Paper short abstract

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Paper long abstract

Since the European Union successively closes down immigration routes, Israel has become an interesting intermediate stage for African migrants using the North-Eastern route to Europe. While their agency is strongly restricted by impecuniousness and immigration law, they have to carefully gather information on legal and illegal possibilities to stay or move and find ways to decide strategically and act creatively. International refugee agencies and national immigration authorities more often refuse than provide suitable support and future perspectives, but conditions and policies change from place to place, from country to country. Sometimes a legal procedure may indeed be wiser than subjecting oneself to an illegal smuggler's arbitrariness to reach a relatively safe status or a further stage in the migration to the First World. Such general problems and processes of strategic decision-making will be shown exemplarily in the case of migrants from Eritrea, who made it via Khartoum and Cairo to Jerusalem. Fieldwork and interviews have been done in Cairo and Jerusalem.