L’a-storicità del dibattito contemporaneo sulle migrazioni

This paper contends that the political and media narratives regarding contemporary migratory flows fail to provide their audiences with an historical perspective on the matter. In such form, the debate has been reduced to a mere dialectical confrontation between those showing solidarity and those supporting a securitization approach towards asylum seekers and migration policies in general. Through an analysis that critically reflects on the concepts of imperialism and racial capitalism, which are declined in the context of the so-called neoliberal globalization, the author intends to demonstrate that the flows from Africa to Europe are to be interpreted as physiological movements from the «periphery» to the «center» within a system of unequal relations set up by different state and non-state actors. Contemporary migrations should not be conceptualized as external issues to the Europe and the West, but rather as a structural dynamic that finds its roots in the very functioning of international capitalism.