A controversy over a Netflix docudrama about Cleopatra escalated last week, when the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities asserted that Cleopatra was fair-skinned. The statement capped two weeks of debate about her ethnicity, after Netflix cast a mixed-race British actress in the leading role for “Queen Cleopatra.”
On March 21, nine Algerian migrants died when the boat taking them to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. The tragedy highlights the cost of migration, which is not limited to lives lost. The highly publicized reports of migrant deaths have increasingly shaped a vision of migration as a symptom of a broader social tragedy.