(In)Visibility: On the Doorstep of a Mediatized Refugees’ Squat

Abstract

Migrants’ squats often inhabit marginal and “out of sight” urban areas, placed at the intersection of institutional neglect and alternative strategies for self-managed living. Yet, at times, migrants’ informal settlements become highly visible places, as they find themselves in the spotlight as symbols of governmental failure and urban decay. This chapter reflects on the hurdles and conundrums of negotiating access as a researcher within such a place. It is based on a number of ethnographic encounters that took place at “Ex-MOI”, a housing squat in Turin’s abandoned Olympic Village that became catalyst of local anxieties, as well as of national xenophobic propaganda. Entering a housing squat – at once a public and a private environment – is by no means obvious. Yet, this scenario offers a fertile perspective to look at some underlying aspects of the ethnographic encounter, such as research subjects’ resistance to the “ethnographic gaze”, cross-gender and cross-racial dynamics within fieldwork, as well as the role of the “unsaid” as a telling social act. Refugees’ refusal to be “domesticated” for academic purposes testifies to their multiple attempts at re-gaining control over the representation of their lives, as well as to the inherent political nature of acts of homemaking.

Migrant agency and embodiment in space – commentary to van Liempt

“…Contemporary cases of research refusal are starting to attract scholarly attention in migration sites as well. These include refugee camps, border spaces, and migrant squats (Spathopoulou & Meier 2020;Giudici 2023). Additionally, refusal is becoming more evident in the growing resistance of some migrants to various forms of delayed or insufficient state-based and pastoral care, as noted above.…”