Refugees as Gamblers: Eritreans Seeking to Migrate Through Italy

Belloni, Milena

doi:10.1080/15562948.2015.1060375

Cited by 89 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Within resettlement contexts, where gaining residency or citizenship in the host country does not automatically result in belonging to that nation (Hoyle, 1999), multiple notions of nationhood may exist simultaneously as the past and current identities and lives of refugees intersect. Here our findings support those of recent studies of Eritreans settling across Europe which examine the complexity of identity and belonging in the settlement space (Belloni, 2016;Graf & Thieme, 2016).…”

supporting

confidence: 90%

‘Remembering’ Absent and Recent Pasts Through Photographs: Young Eritrean Women in New Zealand

Humpage¹,

Marlowe²

2017

ARAS

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This article presents a Photovoice project that explores the narratives of five young women of Eritrean heritage living in New Zealand. The photographs taken by the women suggest that their current individual and collective identities are mediated by two different kinds of 'memories': 'post-memories' of an absent past in their ancestral country that they were too young to experience, which build identity and belonging at the collective level, and 'autobiographical memories' of recent, lived experiences which remind participants of their individual achievements since resettlement and/or help them articulate a future in New Zealand.

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supporting

confidence: 90%

‘Remembering’ Absent and Recent Pasts Through Photographs: Young Eritrean Women in New Zealand

Humpage¹,

Marlowe²

2017

ARAS

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“…Yet we found that our experience of bureaucracies’ decision‐making and internal power relations as unpredictable, arbitrary and unreadable – an account that was often shared by street‐level officials – bore similarities to how migrants and their support groups describe their encounters with migration control agencies. Prior research has shown how such obscurity of state practices makes migrants’ statuses and life prospects more precarious as it makes law enforcement difficult to anticipate (Belloni 2016; Eule et al . 2019).…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Let the right one in? On European migration authorities’ resistance to research

Lindberg

Borrelli

2019

Soc Anthropol

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This article documents efforts to gain access to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in migration control agencies across eight European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Switzerland. Building on repeated email exchanges, phone calls and fieldnotes from personal encounters between the researchers and state authorities, it traces and analyses state agencies’ decisions on whether or not to let researchers in to study their practices. We found that our access negotiations, including failed ones, proved analytically useful, as they drew our attention to the fragmented nature of the state agencies we attempted to study, which contrasts with the order‐making functions they claim to perform within the field of border and migration control. From our observations emerges an image of ‘the state’ as made up by many hands and ridden by internal frictions, conflicting interests and values, which contributes to rendering state practices unpredictable and opaque, also to the street‐level officials enforcing them. This opacity of state bureaucracy has profoundly disempowering effects for those trying to access it, even if it is not necessarily consciously constructed. Instead, we show how our access negotiations drew attention to the ongoing struggles over power, knowledge and order within the contested field of migration control.

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“…In terms of their perceived social and gender status, not much had changed since they had left Eritrea. In Eritrea, forced conscription prevented them from reaching full adulthood; in Italy they still felt like children because they could neither help their relatives nor form a family of their own (Belloni 2016a;2018). Geographical mobility had not led to the expected social mobility, which is why so many of my informants were still thinking of moving on from Italy.…”

Section: Avoiding Financial Requests or Living With Shame? The Reasonmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Even the few who do manage to reach Europe -most remain in camps in developing countries with high levels of socio-economic deprivation -may have a hard time securing a good job or decent accommodation ( van Heelsum 2017). This is especially true of those who are granted protection in southern Europe where aids to integration are often limited and pathways to settlement more complicated (Belloni 2016a(Belloni , 2016b. Many of my informants in Italy, even after having lived there for a few years, were still finding it difficult to become economically independent.…”

Section: Long Journeys and Few Prospects: The Historical And Social Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even the Eritreans I met in Italy were frequent users of the internet and would spend much time talking to friends all around Europe and elsewhere. These widespread flows of information and images would elicit a feeling of disparity between those who seemed to be enjoying better conditions in northern Europe and those still struggling to make their way into Italian society (Belloni 2016a). It also induced a longing for further migration even among those who had already been granted international protection (Brekke and Brochmann 2015).…”

Section: Avoiding Financial Requests or Living With Shame? The Reasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When the phone stops ringing: on the meanings and causes of disruptions in communication between Eritrean refugees and their families back home

Belloni

2019

Global Networks

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In recent years, a growing number of studies have highlighted the role of technology in facilitating the circulation of the information and images that underpin migrants' journeys and aspirations. However, less attention has been paid to the social circumstances that obstruct these communication flows. Based on ethnographic work in Italy and Eritrea, in this article I show that, despite the technological possibilities that are available, contacts between Eritrean refugees in Italy and their families back home are often extremely limited. This is not the result of infrastructural under‐development, but of a bundle of social and family expectations that my informants perceive as overwhelming. My respondents in Italy maintained many transnational relationships with friends and acquaintances around the world, but generally not with their parents in Eritrea. While revisiting the literature on the moral economy of transnational families, I show that my informants' attempts to move onwards from Italy emerge from their wish to reconnect with their left‐behind kin. Only by reaching the final destination of their geographical and moral journey can they support their families back home. Only this can give them respect in the eyes of their community and restore transnational communication with their families.

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Refugees as Gamblers: Eritreans Seeking to Migrate Through Italy

Cited by 89 publications

References 19 publications

‘Remembering’ Absent and Recent Pasts Through Photographs: Young Eritrean Women in New Zealand

‘Remembering’ Absent and Recent Pasts Through Photographs: Young Eritrean Women in New Zealand

Let the right one in? On European migration authorities’ resistance to research

When the phone stops ringing: on the meanings and causes of disruptions in communication between Eritrean refugees and their families back home

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