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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the relationship of Nepalese women refugees (arrived via the Balkan route) with the Trieste woodlands. In spite of life-threatening experiences in the highly securitized forests along the route, such relationship is life-affirming and integral to their home-making practices

Paper long abstract

This paper presents research conducted with Nepalese women refugees in the Italian border city of Trieste, a mid-sized city in the north-east of Italy. The research coproducers arrived in Trieste via the northern section of the so-called Balkan route: most of the route, including the very last section to Trieste, is traveled on foot through expansive forests, in what is a high risk attempt at reaching Western Europe. The Balkan forests are in fact a heavily securitized and militarized landscape, a diffused, multi-state border device, where the forest morphology and ecosystem are themselves weaponized. The woodland that encloses the city of Trieste lies at the westernmost extremity of the Balkan route.

This paper explores the research coproducers’ engagement with the forest in Trieste, including the urban and the peri-urban woodlands. It focuses on how their regular enjoyment of the forest helps develop their affinity with the city as well as their sense of place, and contributes to their home-making practices. This largely positive relationship with the forest in Trieste (mediated through their specific sociocultural life-worlds, including folk Nepalese beliefs and religious cosmologies) subverts a series of Eurocentric polarizations such as urban/wild, city/nature, human/more-than-human, as well as expectations around trauma and healing, representations of displacement and home, and understandings of security as defence instead of care. The theoretical framework (developed using grounded theory to center the research coproducers insights and experiences) combines, among others, Karen Barad’s new materialism with Erin Manning’s sensing body in movement and Doreen Massey concept of throwntogetherness.