Interrelating Necrocities and Borderscapes in the Migration Performances The Jungle, Lampedusa, and The Walk

Abstract

Abstract Cities and borders are interlinked by a necropolitics that is particularly pertinent on the coasts of the European continent and the settlements along its coastlines. While these borderscapes become what Achille Mbembe refers to as death worlds, refugee cityscapes turn into Fanonian zones-of-nonbeing. The play The Jungle (2017) by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, the ensuing travelling festival The Walk (2021) featuring the performative journey of the refugee girl Little Amal, and the play Lampedusa (2015) by Anders Lustgarten engage with these necrogeographies and the way in which refugees and migrants are exposed to necropower in these spaces of ontological negation. This article maps how the refugee camp builds on colonial practices of citizenship and racialisation extended to the biopolitical city, delineating the interrelation of cities and borders through necropower. It also discusses the refugee camp as necrocity and necrocitizenship while exploring theatre as a means of transgressing colonial racial capitalist (b)order in the city in the three migration performances. By bringing these performances and geographies in conversation, the article explores theatre as rebellious practice that creates spaces for the necropolitical and biopolitical to touch and to move towards a shared humanity.