Asylum-seeker emergency and third spaces in the Inspector Montalbano TV series

By analysing the TV episode ‘The Other End of the line’ (2019) through the lens of Bhabha’s concepts of ‘third space’ and ‘hybridity’ (1994), and Soja’s formulation of ‘thirdspace,’ this article argues that, far from being escapist viewing, the Inspector Montalbano TV series (Italy, 1999–2021) is a ‘geopolitical’ crime series (Saunders 2020, 1) that challenges the ‘nation-centred view of sovereign citizenship’ (Bhabha 38) embodied by Matteo Salvini, the leader of the xenophobic Italian political party, Lega. This episode provides criticism of Salvini’s policy of closed ports, which aimed to stop migration fluxes from Northern Africa, when the Lega was in power in Italy (2018–2019). By visualizing several ‘thirdspaces’, such as a rescue vessel, a port, and the village of Vigàta, where the story takes place, and populating the plot with characters who defy a Manichean view of ‘us-versus-them’, ‘The Other End of the line’ endorses the idea of an inclusive society characterized by ‘a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy’ (Bhabha 5). This article also argues that this episode invites viewers to act ‘as active citizens’ who ‘must vigilantly guard against the state’s strategies of exclusion and discrimination in the midst of its promises of formal equality and procedural democracy’ (Bhabha xxi).