Descrizione del progetto
Tracciare la migrazione informale lungo la rotta dei Balcani
Migliaia di migranti, la maggior parte dei quali proveniente da Siria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan e Africa settentrionale, viaggia ogni anno lungo la cosiddetta rotta dei Balcani. Considerata il principale corridoio di migrazione via terra in Europa, questa rotta è costituita da una complessa geografia di siti formali e informali, nonché visibili e «invisibili», a sostegno del «gioco» (in inglese The Game), termine con cui i migranti si riferiscono ai loro viaggi irregolari all’interno di questa regione. Lungo la rotta dei Balcani è emerso un arcipelago di campi improvvisati, che fungono da rifugi temporanei e luoghi in cui i migranti si incontrano, riposano e programmano le seguenti fasi del percorso. Il progetto TheGAME, finanziato dal CER, esplorerà le realtà politiche e sociali di questi accampamenti di fortuna considerandoli come formazioni geografiche interconnesse che danno origine a un corridoio, essenziali per le molteplici esperienze vissute dai migranti nella rotta dei Balcani.
Obiettivo
The Balkan Route is the most important overland informal migration corridor in Europe, taken by thousands of refugees every year. Linking Greece to Western Europe across Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Croatia, the Route is a complex geography of formal and informal, visible and ‘invisible’ sites; an assemblage of diverse actors, camps, borders, violence, solidarity, and a multiplicity of micro-routes, constantly adapting and shifting. Across and between these interconnected spatialities, refugees forge their trajectories towards Europe through ‘The Game,’ the term they use to refer to clandestine journeys. Along the Route, an archipelago of makeshift camps has emerged, hosting thousands of refugees as they repeatedly attempt to enter Europe. Key in producing and sustaining The Game, these sites serve as temporary shelters, nodes of services and information, where refugees meet smugglers, wait, and plan the next move. To understand how informal migration corridors work TheGAME aims to: (1) theorize makeshift camps as distinct spatialities with a unique social and political life; (2) investigate the Route’s archipelago of makeshift camp as an inter-connected, corridor-forming counter-geography; (3) produce an archive-in-progress documenting refugee experiences of a corridor endlessly re-invented across space and time; (4) employ counter-mapping as a methodology capable of critically understanding how the Balkan Route functions and propose a novel and replicable approach to studying informal migration corridors globally. TheGAME is the first transnational, multi-sited, multi-temporal, extensive ethnographic research on an entire informal migration corridor, a ground-breaking project with the potential to disrupt how we understand refugee informal mobilities and camps, generate cutting-edge academic work and shape new directions for Camp Studies and Political Geography.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Istituzione ospitante
40126 Bologna
Italia