Tarnished gold: border regimes from the Mediterranean to Switzerland

Caroline Wiedmer is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Franklin University Switzerland. She has published in the areas of memory studies, environmental humanities, law and culture, and gender and sexuality. In her research, she is interested in the ways narratives circulate in dif ferent areas of society, and how their impact and function change as they traverse dif ferent epistemic realms and dif ferent forms of expressive media. The following text pitches the representation of forced migration in Europe during the ‘crisis years’ 2014-2016 in the film Eldorado against the policies, agreements and laws that determine the movement of refugees across the continent. The discussion asks af ter the ability of the documentary mode in film to grasp the uneven mobilities of people and wares across the Schengen area, and the figurations of citizenship and refugeedom that emerge in the comparison.