Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the attitudes of Poles in the UK towards the EU Settlement Status, which range from compliance to resistance. We argue that the discourse of deservingness and normalization of future illegality point to how precarious 'EU citizens' get re-classified and adopt new identities.

Paper long abstract:

With Brexit, the United Kingdom will abandon the principle of the EU freedom of movement and newly established migration policies will expand the grounds for deportation. The EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) requires the EU citizens to apply for a new migration status. The Polish citizens (the biggest group of foreigners in the UK) have been the most numerous to apply in the EUSS but also, proportionally, the most reluctant group to do so. The topic of this paper is the attitude of Poles towards Brexit-related bordering. The paper draws upon 30 qualitative in-depth interviews conducted within the Horizon 2020 research project "Brexit and Deportations" (BRAD) in West Midlands, the region with the highest pro-Leave vote in the 2016 Referendum. The attitudes range from compliance to resistance. Some of those who comply declare they felt relief upon Home Office acknowledging their rights, something they missed under the EU Freedom of Movement. The interviewees who resign from applying often want to conceal their criminal record, as it could render them deportable. Both groups come up with a new narrative that rationalizes their presence in the UK as a valuable labour force which produces boundaries between a fiscal contributor and a burden. On the other hand, resistance towards the new borders of Britain come together with normalization of future illegality, that makes a reference to the undocumented status of Polish migrants before the 2004 EU Enlargement. The paper concludes that the symbolic violence easily re-classifies precarious 'EU citizens' as 'migrant workers' or 'illegals'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyse emerging bordering practices in two European settings: Catalonia and Denmark. The main purpose of this comparison is to shed light upon the tendency amongst EU member states to openly criminalise marginal social activities to deter and detain certain migrant groups.

Paper long abstract:

European politics is at a turning point. Faced with increasing migration, extremism, transnational crimes, and a variety of other ostensible external security threats, most European countries have recently taken new and alternative steps to police and secure internal borders.

Criminal law and justice are increasingly replacing border checks as a primary present-day technology of inclusion/exclusion. A vivid yet under-researched example of this appears in new laws passed around Europe, where nation-states are openly criminalising various marginal social activities to deter and detain certain migrant groups. These both constitute situational and particular practices of control and social ordering of the 'unknown' or 'undesired' subjects which operate at different local scales, be that in the form of unauthorised urban vendors, homeless or others who live on and off the streets.

Such new, petty, yet very consequent bordering practices - i.e. measures taken by state institutions to attain social order and gain legitimacy by demarcating categories of people to incorporate some and exclude others - have social and political consequences that go far beyond the intended ones.

More concretely, in this paper aims to understand how social boundaries are being constituted and enforced through the socio-cultural and political use of crime and criminalisation in two European metropolises: Barcelona (Spain) and Copenhagen (Denmark). Cities which now are at the avant-garde in terms of bordering practices, and yet have crucially different traditions of State-citizen relations and social policies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the effects of the internal bordering processes of European mobility regimes on illegalized migrants and their daily forms of resistance. It discusses how precarious legal status impact the strategies and the imaginaries of an illegalized population from sub-Saharan Africa

Paper long abstract:

European Union proceeds to a selection of nationals from only certain countries or benefiting of some specific skills by facilitating their access to the mobility across Europe. This bordering processes represent a hierarchical sorting creating an uneven access to mobility rather than actual hermetic borders. Therefore, the existence of an illegalized population, able to live and work for a more or less long duration, is a stable and structural pattern of contemporary Nation-States and not, as some argue, an anomaly or the proof of the inefficiencies of the migratory policies. Nation-states try to regulate such "irregular mobility" by denying accesses to public services, labor and housing market. I focus on how impoverished and racialized migrants from sub-Saharan Africa bypass those internal apparatuses. Drawing from the trajectories of illegalized migrants, I use biographical analysis and participant observations of a squatting mobilization to explore the evolution of their projects and their (trans)local anchors despite the spatial and social exclusion they face. In this paper, I examine the local layer of a Swiss city in order to grasp the strategies of illegalized migrants to negotiate police controls, move in public spaces and find alternative dwelling places. Thus, it offers an analysis of how precarious migrants achieve or not to navigate and appropriate European mobility regimes' constraints which try to narrow their movements.

Paper short abstract:

How local bureaucrats influence the bordering process within cities? How their intervention keep people "in but out" in a permanent sense of temporality and insecurity that alienates them?

Paper long abstract:

We intend to identify how local bureaucrats influence the bordering process within cities in order to remove unwanted EU citizens, Barcelona case.

In the case of precarious Roma citizens from Romania, they can live in the same city for more than six years, but without having access to basic rights. At the same time, social programs promoted by the municipality and NGOs target them in order to have access to services and at the same time control them. Which is the role of the ordinary social worker in maintaining-contesting this daily exclusion?

Nevertheless, the access to rights is determined (or denied) by going through a "merit-based corridor" designed by the local bureaucrats according to "values and duties" which translate to validation. Access to rights is transformed in an arbitrary selection process managed by social workers who impose the fulfilment of a "labour plan", an evaluation process which splits the citizens between those who deserve to use their rights and those who do not. Arbitrariness derived from the legislative hassle can be accentuated by the willingness and interpretation of the local bureaucrats who decide who will get "in" and who will be punished remaining outside. The constant surveillance, the bureaucratic timing and the lack of access to resources combined with delayed interventions result in long periods of instability and uncertainty. The permanent sense of temporality and insecurity alienates people. This "in but out" situation keeps people in a permanent movement between Spain and Romania (or other different countries).

Paper short abstract:

This paper focusses on the situation of undocumented, homeless refugees in Brussels, whose mobility takes place in resistance to multi-level migration policies and control mechanisms, and on NGOs supporting them. It discusses strategies and ways in which spaces of mobilities are created.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focusses on the current situation of homeless undocumented refugees in Brussels and their mobilities. Most of them have been travelling through Europe and are on their way to the UK or are looking for other ways of making their life in Europe. In Brussels this situation has led to numerous initiatives by citizens to support these refugees and set up an infrastructure for them.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study with NGOs and refugees in Brussels and Calais and looks at their situation in the context of supra-, state, and sub-state multi-level governance of the asylum system, state bordering practices, control and the paradigm of "crisis". It sheds light on the strategies and practices of the different actors and understands these as acts of citizenship. Finally, it discusses in how far NGOs, refugees and other actors cross and extend borders and boundaries and create new forms and spaces of mobilities. The concept of mobility will here be interpreted as a form of resistance to the official migration regimes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the complex shifting reality of British migrant retirees in Spain and their privileged relationship with mobility and bureaucracy can later on be affected by old age, generating situations of precariousness and social exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

Grounded on an on-going ethnographic research about the (re)construction of identities of Northern European migrant retirees living on the coasts of Spain, this paper explores the complex relationship between mobility, shifting privilege, and old age in the British migrant retiree experience. Due to the Article of Free Movement of Persons, Northern European migrants move across Spain’s borders with ease but must formalize their residency through bureaucratic measures. Be it due to lack of knowledge or general disinterest by retiree migrants and aided by a lack of enforceability by the Spanish authorities, these migrants find themselves in a legal limbo many use to their advantage when avoiding taxation and other government fees. This limbo generates a disconnect between the Spanish government and Northern European retirees, which proves to be problematic when old age intersects, leading to precarious situations and varying degrees of social exclusion. In the wake of Brexit, this legal and social limbo was made visible by the flood of appointments at local police stations and Town Halls in which British retiree migrants requested basic information on bureaucratic processes. Not only has Brexit given new meaning to borders for subjects whom moved seamlessly through them, but also when intersected with old age their reality is pushed towards situations of anxiety. Therefore, British migrants are experiencing how their relative legal invisibility and apparent impunity, in relation to their non-European counterparts, is now somewhat endangered. This paper aims to explore through the analysis of ethnographic vignettes how British retiree migrants cope with their shifting privilege, giving a glimpse into the webs of power and oppression at work in migration policies within Europe.

Paper short abstract:

This contribution aims to analyze the complex relationship between mobility and inequalities. By analyzing the Italian railway system, I focused on how the security policies related to migration have been reconfigured into those related to mobility; they are an important economical and political vector of control linked to citizenship's rights.

Paper long abstract:

Today, rail transport systems have seen important changes that have reorganized the patterns of possible movements of travelers, commuters and migrants, making evident power differentials between people on the move and between the territories themselves. This contribution starts on a case study of a railway line in north-west Italy and on an analysis of the railway system, in terms of business and policy management.

The intent of the contribution is focused on the inequalities produced in the context of mobility processes, mobility as a brutal fact (Cresswell, 2006).

Moreover, rail transport represents an important vector of control, since the mere presence of the ticket implies the possibility or not to move: it is on the one hand an economic but also a political possibility related to citizenship rights: the possibilities of movement of migrants are thus limited because they are related to the processes of identification and expulsion.

This theme, together with the "racialization of control", has led to a progressive security of the mobility apparatus and to the encouragement of security policies in the government of railway movements. Thus, on the one hand we see the integration of a "single" European network, by High Speed railways, on the other hand, a progressive exclusion of "marginal travelers", migrants, poor, indecorous.

The study of migration, as well as of "social exclusion", must therefore go through not only an analysis of long-range mobility but also the daily one, this brings anthropology towards new disciplinary relations involving new linguistic and theoretical approach.

Paper short abstract:

hrough observation and participation in informal solidarity platforms of different scales I look at the intersubjective reciprocity schemes created between informal helpers, asylum seekers and host communities that support asylum seekers and refugees in Europe; and I propose an analysis of the ethical positionings that they claim.

Paper long abstract:

The so-called refugee crisis in Europe has been generating political narratives where mobilities from the Global South are reduced to stereotypical images of “asylum seekers”, “refugees” and "illegal migrants", distinguished from the cosmopolitan “expatriates” or “global citizens”. Some of the people on the move are perceived first and foremost for their "transgression", and therefore regulations and policies that are created to condition their mobility become acceptable. At the same time, European countries attempt to preserve an image of strong moral values, protection of human rights and generosity towards those who find themselves in situations of “forced migration”.

To respond to the ambiguities in policies and discourse, "classic" humanitarian and philanthropic practices have been reinvented by new "independent" initiatives of informal solidarity. Engaged citizens have been creating new solidarity practices that address the hostility towards asylum seekers by countering it with care and civil resistance. The motivations for this activism can vary and change with time and experience. Activists identify selfish personal interests (such as experience, visibility and political status) but also altruistic and naïve motives. In my ethnographic work I observe how expectations interweave with the complex human relationships that are established, resulting in a nuanced intersubjective process of reciprocity driven by complex moral and ethical negotiations. Human relationships are invested of strong emotional, moral and political meanings that are produced under the guise of solidarity. These spaces of meaning can help us understand the underlying political communities, where governance is contested, and mobility is imagined beyond the restrictions imposed by the States.