Into the Woods: Imaginaries between Freedom and Control at the Italian Border

Abstract

The paper examines the nuanced cross-border imaginaries related to the Swiss-Italian borderscape by focusing on the wooded areas between Lombardy and Ticino. The woods, seemingly open border spaces often devoid of physical barriers, harbour complex narratives and imaginaries embedded within the local population and migrant communities. In these areas where one can only move on foot, old custom houses are not in use anymore. While architecturally dematerialized, these borderlands remain sites of contested movement, where one's positionality dictates the right to traverse. The research developed through embodied fieldwork methodologies, including site visits, interviews and dialogues, and the making of photographs for an artistic project. Alongside, the research examined the narratives of local newspapers, other artistic projects and institutional representations. With this multi-layered investigation, the paper elucidates the ambivalent imaginaries surrounding these borderlands: they oscillate between “freedom” and “control”, with romanticized tales of historical smuggling and leisurely communion with nature, juxtaposed with apprehension fueled by the presence of surveillance drones used to patrol the border. Each of these elements has its own associated visuality, which in the case of drones is for example that of aerial thermographic imagery. The disruptive onset of the COVID-19 pandemic further unsettled the woods equilibrium, imposing additional restrictions on border crossings. However, paradoxically, it also catalyzed the emergence of the woods as nodes of meeting points for transborder communities and refuges for those seeking respite from confinement. In this framework, the paper highlights the transformative potential of these borderland spaces in reimagining cross-border relations. They serve not merely as sites of contention but as fertile ground for fostering new transborder networks. In the post-2020 era, these woods beckoned as liminal spaces of possibility, offering avenues for more-than-spatial re-engagement in the evolving landscape of Italian borderscapes.