"The first three-month period was dedicated to preparing the ground for developing the project, in particular the empirical research. A review of the literature related to the project (border studies, migration and refugees’ studies) was conducted in parallel with the analysis of asylum and migration law at the EU and the national level (Italy, French and Austria), on the one side, and the agreements for cross-border cooperation in force at the French/Italian and Austrian/Italian borders, on the other.
After this preliminary phase, fieldwork research has been carried out between July 2018 and January 2019 in three aforementioned cross-border locations, two at the French/Italian border and one at the Austrian/Italian border. Fieldwork has been carried out between July and November 2018 at the French/Italian border (three months in the Marittime Alps, two months in the Hautes Alps) and between December 2018 and January 2019 at the Austro/Italian border. Four main categories of social actors have been involved in the research: 1) migrants, 2) residents of border areas, 3) local administrators and 3) border police officers.
Data recollected (recorded interviews and field notes) have been analysed between February and June 2019, in parallel with dissemination activities that extended until the end of the fellowship.
Communication activities (creation and continuous update of a research blog including audiovisual contents, creation and continuous update of a Facebook page) have been conducted throughout the whole duration of the project.
The main results achieved sheds light on emerging social and political dynamics at the intra-EU level:
1) States sovereignty practices though borderwork.
Results: Vergnano, C. (forthcoming) “Desired freight and undesired migrants. Security and market forces at internal EU borders”, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.
2) Processes of criminalization of solidarity (and, more broadly, criminalization of border-crossing facilitation practices).
Published results: Vergnano, C. (2020) “Why take such a risk? Beyond profit: motivations of border-crossing facilitators between France and Italy”, Social Anthropology (doi: 10.1111/1469-8676.12918) and Vergnano, C. (forthcoming) “From affects to contentious politics: disruptive encounters with migrants along a transalpine route”, Journal of Alpine Geography
3) The dialectic relation between the evolution of techniques of control, on the one side, and migrants´ agency, on the other
Results: Amigoni L., S. Aru, I. Bonin, G. Proglio and C. Vergnano (eds.) (2021) ""Debordering Europe. Migration and controls across the Ventimiglia region"", Palgrave MacMillan."
