Paper short abstract:

By a “multi sited” fieldwork in Northeast Italy and Senegal, this proposal aims to explore gendered practices, tactics and “sojourn strategies” (Engbersen, 1999) of Senegalese undocumented or irregular migrants who are living or have been living in Italy.

Paper long abstract:

The data used in this paper have been gathered through an ethnography, carried out mostly in Padoua (Italy) and Dakar (Senegal), dealing with the experiences of Senegalese men who are at risk of repatriation and the ones which have been repatriated. Those two locations allowing us to consider different positioning with respect to the European system of governance of migration.

Through a participant observation in Padoua and through in-depth interviews in Senegal, we sought to grasp which kinds of solidarity links, moral economies, gender representations are at stake in the efforts to gain the stay in Italy.

Moreover, the fact of collecting both the voices of the ones which are "risking", and the ones which stopped to do it because they have been "caught", let us gain a more complex understanding of the irregular migrants being-in-the-world. First of all because it gives us the opportunity to historicize the tactics and the resistances in relation to the mutations in European governmentalities. But also because it allows us to perceive more in depth which kind of social sufferings are endured in being irregular migrants in Europe. In attempting to account for irregular migrants' agencies, we should also take into consideration the gazes of the one "left home" (in Senegal) which structure migrants practices. Gazes which increase their moral weight when is the risk of deportation which is faced.