Unveiling Informality through Im/mobility. Conceptual Analysis of Asylum Seekers and Refugees at the Margins of the Reception system in Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2015, the progressive tightening of border controls and the implementation of policy measures aimed at discouraging the settlement of asylum seekers in the Italian territories have increasingly left an unprecedented number of migrant people at the margins of the official system of reception. Though social research has variously explored their experience of informal settling by interrogating the power dynamics in relation to individuals and the processes of categorization, little attention has been devoted to their mobility dimension. The aim of this article is to place the relationship between mobility and informality in the foreground to examine the analytical purchase of the conceptual perspective of the mobility studies in order to explore the reality of asylum seekers and refugees outside the reception system in Italy, and not only. The article contributes to capturing the multiple mobility/immobility dimensions of their geographical and social trajectories, arguing for an overcoming of the representation of ‘passive pawns’ and establishing a more fine-grained analysis of the experience of ‘migrant informality’. 1