Abstract

This essay is dedicated to analyse oral memories of migration across the Mediterranean. Starting from a theoretical debate on the Black Mediterranean, this contribution takes into account some journey’s memories by migrant people coming from the Horn of Africa. Paying attention to the production of knowledge through the Foucauldian concept of «discourse», these memories are strategic in the sense of subverting contextual rules and show a transnational and diasporic imaginary. Trying to connect this reflection to the «autonomy of migration» theory, this essay is based on the role of intersubjectivity in elaborating and interpreting narratives about colonialisms, slavery, mobility and Europe which re-signify the past, History as well as lands, and places. This contribution argues the Black Mediterranean is an excess space of signification where are elaborated crossover strategies and new ways to stay in Europe, to be European.