BeCAMP
Beyond the camp: border regimes, enduring liminality and everyday geopolitics of migration in Italy and Spain

Project Research Activities Publications Contacts

Project

The project BeCamp is an anthropological approach to the second-line reception system for asylum seekers in two European first-arrival countries, Italy and Spain, from the perspective of a former worker of that system.
The study explores the functioning of the multiple control and management devices directed at asylum seekers on the ground. It also looks at how the daily adaptation strategies deployed by the individuals navigating these systems change according to various factors, such as political contingencies. 

The starting assumption is that borders, far from marking mere geopolitical divisions, are much more complex and broader entities, which begin well before (externalisation) and end long after the frontier in the strict sense (internalisation), and which follow the migrant over time in the form of laws and regulations, welfare systems, bureaucracy, and media discourses.
However, while borders externalization has been widely discussed, their internalisation, that is the military-humanitarian governance of migration flows after the crossing of the geopolitical frontier and on national territory has received so far little attention. BeCAMP seeks to fill the gap in the analysis of the internalization of borders by critically addressing the migrants’ reception system as an enactment and a constitutive factor of a wider border regime. 

Research

BeCAMP is built around three key topics: 

  • border regimes, according to which the border is conceived as a changing assemblage of power (politics), legal and operational arrangements (policies) and discourses (mediascape), where the military and the humanitarian are deeply intertwined in various modalities of migration governance; 
  • enduring liminality, that indefinite state of suspension and uncertainty that emphasizes the specific space/time of the people-on-the-move caught in-between different locales and statuses
  • everyday geopolitics, referring to a grounded ethnographical approach to the ways migration governance is experienced by those dealing with it on a daily basis that challenges a top-down hierarchical relationship between geopolitics and the everyday.

By bridging these three topics, the project offers a comparative, well-informed, ethnographically rooted account of life within of the Italian and Spanish migrants' reception systems.

Methodology

BeCAMP relies upon a strong empirical basis, as it draws from the PI’s direct experience of the sector. Fieldwork has consisted of two phases: the first one, an extensive, in-depth research conducted at one asylum seekers reception centre in north-eastern Italy, of which the PI is a former worker and coordinator. Therefore, the resulting ethnography is also partly an autoethnography of social work in asylum. This case study has been later put in dialogue with the Spanish system, to gain a comparative perspective through a second, multi-sited fieldwork at different organisations managing reception programmes for asylum seekers in Barcelona (Spain). 

Activities

Conferences

  • EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) - Biannual Conference “Doing and Undoing with Anthropology” (Barcelona, 23-26/07/2024). Organisation (with Amanda Bernal) of panel 179 "Undoing and redoing anthropology with photography: dialogues, collaborations, hybridisations". Within panel 308 "Shaping futures: reimagining immobility through an anthropological exploration of waiting, stuckness and hope", paper "Border impasses: on waiting and immobility in asylum” (sole author). Conference programme - session 2: 26/07/2024
  • SKAE (Association of Social Anthropologists Greece) - Biannual Conference “Anthropology, Ethnography in/for uncertain times” (Thessaloniki, 24-26 May 2024). Panel 17 “Precarious mobilities and violent borders: Ethnographies of risk and invisibility in the Mediterranean”, paper “Meet the smugglers. Decolonising the mind, questioning the border” (sole author). Conference programme [GRE]
  • CoCA - Congrés Català d'Antropologia - Biannual Conference (Lleida, 24-26 January 2024). Organisation (with Arnau Poy and Alèxia Rué) of panel S8 “Governing migrations through 'ghost bureaucracy': digitalization, outsourcing and the unreachability of the state”. CoCA programme [CAT]
  • IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) Annual Conference “Marginalities, Uncertainties and World Anthropologies: Enlivening Pasts and Envisioning Futures” (New Delhi, 14-20 October 2023). Panel 062 “Wither an Anthropology of the Everyday State?”, paper “Governing asylum without ‘being there’: Ghost Bureaucracy, Outsourcing and the Unreachability of the State” (with Arnau Poy and Alèxia Rué). IUAES Programme
  • EISA (European International Studies Association) Pan-European Conference on International Relations "Envisioning a new normal" (Potsdam and online, 5-9 September 2023). Organisation (with Corina Tulbure) of the panel “Everyday geopolitics of migration. Micro-settings of banal violence in border regimes”, including the paper “The border of small things: the management of everyday life in state reception facilities in Italy and Spain” (with Corina Tulbure). EISA Programme 
  • IMISCOE (International Migration Research Network) Annual Conference “Migration and Inequalities. In search of Answers and Solutions” (Warsaw and online, 3-6/07/2023). Panel 153 “A reflexive perspective on borders, bordering practices and border narratives”, chair and presenter of the paper “Daily crossings. The in-betweenness of the social worker/researcher of the asylum regime” (sole author). IMISCOE Programme 
  • SIEF (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) International Congress “Living Uncertainty” (Brno, 7-10/06/2023). Panel “Encampment in Europe in a Comparative Perspective”, paper “The camp as method: infrastructural uncertainty in state reception for asylum seekers” (sole author). SIEF Programme
  • ERQ (Ethnography and Qualitative Research) International Conference (Trento, 7-10/06/2023). Panel “Humanitarian exploitation: ethnographies of labor in the humanitarian sector”, paper “Work! Work! Work! From ‘autonomy’ and ‘integration’ to precariousness and exploitation in the asylum system” (with Arnau Poy and Alèxia Rué). ERQ Programme 
  • RGS (Royal Geographical Society) Annual International Conference (Geographies beyond Recovery” (Newcastle and online, 29/08-02/09/2022). Organisation of the panel "Recovery in border regimes: disrupted life projects and clashing imaginaries of the future” (with Louis Vuilleumier)
  • EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) Biannual Conference “Transformation, Hope and the Commons” (Belfast and online, 26-29/07/2022). Panel “Food, Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Between (in)security and agency: ethnographic studies from European urban and rural settings and border areas”, paper title “Bordering food: where the code of hospitality and the quest for autonomy collide” (with Louis Vuilleumier). EASA Programme
  • IMISCOE (International Migration Research Network) Annual Conference “Migration and Time. Temporalities of Mobility, Governance and Resistance” (Oslo and online, 29/06-01/07/2022). Panel “Street-level bureaucrats and immigrants’ access to welfare entitlements”, paper title “Governing asylum without ‘being there’. Ghost bureaucracy, outsourcing and the invisibility of the state” (with Arnau Poy and Alèxia Rué)
  • DGSKA-GAA (German Association of Anthropologists) Annual Conference “World, Zones, Atmospheres. Seismographies of the Anthropocene” (online, 27/09-01/10/2021). Panel “Theorizing Migration and the Political Economy of Provisioning”, paper title “Catering for asylum. Refugees labelling and the everyday politics of provisions in Italy" (sole author)

Outreach activities

  • 21/02/2024: Conference "Performing at the gateways of Europe. Pratiche performative e strategie di resistenza artistica nei contesti di trasnito migratorio" organized by Rosaria Ruffini, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University (Venice). Paper "Beyond the written word: working with images in asylum"
  • 2/12/2023: Workshop "Sobre hibridación. Tres ejercicios en el mestizaje entre antropología y fotografía" (El Observatorio photography school, Barcelona) (with Camilla de Maffei, Felipe Romero and Lorenzo Vitturi)
  • 1/12/2023: Seminar "Sobre hibridación. Tres ejercicios en el mestizaje entre antropología y fotografía" (Universitat de Barcelona) (with Camilla de Maffei, Felipe Romero and Lorenzo Vitturi)
  • 29/09/2023: Veneto Night, la notte della ricerca (Università Ca' Foscari), presentation of the board game "La Nuova Odissea" (with Renata Soukand)
  • 13/02/2023: Seminar "El asilo como frontera. Una mirada comparativa sobre los sistemas de acogida en Italia y España", hosted by OACU, Observatori d'Antropologia del Conflicte Urbà (Universitat de Barcelona)
  • 15/11/2022: Lecture "Anthropology of Dwelling" in the "Thinking with Things" course, prof. Barbara Adams, Parsons School of Design, The New School (New York)
  • 18/10/2022: Lecture "The Visible Mountain" in the "Walking as a Research Practice" course, prof. Lydia Matthews, Parsons School of Design, The New School (New York)
  • 30/03/2022: Seminar "El asilo desde dentro. Una mirada comparativa sobre los sistemas de acogida en Italia y España", hosted by GENI, Grup de Recerca en Gènere, Identitat i Diversitat (Universitat de Barcelona)
  • 15/10/2021: Caffè dell'Innovazione "Sustainable for All. Empowerment, sviluppo di talenti e di ambienti", Ca' Foscari University, Treviso

Publications