Paper short abstract:

By ‘zooming in’ on micro experiences of divergent temporalities, this paper analyses the psychic life of the European asylum system and the long-term products of bordering practices. The paper considers mental ‘disorders’ as a way to explore the ambiguities of citizenship projects.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists have largely problematized mainstream narratives on the current European migration crisis, especially with regard to the proliferation of 'bordering' practices aimed at governing mobility. Yet, movement control is not limited to spatial dimensions. Borders draw both spaces of marginality and fragmented temporal trajectories, in which time becomes suspended, interrupted, or accelerated. Moreover, bordering practices act at different levels, from macro migration policies, to national projects of citizenship, to micro acts, and consequences, of control. By 'zooming in' on those micro experiences of divergent temporalities, this paper analyses the psychic life of the European asylum system and the long-term products of the related citizenship categories and trajectories. Drawing on Foucault's work about the historicization of non-sense, and de Martino's analysis of psychopathological facts as ethnographic documents, the paper considers mental 'disorders' as a way to explore ordering practices. Through an ethnographic exploration of mental distress among refugees in Italy, the paper looks at embodied relations between migrants and state, investigating the work, and the ambiguities in particular, of citizenship projects. Focusing on disruptions and other fractures resisting language, the aim is to put into dialogue idiosyncratic and collective experiences of liminality, thus asking: What are the psychic products of bordering categories, procedures and regulations? And as historical events, what can those products tell about the marginal spaces they inhabit - and are inhabited by?