Paper short abstract:

This paper is the result of a combination of an experience in participative social research and an experiment in documentary photography. It will focuses on a group of "Dublinated" refugee seekers living in a refugee centre near Varese.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is the result of a combination of an experience in participative social research and an experiment in documentary photography. It will focuses on a group of refugee seekers living in a refugee centre in the province of Varese (Italy) that seeks to shed light on European laws on asylum. It will analyses the communitarian regulation that forces refugee seekers to return to the first European country in which they enter to ask for protection and wait for bureaucracy to take its course - effectively deporting them. The paper will report the life stories of five refugees, complemented with photographic works. The visual component shirks sensationalism, instead using the still life technique: presenting objects chosen by the refugee seekers themselves to represent the things they brought with them during their journeys to Europe.