025 Fascicolo 2025/3
Lingua Inglese Numero pagine 23 P. 41-63 Dimensione file 170 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2025-003003
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This article examines the recent transformations of the migration industry in Tunisia’s Sfax region, focusing on the emergence of small metal boats - locally known as tobà - as a pivotal innovation in the organization of irregular sea crossings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2024, the article traces how the material infrastructures of mobility have become entangled in new social, racial, and economic configurations along the Central Mediterranean route. The tobà is explored not merely as a technical artifact, but as a truly political actor embedded within overlapping systems of autonomy, control, and appropriation. While initially enabling a brief moment of sub-Saharan self-organization and reduced dependency on Tunisian intermediaries, the tobà was quickly reterritorialized into local economies of exploitation, led by rural landowners in El Amra. Through this lens, the article contributes to the literature on the migration industry, viapolitics, and border externalization, arguing that material objects such as boats are key to understanding the shifting political economies and geographies of undocumented migration. The tobà, as both a vehicle and a symbol, becomes a site where lines of resistance, creativity, repression, and reconfiguration intersect and are constantly renegotiated.

Questo articolo esamina le trasformazioni recenti dell’industria della migrazione nella regione di Sfax, in Tunisia, concentrandosi sull’emergere delle piccole imbarcazioni metalliche – localmente note come tobà – come snodo centrale nell’organizzazione delle traversate marittime irregolari. Basandosi su un lavoro etnografico condotto tra il 2017 e il 2024, l’articolo ricostruisce come le infrastrutture materiali della mobilità siano state inglobate in nuove configurazioni sociali, razziali ed economiche lungo la rotta del Mediterraneo centrale. Il tobà viene analizzato non solo come artefatto tecnico, ma come un vero e proprio attore politico, inserito in sistemi sovrapposti di autonomia, controllo e appropriazione. Se inizialmente ha reso possibile un breve momento di auto-organizzazione da parte dei migranti subsahariani e una riduzione della dipendenza dagli intermediari tunisini, il tobà è stato rapidamente riterritorializzato all’interno di economie locali di sfruttamento, guidate da proprietari terrieri rurali nella zona di El Amra. In questa prospettiva, l’articolo contribuisce alla letteratura sull’industria della migrazione, sulla viapolitica e sull’esternalizzazione delle frontiere, sostenendo che oggetti materiali come le barche siano fondamentali per comprendere le trasformazioni delle economie politiche e delle geografie della migrazione irregolarizzata. Il tobà, in quanto veicolo e simbolo, diventa uno spazio in cui si intrecciano linee di resistenza, creatività, repressione e riconfigurazione.

Parole chiave:viapolitica; infrastrutture della mobilità; industria della migrazione; confine mediterraneo; autonomia della migrazione

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Ivan Bonnin, Camille Cassarini, The Metal Boat Revolution: The Viapolitics of the Tobà and the Iron Age of the Migration Industry on the Central Mediterranean Route in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 3/2025, pp 41-63, DOI: 10.3280/MM2025-003003