Anthropologist and migration critic Megan Carney's timely book avoids the simplistic view of migration across the Mediterranean as nothing but a crisis, instead illustrating forms of coexistence and solidarity that have been mobilised as antidotes to the social and political marginalisation of both natives and immigrants in southern Europe. Focusing specifically on Sicily, this innovative study combines extensive ethnographic research and critical reflections to demonstrate that an undercurrent of hope and affective interactions between citizens and non-citizens in Sicily sheds light on a shared aspirational future for the struggles of recognition, dignity and autonomy. Carney's revisionist approach looks at migrants not as ‘victims’, but as active agents in an effort to transform collective welfare and social alliances in Europe's southern borderlands.

Island of Hope is divided into six interrelated chapters. Chapter One underlines how local economic crisis in Sicily might contribute to an understanding of its migrant reception. In this regard, Carney emphasises that the struggles of Europe's southern peripheries, migration, and the imposition of austerity politics are inextricably linked. Both Sicilian locals and migrants, according to Carney, have been marginalised and ‘conditioned toward specific ways of being – and feeling’ (p. 23). The second chapter historicises Sicily's geopolitical position at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, as an island that has experienced centuries of occupation and colonialism. Carney demonstrates impressive discursive skill in intertwining the historical conditions and current austerity regimes, viewing these two aspects as crucial in articulating ‘particular affective states – ways of feeling – that precede local acts of solidarity with migrations’ (p. 49). Such a process also negatively alludes to Sicily's longstanding ‘problems’, such as corruption, backwardness and poverty. The author carefully points out the variegated local attitudes to migrants in Sicily when taking into consideration class and spatial (urban/rural) divisions.

Chapter Three highlights the ‘irresponsible’ acts of Italy's institutional and state-sponsored reception centres after migrants’ disembarkations. Lack of state support, the increased privatisation of the system, high rejection rates (of asylum applications) and inconsistency of reception procedures across the country all account for the post-reception failures. In this context, migrants often view Italy as a country of transit; those who remain are often unaware of their rights, the services available to them and the ‘procedures for reporting infractions’ (p. 79). In stark contrast to these formal reception centres is the emergence of ‘street-level’ hospitality, which the book lauds as providing explicit sites of care, moral support and solidarity that serve to subvert the broader political arrangement of hostility and crisis. Within this framework, Palermo's Centro Astalli takes central stage, revealing a quasi utopistic citizen-noncitizen community and convivenza, where migrants receive not merely physical assistance (food, bathing, clothing, medicine) but services enhancing their practical skills and autonomy, including language, cooking and computer classes, vocational training, and after-school care for children (as ‘secondary reception’).

Based on this observation, Chapter Four offers a deeper understanding of ‘solidarity’, a concept different from humanitarianism and charity. Carney acknowledges that ‘migrant solidarity work’ comprises a ‘particular set of practices and economy of affects’ (p. 120) and seeks to reposition migrants as active, rather than objectified, participants in these collective and mutual works of care. In corroborating this argument, Carney expands her focus on a larger urban scale and interestingly underscores Palermo's urban environment in portraying itself as a pro-migrant city, although the author herself shows doubts. This chapter culminates with a radical, Marxist perspective in considering such a new format of solidarity and collectivity as a ‘politicized caring labor’ (p. 122). This exploration of a horizontal alliance repudiates traditional ideas on native-migrant dynamics which relied on centrifugal forces, binarism and stratified reproduction.

Continuing this radical point, Chapter Five sheds light on how the ‘uniqueness’ of Sicily's ‘multicultural’ food establishments transforms the ‘material, affective, and political possibilities’ of both Sicilians and the displaced (p. 126). Using the cases of two Sicilian restaurants, Moltivolti (Palermo) and Ginger (Agrigento), and their social engagements, Carney astutely links the issue of belonging with food, presenting them as alternative spaces against strictly demarcated boundaries of political belongings and citizenship. Crafted around another case – migrant youth – the last chapter follows the task of examining the multiple modes of ‘performing’ community, solidarity and care. In this chapter, Carney recaptures the contrast between reception centre and street level. For her, the active participation of young migrants in various projects, initiatives and laboratories represents new levels of cosmopolitanism and solidarity that aspire to ‘a future population that is distinguished from the past’ (p. 174). She re-emphasises the agency of migrant youth in strengthening the collective well-being and ‘informal’ visibility, citizenship and belonging.

Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean is a radical inquiry that spotlights grassroots forms of social inclusion and rejects stratified reproduction of labour at Europe's southern peripheries. Through extensive fieldwork in Sicily (mainly) and Rome, Carney convincingly challenges the traditional view of Mediterranean migration as a crisis of the nation state and neoliberal economy, combining meticulous empirical analysis and thoughtful discussions. What renders this book particularly invaluable is that Carney offers a timely epilogue written after the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy and the global movement of Black Lives Matter in 2020, pointing to possible trajectories in future studies. However, the book falls short of an engaged theoretical analysis, even if touching upon a variety of topics and thoughts. For example, one of the frameworks perfectly echoed in Carney's study would be the concept of ‘minor transnationalism’ coined by Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih. When reading Carney's elegantly written chapters, I eagerly awaited a similar sensibility on political theories. But with its ethnographic narrative and interesting details, this practical ethnographical work leaves the door open for more theoretical discussions on the perspectives Carney introduces. Scholars and students working on migration studies, in any regional or national context, will appreciate reading Island of Hope for the refreshing snapshot it provides of philosophies of care and hospitality, Italy's Southern Question, the Mediterranean migration ‘crisis’ and the concept of the Global South in the context of globalisation.