The Long Landing. Trajectories of young Somali asylum seekers in Europe, between reception systems and protracted mobility

Abstract

The article presents the results of a research workshop carried out during the summer of 2019 in an asylum reception center in Milan involving a group of young refugees of Somali origin and combining ethnographic investigation, personal narratives and audio-visual methods.

Drawing on the refugees’ accounts of their trajectories across Europe, the article develops an analysis of the social conditions of asylum in the conjuncture of the “migration crisis” of the years 2014-18, highlighting one of its central aspects: the nexus, persistent and structural, between asylum, mobility, and precariousness. On the one hand, the article shows the historical depth of these dynamics; on the other hand, in connection to a discussion that has emerged in recent years, it examines the issue of protracted displacement, no longer only referred to the condition of refugees in the global South, but to their condition in Italy and more generally in Europe. Questioning these forms of protracted mobility means investigating the various dimensions of precariousness and institutional abandonment that have characterized asylum procedures and the governance of forced mobility in recent years, and sheds light on the social worlds of refugees in their resettlement paths.