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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ethical and political dilemmas of ethnographically approaching a refugees’ squat in Turin, Italy. By addressing hurdles and conundrums of engaging with such a place, the article seeks to reflect on the refusal of the “researched subject” to be domesticated for academic purposes.

Paper long abstract:

Migrants’ squats often inhabit marginal and “out of sight” urban areas, placed at the intersection of institutional neglect and radical forms of dwelling (Lancione 2019). Yet, at times, migrants’ informal settlements become highly visible places, as they can find themselves in the spotlight as symbols of governmental failure and urban decay. Drawing on some ethnographic encounters that took place at the doorstep of a refugees’ squat in Turin (Italy), this paper reflects on ethical and political dilemmas of ethnographically approaching such a place. Entering a housing squat, inhabited by documented and undocumented migrants, is nothing but obvious. This task was complicated by an intense mediatic attention - experienced as deeply violent by the squat’s residents - as well as by an imminent eviction, which entailed a heightened sense of precarity and suspicion. Squat’s residents’ search for invisibility and their - more or less explicit - resistance to the “ethnographic gaze” can be interpreted as political acts, in that they attempted at re-gaining control over exogeneous narratives and representations. This scenario offers a fertile perspective to critically engage with some underlying aspects of the ethnographic encounter, such as researcher’s ambivalent affects and hesitations, the complex responsibilities of the ethnographic account, as well as the very refusal of the “researched subject” to be domesticated for academic purposes.