The multiple facets of (im)mobility. A multisited ethnography on territorialisation experiences and mobility trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees outside the Italian reception system

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article analyses the forms of mobility and (im)mobility of migrants and asylum seekers who are outside the institutional reception system. Through the narration of two ethnographic cases placed in northern and southern Italy, the authors retrace the biographical and geographic trajectories of migrants, and compare them with territorial policies. By analysing two very different contexts from the economic and social point of view, we highlight the similarities between these territories, the mobility and immobility they generate and through which they are crossed, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.