University of Genoa is leading a research project – joined also by research teams from University of Milan, University of Padua, University of Parma, and L’Orientale, University of Naples – which has been awarded within the PRIN (Programmi di Ricerca di Interesse Nazionale) framework.
Focusing mainly on the Italian context, the project focuses on the porosity of the national territory, deeply interconnected at a transnational level, where migrants on the move with different legal status and social positions give shape to various forms of temporary dwelling and mobility, despite the multiplication of borders and boundaries along lines of colour, race, citizenship, gender and class.
Accordingly, the project defined four types of space of transit, which are, at the same time, battlegrounds and spaces of encounters: 1) the mountain; 2) the Mediterranean Sea; 3) the urban area; 4) the rural area.
In these different spaces of transit, the research teams involved in the project will carry out their research work through multiple qualitative approaches; such as, ethnography, visual sociology, art-based methods, socio-legal clinics, future labs, etc.
Within this framework the University of Genoa research unit will work mainly on the Mediterranean Sea, and on the rural space.
In the Italian spaces of transit, profoundly transformed by the effects of Covid-19 pandemic, migrants’ mobilities are shaped by mechanisms of containment and multiple filtering, processes of production and reproduction of labour that go often beyond national borders and by the strive for autonomy, fuelled by social representations, imaginaries on the future and narratives of the past which steer choices and biographies. A crucial role in this articulation of mobilities is played by the heterogeneous set of practices of solidarity carried out towards and with migrants: in the urban fabric of the city; around the hotspots, camps and other border apparatuses; in the
Mediterranean search and rescue area; within digital platforms and networks; across the alpine passages to northern Europe; in the stratified labour markets where migrant workforce is employed, as in the agriculture, logistics, delivery and services sector.
