This book examines migrant landing spaces, analyzing the processes and infrastructure encountered by people as they navigate urban environments during the central Mediterranean route. The book argues that there is a theoretical and practical difficulty in understanding the complexity of migrant arrivals. Migrants are often unsure whether they will stay or leave, and their mobility is uncertain. Nevertheless, they face rigid dualities and categories within administrative policies and planning that try to classify them as either permanent or temporary.

Based on extensive original research in southern Italy, the book suggests that we should think differently about "landing spaces": parts of the city that function as infrastructure for landing, allowing for an open and dynamic use of urban space and providing opportunities for encounter and exchange of information as migrants consider their next steps.

Combining an ethnographic perspective with insights from urban planning, architecture, geography, social sciences, and migration studies, this book invites us to examine more closely the interactions between people, practices, and places as migrants land in Europe.