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Paper short abstract

This contribution intends to share reflections and ethnographic examples emerging from participatory animation used in collaboration with Egyptian migrants to explore how imaginative anticipation of places and events was crucial in (in)forming experiences of illegalised mobility across borders.

Paper long abstract

Existential immobility, using Ghassan Hage's terms, is a condition that encourages people to imagine themselves elsewhere, and in the future. Having carried out research with three Egyptian men who crossed the Mediterranean Sea illegally to reach Italy, my contribution to this roundtable intends to reflect on how the anticipation of place is (in)formed imaginatively and socially, before and during the crossing, and how it relates to the following experience of being 'in' the imagined places. The research used participatory animation as a way to explore imagination and engage research participants in a creative and collaborative research. The animated ethnographic examples I will share with the panel, explore ways in which my participants' memory and experience of moving across borders is created by the interdependent relationship between reality and the imagination of what lies beyond the horizon (Crapanzano 2014).