Migrations

Summary

Dominique Pagani first approaches migration through the migrants who die in the Mediterranean. In 2021, he pays tribute to them and contrasts their anonymity with Navalny's fame1. In 2022, he draws on them to show that security is not a reactionary term: it is a vital moment, the first of freedoms, like flight for the gazelle pursued by the panther2. In 2025, he turns migration into an anthropological thesis. Man is a migrant by essence, and hominization itself is a migration, from the canopy to the savannah and then out of Africa. He contrasts this mobility with the rootedness of geraniums in window boxes and with the untraceable "stock" of the "Français de souche"3. Drawing on Ibn Khaldun and the example of the Dioula, he argues that such names designate functions, not ethnic groups. Finally, he links the departures of young Nigeriens, who go to hire out their labour on plantations in the south, to real problems of birth rates and of the lean season. In his view, these problems are manipulated by translating them into terms of identity, that is, by seeing substance where there is relation3.

1. 1Cynicism of the extreme centre or epistemic heroism? The dialectic of the middle20 May 2021
2. 2Security: is it conservatism or Revolution?12 Jul 2022
3. 3Imaginary identity15 May 2025

Introduction produced automatically from the 3 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.