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Accepted Paper:
Taming the irregular mobilities: Humanitarian corridors as circuits of movement
Pasquale Menditto
(University of Genova)
Starting from an ethnography of the Humanitarian corridor between Lebanon and Italy, this paper intends to outline how the enchainment of different actors produce a hybrid infrastructure of migration to individuate who can move and how, according to a specific regime of circulation
Paper long abstract:
Since 2016, an assemblage of NGOs and Italian institutions has launched the “Humanitarian corridors” programme in order to construct “legal paths of migration” for subjects considered eligible for humanitarian or political protection. Initially the program was built for Syrian refugees stuck in Lebanon, waiting indefinitely in the UNHCR resettlement list, but was later expanded to other areas of irregular mobility such as Libya, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. The aim of this paper is to grasp how this migration policy is based upon a specific governmentality of circulation, intended as a techno-political software capable of shaping spaces and times through the implementation of circuits of movement. In the age of global connectivity, this social practise – far from being free and unruled – is in fact overly structured by mixed chains of state and non-state actors in order to maximise speed, efficiency and security of circulation. In this sense, the humanitarian corridor can be considered a particular circuit of movement that seeks to canalise the fluxes of irregular mobility, taming them through selection rituals and departure schedule, while they inevitably contribute to devaluate the right to move of those who are excluded from these programs. Starting from an ethnography of the humanitarian corridor between Lebanon and Italy, this paper intends to outline how the enchainment of different actors produce a hybrid infrastructure of migration to individuate who can move and how, according to a specific regime of circulation.