Over the past two decades, national and supranational institutions and the mass media have played a central role in presenting the migrant struggle in a sensational way, spreading an unjustified moral panic and relegating migrants themselves to spaces of invisibility. Building on recent theoretical debates in migration studies around the so- called «autonomy of migration» - which sees people on the move as individuals with self-determination and agency - this book reframes migration in the Mediterranean, and specifically around the island of Lampedusa. In particular, the book explores how activist and art forms have become a platform for subverting the dominant narrative of migration and generating