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Fabio Perocco (ed.), Migration and Torture in Today’s World
Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2023, 290 pp.
At a particularly delicate historical juncture, namely, the post­pandemic one, where 
the topic of migration is regaining importance on different socio­political­economic 
levels, Migration and Torture in Today’s World brings to the center of research inter­
est a concept inextricably linked to the migration phenomenon: torture. Through 
an analysis of torture in its broadest sense, including the inhuman and degrad­
ing treatment of migrants, this volume edited by Fabio Perocco—which follows 
the volume Torture and Migration (2019, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari)—compiles twelve 
contributions (including a rich introduction to the volume by Perocco himself ) 
of heterogeneous content focusing on different perspectives on the correlation 
between migration and torture. Each author contributes through multi­ and 
inter­disciplinary works to create a multidimensional analysis of the phenome­
non, helping the reader to deconstruct the complexity of the different scientific 
approaches toward a common interpretative strand and a homogeneous recon­
struction of the migration­torture theme.
Through a strong ethnographic lens, Migration and Torture in Today’s World 
makes use of a ground approach and analysis, giving space to empirical field experi­
ences by the authors themselves, thus providing depth and nuances to the already 
complex topic treated. This is one of the major strengths of the volume, which in 
its heterogeneity of time, space, and contexts, allows for a study that is not solely 
academic and is capable of defining (and redefining) a complex and technical narra­
tive combined with events of strong human and contemporary social impact. The 
alternation of a solid scientific and technical component (legal, sociological, histori­
cal) with ethnographic analysis gives great insight into the book.
By researching and analyzing torture and the inhuman and degrading treatment 
of migrants worldwide, the different contributions show how the phenomenon is 
not localized only in particular areas of the planet but presents global characteris­
tics, experienced diachronically throughout the entire migration experience. In the 
course of his or her migratory journey, the migrant no longer distinguishes clearly 
the physical and symbolic differences (barriers) of the country of departure, tran­
sit, and arrival, undergoing instead a reconfiguration of the migratory experience in 
an amalgam of production and reproduction of forms of (extreme) state and, often 
indirectly, supranational structural violence.
In the course of the analysis of the intimate relationship between torture and 
the migration phenomenon (to which Iside Gjergji adds racism into the equation), 
the book, in all its contributions, emphasizes the role of different institutional 
actors present at different times, places, and levels, as the primary producers of 
torture and reproduction of the systemic dynamics of violence and racism. The 
connection between economic, institutional violence, migration policies, and the 
needs of the (inter­)national labor market is then highlighted, featuring how these 
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components are constantly intertwined. Hence, as in the various quotations from 
Hannah Arendt in the different contributions, evil (in this case, torture) is presented 
in everyday interactions and socio­economic relations in a process of perpetual 
institutional normalization.
This volume does not present a clear thematic division but instead leads the 
reader along a preparatory path to understanding the phenomenon and gradually 
broadening the perspective of analysis. Perocco’s first chapter, despite its clear inten­
tions as an introduction to the book, carries on a legacy from the previous volume 
(2019), clarifying from the outset the themes present in the subsequent contribu­
tions and deepening the link between torture, migration policies, and institutional 
racism. This chapter highlights the social dimension of torture and inhuman treat­
ment of migrants, especially in its link with economic­productive dynamics and the 
market, and, therefore, in the creation of inequalities and socio­economic hierarchies. 
This first chapter continues by accompanying the reader toward a conceptual­
ization of the relationship between migration and torture, bringing emblematic 
examples (Libya, the Balkans, the Mexico–United States border), but also of forms 
of resistance, legal (mainly international law) and social movements (especially of 
grassroots classes, historically fighting for a wide range of rights), creating the basis 
for the progressive analytical path set in the book.
Subsequent contributions create an epistemological structure that starts from 
a more theoretical approach to the topic (see Gjergji’s chapter, with an extensive 
discussion of the relationship between racism and torture, and Alessandra Algostino’s 
chapter that provides an interesting discussion of International Agreements toward 
the middle of the volume), a “journey” toward a greater historical, geographical, legal 
and social awareness of the phenomenon. None of them lacks the historical contex­
tualization necessary to understand the details and causal mechanisms leading to 
the contemporary status quo. Nor are references to different analytical categories 
absent from the various contributions, such as the political economy (again, see 
Gjergji’s chapter), different theoretical approaches such as “torturing environments” 
(see the chapter by Pau Pérez­Sales, Andrea Galán­Santamarina, and Julia Manek), 
the transformation from securitization to weaponization processes through the 
rhetoric of “hybrid warfare” (see Eleni Takou’s chapter), the “weaponization” of public 
health laws (especially with the COVID­19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s 
controversial Title 42, see chapter by Alexander Aviña), up to a psychopathological 
approach about the different traumas, and re­traumatization, that migration, and 
related torture, can manifest through “post­migration living difficulties” (PMLD, see 
the chapter by Massimiliano Aragona, Salvatore Geraci, and Marco Mazzetti). No less 
important is the issue of the externalization of borders, from the best­known Libyan 
case to that of the “Balkan Route” and the Mexico–United States border (see again 
the chapter by Perocco and the chapter by Algostino).
Most of the areas of the world relevant to the migration­torture issue have been 
described and analyzed in the various contributions, such as the well­known border 
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areas between the US and Mexico, the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the 
Canary Islands in Spain, the Bosnian–Croatian border, the region of Evros in Greece, the 
Mediterranean Sea, and the southern Israeli border with its hyper­technological “smart 
fences” (see chapters by Aviña; Olga Jubany and Alèxia Rué; Karolína Augustová; 
Takou; Algostino; Diego Alberto Biancolin). The relative pushbacks, state migration 
policies, and the more insidious policies of supranational institutions (primarily the 
EU), often through international soft law agreements in para­institutional contexts 
that remove the responsibility to individual member states (e.g., the 2016 EU–Turkey 
Statement), are explored. 
Nouria Ouali brings all this to a more direct, lived, cruelly real dimension in the 
heart of democratic, progressive, and tolerant Europe, which, in the course of the 
book, is re­analyzed and re­considered through practices, actions, fortifications at 
the borders and within national territories (e.g., with detention centers), ending with 
the ultimate act of “purification” of the “sacred” European space, namely the expul­
sion of the migrant. In the chapter by Pérez­Sales, Galán­Santamarina, and Manek, it 
is interesting to discover the concept of the “measurement” of torture (with specific 
reference to torturing environments) and to understand how it can become a quan­
titative object of measurement while maintaining an objective solidity.
The volume concludes with two contributions that seem somewhat detached 
from the progressive logic achieved so far. Muhammad Ridwan Mostafa’s contribu­
tion takes the themes of the volume on new tracks with the case of the Rohingya, 
shedding light on this internationally controversial issue, not excluding, among 
other things, the geopolitical and economic connection of the case. The final contri­
bution by Aragona, Geraci, and Mazzetti concludes with a once again technical 
imprint, bringing the complex and highly specialized theme of psychopathological 
problems related to migration (and in particular on “forced migrants”).
One shortcoming of the book, if it can be defined as such, is the difficulty in 
finding a certain homogeneity in the path that the reader has to follow from the 
beginning to the end of all the contributions that make up the volume. The risk is 
finding oneself lost in myriad places, times, and contexts that, no matter how clear 
the leitmotif is, force the reader to leap from one context to another almost abruptly. 
There is, in fact, no lack of definition of this path. However, it requires the reader to 
make an additional effort to structure the content spatially to overcome this “impres­
sion” of partial disconnection between the parts. This, however, is at odds with what 
the volume manages to instill in the reader: the desire to further expand the analyt­
ical areas (geographical, thematic, and disciplinary) already covered, suggestive of 
the great possibilities the volume offers after reading it.
To sum things up, Migration and Torture in Today’s World represents the continu­
ation of a journey begun with the 2019 volume toward creating a greater scholarly 
awareness of the close correlation between the phenomenon of migration and 
torture (as well as racism) across different experiences, disciplines, and contexts 
worldwide. It is rich and extensively structured, creating interest in the analytical 
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heterogeneity and contexts analyzed, thus instilling in the reader the need for 
further insights into issues of crucial importance in contemporary times and still in a 
state of work in progress in the scientific literature.
Nicola Costalunga