Giorgio Agamben writes about people—including citizens—being “al bando” (banned, banished), and connects the root of the noun “abbandono,” or abandonment, to discourses of inclusion and exclusion. In terms of mobility, the possible abandonment of those who move—the stateless, the vagabonds, those who Hannah Arendt warned may not “have the right to have rights” —is particularly important. This paper focuses on the recent abandonment of non-citizens who are left adrift boats in the Mediterranean Sea near Italy, as well as the abandonment of refugees who die out at sea or arrive in Lampedusa, Italy. Although European Union (EU) initiatives such as Frontex, and Italy’s Mare Nostrum-now Tritan, exist to help non-citizens, their abandonment both by those who send them off and those who rescue them, often to arrest them, poses new challenges and opportunities for the study of international human rights and legal duties to non-citizens.
