On October 3, 2013, over 360 people—mainly from Eritrea, Somalia, and Ghana—perished in a shipwreck just off the coast of Lampedusa, the Italian island now most associated with the arrival of boat refugees into Europe. Contemporaneously deemed the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean, this tragic incident presages what is now identifiable as the current ‘refugee crisis’ in and around Europe. In response, Italian authorities called on EU countries to help manage the problem of unsafe migration from the African continent to Europe; however, less reported was the subsequent commemoration of what became known as the ‘Lampedusa disaster.’ The following year (2014), the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, delivered a commemorative address; soon after, a plaque was lowered into the sea, onto the site of the shipwreck (a video of which can be seen on YouTube). The plaque depicts a disembodied white hand reaching down to grasp a black hand being claimed by a roiling sea, lifting it out of the abyss. Such memorialization operates in stark contrast to current EU policies, which troublingly enact regulations intended to penalize refugee-sending nations and benefit refugee-receiving countries. Notwithstanding the solemnity of the commemorative event, the plaque’s juxtaposition of white and black accesses a centuries-old discourse of dependency and European salvation. Such a discourse is most famously given expression in Rudyard Kipling’s conceptualization of ‘The White Man’s Burden’ in his 1899 poem of the same name. In depicting white, European salvation, the Lampedusa image, perhaps unwittingly, draws a line of continuity between contemporary conceptions of humanitarian response and those colonial dependencies and power relations whose ongoing legacies are responsible for the very refugee movements being commemorated.

中文翻译：

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移民，人道主义和救赎政治

2013年10月3日，主要来自厄立特里亚，索马里和加纳的360多人在意大利兰佩杜萨（Lampedusa）海岸附近的海难中丧生，该岛如今与乘船难民进入欧洲最相关。同时被认为是地中海最致命的沉船事件，这一悲惨事件预示着现在可确定为欧洲及其周边地区当前的“难民危机”。作为回应，意大利当局呼吁欧盟国家帮助解决从非洲大陆到欧洲的不安全移民问题；然而，随后的纪念活动被称为“兰佩杜萨灾难”的报道较少。第二年（2014年），欧洲议会主席马丁·舒尔茨发表纪念讲话；不久之后，一块牌匾降到了海里，进入沉船现场（可以在YouTube上观看其视频）。该牌匾描绘了一只无知的白手，伸手抓住一只被汹涌的海浪夺走的黑手，将其抬离深渊。这种纪念与目前的欧盟政策形成鲜明对比，后者令人不安地颁布了旨在惩罚难民派遣国并使难民接收国受益的法规。尽管纪念活动是庄严的，但匾额的白色和黑色并列却可以使用已有数百年历史的关于依赖和欧洲救赎的论述。Rudyard Kipling在其1899年的同名诗中对“白人的负担”的概念化最著名地表达了这种话语。在描绘白色的欧洲救赎时，兰佩杜萨（Lampedusa）图像也许是不经意间