Abstract
This chapter explores the existential and embodied experience of border(ing) by focusing on the trials and tribulations of Abdelkrim, a young Moroccan man in his late 20s. Abdelkrim’s biography offers insights into the structural constraints, which produce lives suspended in the borderland. His slippage into ‘illegality’ testifies to the extent to which becoming an ‘illegal alien’ in Italy can be the result both of the migration policies rhetorically legitimized in the name of legality and, equally, of the system of exploitation that marks Italy’s underground economy. In a period of financial crisis and neoliberal economic policies, these dynamics push migrants to the margins of citizenship, while their legal limbo becomes increasingly permanent and uncertain. At the same time, within the ‘grey areas’ of exclusion, new modes of political subjectivity and collective agency emerge. By joining the protests on Imbonati Street, Abdelkrim and the activists reverse the securitarian argument about the need for security and legality, and invite us to rethink the EurAfrican border regimes in the light of the illegalization of migration. In doing so, they make visible the institutional processes of inclusion and exclusion through which certain types of human beings and power relations are brought into being.
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Notes
- 1.
Ethnographic research conducted in Morocco (2008–10) and in Milan (October 2010–February 2011) was funded by the doctoral programme in the Anthropology of the Contemporary World, University of Milano-Bicocca. This chapter was completed, thanks to the support from the Zentrum Moderner Orient, the PRIN project ‘State, Conflict, Plurality in Africa’ and the Project ‘Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond’ (ERC Grant 313737). I am grateful to Paolo Gaibazzi, Stephen Dünnwald and the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on previous versions.
- 2.
It is worth noting that the notion of ‘illegality’, as it is referred to in relevant academic literature and public discourse, comprises two different conditions in Italy. Italian immigration law, indeed, differentiates between ‘clandestine’ immigrants (immigrati clandestini), who entered Italy without documents, and ‘irregular’ immigrants (immigrati irregolari) who fail to renew their documents when they expire.
- 3.
For further details, see http://www.frontex.europa.eu [Accessed 20 November 2015].
- 4.
Migrants crossing the frontiers illegally risk being fined from 3,000 to 10,000 Dirham (about 300 to 1,000 Euros) and/or imprisoned for between 1 and 6 months (Art. 50), while smugglers risk being fined from 50,000 to 500,000 DH (about 5,000 to 50,000 Euros) and/or imprisoned for between 1 and 2 years (Art. 52).
- 5.
First established by the Turco-Napolitano Law for controlling and expelling undocumented migrants, the Centri di Permanenza Temporanea (CPT) were included in the Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione and modified by the Bossi-Fini Law (art.14). In 2008, the decree ‘Misure urgenti in material di sicurezza pubblica’ (92/2008), and then Law 125/2008, changed the CPT to Centri di Idenitificazione ad Esplulsione, where the length of time undocumented migrants can be detained is 180 days (Law 94/2009).
- 6.
Fieldnotes, May 2009.
- 7.
For a thorough analysis of the migrants’ protests in Brescia and Milan, see also Carissimo (2011).
- 8.
While I focus here on the Via Imbonati protests in Milan, it is worth noting the actions of migrants in Rosarno in January 2010 who denounced the extreme conditions of exploitation and marginalization in which they were forced to live and work, see Corriere della Sera (2010). For a historical overview of the migrants’ movement in Italy, see for instance: Basso and Perocco (2003).
- 9.
On 15 November 2010, serious medical conditions led two activists to come down from the Imbonati Street Tower and they succeeded in vanishing. On 28 November 2010, another man was hospitalized and then released by the physician without the police being informed, which created controversy. Finally, on 2 December 2010, the remaining activists came down, a man of Argentine-Italian origin and an undocumented migrant; the latter was repatriated to Morocco despite the activists’ protests.
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Menin, L. (2017). Suspended Lives: Undocumented Migrants’ Everyday Worlds and the Making of ‘Illegality’ Between Morocco and Italy. In: Gaibazzi, P., Dünnwald, S., Bellagamba, A. (eds) EurAfrican Borders and Migration Management. Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94972-4_12
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