Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

Note

Border enforcement measures have deeply affected borderlands, transformed into laboratories where remote control of migration is tested. These areas in close geographic proximity to borders are both zones of hyper circulations and waiting rooms for migrants stranded before they reach their aspired destinations. ROADSIDE
proposes an innovative theoretical elaboration that expands the current interpretations of time and temporality in the studies of mobility, drawing on what I term the politics of (im)mobility. This conceptualization captures the political impact of the intermediate stand-by condition characterizing migrants’ waiting at the borderlands as well as how this institutionalized temporariness is used as an instrument to regiment mobility.
ROADSIDE comparatively focuses on two crucial borderlands: the EU-Turkish border and the US-Mexico border.
It sets out new approaches to understanding migrant mobility as a complex process involving local, national and transnational actors and to illuminating on governmental techniques. Combining disciplines and methodologies from political science, anthropology and sociology, ROADSIDE will provide an anatomy of migrants’ stand-by condition through fieldwork and desk research:
• in-depth interviews with migrants and visual ethnography at the borders.
• structured interviews with key informants and participant observations of daily activities
• records and document analysis
ROADSIDE envisages two secondments (in the US and in Turkey) to conduct fieldwork and produce an empirically rich analysis. Working with outstanding scholars in each of these countries, will develop an international and interdisciplinary network of academics and stakeholders and ensure a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge by fostering mutual cultural understanding as stated in the Horizon Europe Cluster 6- Effective management of EU external borders.