Paper short abstract:

My presentation analyzes different articulations and representations of the “desire of elsewhere”, focusing on different migration experiences I have been encountering when conducting fieldwork in different parts of Transylvania/Romania.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation analyzes different articulations and representations of the "desire of elsewhere", focusing on different migration experiences I have been encountering when conducting fieldwork in different parts of Transylvania/Romania. Approaching life histories and semi structured interviews, I intend to explore different migration experiences as expressions of a "global form of life". In the last years, I conducted fieldwork in different Transylvanian settlements, both rural and urban (Nimăieşti, Fiziş, Feldru, Cluj) recording, archiving and interpreting different narratives of migration to Spain, Italy, France and United Kingdom. My paper aims to focus on both the recurrent issues and specificities, present in the interviews; the interlocutors motivations of their wish to leave and to return for a while, to move, to settle and to act sometimes as bridge persons. My intention is also to approach critically the concept of "regular" migration, having enough empirical evidence to demonstrate that, mostly, specific, peculiar, "irregular" motivations, experiences and consequences are in and behind these migration histories. Associated to these, fluidity, mobility, fragmentary lives, ruptures, displacements, new dynamics space/time- are key concepts and perspectives of great help in my effort to find an appropriate theoretical framework of the research. I am going to put these "new forms of nomadism" in the current macro context, in the very recent globalization dynamics, considering also the impact of recent EU policies on vivid migration phenomena.