Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the new migration routes and re-migration strategies of Eritreans in Italy and in their homeland have been influenced not just by the European economic crisis but also by the flow of information between refugees and their families, about life styles in destination countries

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic research in Italy and Eritrea, this paper analyses how the perception of the economic crisis in Europe has changed aspirations of Eritreans in their homeland and migration strategies of Eritrean refugees in Italy. In the last ten years aspiring migrants and their families in Eritrea have redirected their life-projects to new destinations in Africa, such as Angola and Uganda, and pushed those Eritreans who have already been recognised as refugees in Italy to migrate further to Scandinavian countries. These are widely recognised as successful destinations because of objective structural advantages of the asylum system (i.e. housing facilities and benefits provided for extended periods of time) compared to the Italian one. Thus, traditional migration routes from Eritrea have changed and recognised Eritrean refugees in Italy continuously attempt to re-migrate to other European countries, even though policy restrictions such as the Dublin II regulations prevent such secondary movements of refugees within Europe. It will be argued that these migration strategies are shaped not only by structural constraints, such as the impact of the economic crisis on the Italian labour market, but also by the continuous flows of information, remittances and imageries (Koser&Pinkerton 2002; Horst 2006) among social networks of young refugees abroad and their families and friends in the homeland. These flows of information produce a "culture of migration" (Cohen 2004; Horst 2006) which sets the goals of migration, the practical ways to achieve them and significantly shapes subjectivities of aspiring migrants in Eritrea and Eritrean refugees abroad