A sea perennially on the move. Search And Rescue in the Mediterranean, between neo-liberalism logic and confrontation with the seascape

The contribution aims to highlight the results of the ethnographic research I carried out aboard different Search and Rescue ships in the Central Mediterranean between 2019 and 2023. I conducted the research during the PhD course in Anthropological Sciences at University of Torino (Italy).
How can we think of the sea? As a limit of atavistic fears, the wild and uncontrollable par excellence, a horizon of individual freedom, a space for the accumulation of capitalism. Nowadays, the Mediterranean Sea seems to be represented as a space of commodities, necro-politics and capital. However, it seems possible to investigate also the forms of contradiction that oppose this model and reflect on how its materiality might create heuristic possibilities.
Trying to remain “close to the practices”, I firstly discuss the tensions among (supra)statal bodies, non-governmental organizations, and individual subjects in defining both the European policies on migration and borders management at sea, and the grass-root forms of solidarity towards people on the move.
Secondly, and in light of the above, I outline the broader coordinates of an anthropology of the sea from the sea. This way, the Mediterranean can be conceived not only as a water basin surrounded by coastal lands, a space “out of law” but rather as an “inhabited” space.
Finally, I investigate the ways in which the subjects that cross the sea signify and are signified by it. Considering the Mediterranean as a “transnational region” crossed by various micro-practices, and specifically investigating the "cultural intimacy" of those who live "on board" - activist, humanitarian workers, migrants - allow us to acknowledge the tensions existing at different scales, between neoliberal politics of control, creation of emergency, exploitation of spaces, and creative forms of resistance from below that cross the sea as “currents”.