EtnoAntropologia

Editoriale n. 1 - 2024

2024-07-27T07:19:02+00:00

Il clima delle frontiere: per un’etnografia ambientale dei corpi

2024-07-27T08:07:06+00:00

Contemporary environmental crises, the migration dynamics related to them, current forms of border management, and all the resulting body phenomena are areas that need a gaze capable of grasping their intersections and interactions. In recent years, anthropology has extensively inquired into these issues. What we need today is the development of an ethnographic practice capable of capturing the interactions between these domains. In this direction, we outline the contours of an environmental ethnography of the body at the borders. It is a perspective that, moving from a focus on the reconceptualizations offered by recent studies on these issues, is based on the idea that analyzing the environmental crisis and its bodily dimensions from the perspective of borders emerges as an effective revealer of issues that go far beyond what is at stake in the border areas themselves. This article describes this approach through a dual perspective: on the one hand, a state of the art in anthropological and social science studies about these issues; and, on the other, a programmatic reflection for an ongoing research program.

Corpi in fuga tra pratiche di accoglienza, questioni di genere e percorsi di soggettivazione

2024-07-27T06:56:36+00:00

The article introduces a monographic section on to the theme of the complex intertwining of wars, gender and health in the experience of asylum seekers and refugees, starting from some ideas that emerged in a dedicated thematic session carried out as part of the 4th National Congress of the Italian Society of Medical Anthropology (SIAM). In the text, after having underlined the importance of an anthropological analysis of contemporary wars, the author focuses, according to a critical and gender perspective, and starting from the discussion on the ethnographies that make up the monograph, on the problems, including those of health, of people fleeing war conflicts and violence, wounded in the body and traumatized, on which global welfare policies are exercised, with a specific focus on women.

Rifugio e genere: il ruolo della credibilità nella narrazione delle donne richiedenti asilo

2024-07-27T07:09:47+00:00

This research aims to critically examine the correlation between asylum and gender relations, with a focus on the crucial role of credibility in asylum seekers’ narratives, concentrating the analysis on a feminist and gender anthropological perspective. In addition to the forms of persecution recognised by the 1951 Geneva Convention, women seeking asylum often face specific gender-based violence, including forced marriages, rape used as a weapon of war, and female genital mutilation. The complexity of expressing such traumatic experiences is intrinsic to the difficulty of retrieving memories in a coherent and orderly manner, a challenge further accentuated when this recollection occurs in a cultural and symbolic context foreign to one’s own.
Women asylum seekers are frequently unable to provide material evidence to justify their well-founded fear of persecution based on gender. Consequently, credibility emerges as the main criterion through which international protection can be obtained, constituting the only means to validate their experiences of persecution. Starting from fieldwork carried out in Madrid (Spain) between 2015 and 2023, the results of ethnographic analysis of the relevance of credibility in the possibilities of accessing or not international protection from a feminist perspective are presented.

“Corpi indocili”, “storie eccedenti”

2024-07-27T07:29:56+00:00

The proposed analysis thoroughly explores the experiences of violence endured by women seeking asylum and refugees within the asylum system, focusing particularly on their interactions with the institutional actors responsible for their care and management. Through a detailed examination of a specific case study, the objective is to scrutinize the perpetuation of violence in arrival contexts, shedding light on the mechanisms of body governance, control, and acculturation practices utilized in these settings. These mechanisms perpetuate a preconceived, genderized, and racialized notion of the “true female refugee,” consistently portraying them as foreign, victimized, passive, and lacking agency. This reinforces narratives that emphasize their perceived need for rescue and protection. Furthermore, the study seeks to elucidate how women asylum seekers and refugees resist such violence by reclaiming agency and asserting their own narratives, bodies, and identities, thereby revealing distinct forms of resistance.

Percorsi di salute, maternità e agency fra rifugiate e richiedenti asilo somale a Napoli

2024-07-27T07:39:55+00:00

Starting from a research carried out amongst the female Somali asylum seekers and refugees in Naples, this article intends to reflect on the repercussions of traumatic and violent events connected with the civil war and - more recently - to Islamic terrorist groups on the life, health and motherhood paths of female migrants. Both the interviews and the life stories we have gathered have shown how such paths may be strongly affected by Somalia’s social and civil instability. In the case of Italy, we will also focus on the cure and agency trajectories allowing women to rebuild their lives, especially concerning gender and migratory networks, as well as by the opportunities and projects offered by the areas such women arrive in. Our field research has started in 2016 and is still ongoing. It envisions both participant observation and interviews. Such activities have involved the female Somali refugees and asylum seekers, as well as privileged informants, such as the social workers participating in area-based projects and female intercultural mediators.

Rifugiati ucraini a Napoli

2024-07-27T07:46:44+00:00

Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine triggered the largest exodus of refugees Europe has ever witnessed since the Second World War. The first part of this paper will examine the significant changes in the European refugee reception policies, with special emphasis on the implementation of Directive No. 55 of 2001 on temporary protection. The second part will instead revolve around the Ukrainian community resident in Naples and its contribution towards all the many compatriots who had escaped the conflict. The accounts of those who acted as cultural mediators during the contingency phase shall shed light on the challenges facing refugees’ wellbeing and their access to the national healthcare system.

Indigesto

2024-07-27T07:57:23+00:00

The article proposes a reflection on the production mechanisms of migrant subjectivity within the Italian reception and integration system and network. It begins with the words of a Gambian asylum seeker, a beneficiary of the system, as a starting point for an ethnographic study. The aim is to connect the experience of the individual with a complex and shape-shifting socionormative framework. By interweaving a multitude of interpretative dimensions, including health, biopolitical, and the role of public narrative and stereotypical representations, this epistemological reflection enables us to consider the diverse pathways to integration. The combination of these hermeneutic lenses provides an ethnography that considers a testimony, a depository of truth guaranteed by the anthropological discipline itself, as it is a public and militant science profoundly engaged in social action. This approach underscores the importance of understanding the intersectional impacts of health, biopolitics, and media on the lived experiences of migrants within the Italian integration context.

Galvanizing Nostalgia?

2024-07-27T08:12:53+00:00

Riprendersi la vita

2024-07-27T08:17:32+00:00