Hope Amid Despair: Encounters at the Existential Borderlands of the Mediterranean

— —

Alessandro Corso

Hope Amid Despair

Name: Hope Amid Despair
Price: 80.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781512829549

Encounters at the Existential Borderlands of the Mediterranean

Alessandro Corso

$80.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

University of Pennsylvania Press
16 June 2026

Refugees & political asylum; Ethnic studies; Social & cultural anthropology; Human rights; Civil rights & citizenship

Series: Contemporary Ethnography

The story of extraordinarily ordinary life on Lampedusa, an island in the Mediterranean and the southernmost frontier of undocumented migration to Europe

Hope amid Despair tells the story of life on Lampedusa, a small island in the central Mediterranean and the southernmost frontier of irregular and undocumented migration to Europe, or what is often referred to as Europe's ""refugee crisis."" Anthropologist Alessandro Corso examines the extraordinarily ordinary choices faced by migrants, migration workers, and locals on the island—and the decisions they make that foster distance, indifference, and abandonment or allow for mutuality, community, and life-building.

Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork as well as oral histories and archival research, Corso follows the island's inhabitants through their quotidian encounters, detailing their impressions, misunderstandings, and reconsiderations of one another. Revealing perspectives and experiences that often run against the grain of prevailing narratives, Corso argues for an understanding of this border zone not as a site of order and control, but as one of existential struggle and moral possibility, characterized by fear and despair but also reconciliation, hope, and love. Challenging mainstream ways of thinking about how borders separate and categorize us as individuals, Hope amid Despair reveals the geographical, historical, social, legal, and ethical boundaries of what it means to be human.

By: Alessandro Corso
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781512829549
ISBN 10: 1512829544
Series: Contemporary Ethnography
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 16 June 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Alessandro Corso is Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute.

Reviews for Hope Amid Despair: Encounters at the Existential Borderlands of the Mediterranean

""Creative and highly empathetic, this remarkable book offers a strong and evocative ethnographic contribution to the study of migration, borders, and the Mediterranean as well as to wider anthropological debates on ethics, suffering, and existential boundaries."" - Ruben Andersson, University of Oxford