1st Edition

Displacement, Environments, and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean Migrant Sea

By Parvati Nair Copyright 2025
190 Pages 10 Color & 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

190 Pages 10 Color & 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

190 Pages 10 Color & 21 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Focusing on the Mediterranean region from 2015 onwards, this volume explores photography’s engagement with displacement, a process that denotes the environmental and social breakdown of places and the forced mobility of people. The ongoing proliferation of photography of the displaced plays a crucial role in shaping opinions, by sensitising the public to the despair of displacement and... Read more

1. Out of Time and Place  2. Crisis Re-Viewed  3. Exposures from the Dark Room  4. Fragile Frames of Home  5. Photography’s Struggle for Hope

Biography

Parvati Nair is Professor of Hispanic, Cultural and Migration Studies at Queen Mary University of London.

“In this evocative and poignant book, Parvati Nair uncovers stories, recalls memories and explores visual narratives, or what she calls the “photo-politics” of displacement. It is a timely exposure of the precarity of mobility and the complexity of belonging. The focus is on the Mediterranean, the liquid border between North and South, as this site is, once again, a source of much tragedy. Photographs are now ubiquitous with everyday life. However, Nair shows us how they can still shock and reshape our public imagination.”

 

-- Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Melbourne.

“This wide-ranging and profound book is a parable of our times. It demonstrates lucidly the entanglement of visual dynamics with the pervading issues of the day -  climate emergency, displacement and migration - and their defining violence and precarity. The volume’s multi-layered focus on the larger Mediterranean region gives it both a contemporary urgency and a historical depth, so often missing from debates. At the centre is the work of photographs.”

 

-- Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University and University College London.