Paper short abstract:

Melilla is a place of transit migration and a frontier between Africa and Europe. Through the lens of social science and visual I am studying life and construction of identities of immigrants living in the CETI (Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes) of the city waiting for their “ticket” to Europe.

Paper long abstract:

Melilla is a Spanish enclave situated in the North of Africa divided from Morocco by a huge fence and from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea. The city is a door to Europe for the thousands of immigrants arriving from Africa. It is a place of transit migration and an obligated stop, a frontier and a Limbo, a "no man's land" where to exclude and lodge in the Centre for immigrants the thousands of people that reach the city every year. The research I am developing in the city tries to build, through the lens of Social Sciences and the instruments of ethnographic narratives and interviews, the life history of some of the immigrants blocked in the C.E.T.I. (Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes) of Melilla. In the study I consider some aspects of this life on the fringe as the recasting of social lives, religiosity, rituality and different relations between groups and how they rebuild their life in this Limbo where they are waiting, most of the time lasting years, their "ticket" to Europe or, more probably their expulsion. The city represents a trap for immigrants in the terms that they are forced to stay without the possibility to move forward (to Europe) or backwards (to their home country). Finally I am using arts and visual especially through interviews, but also to give instruments to the immigrants to enable them to write their own ethnography through the instrument of visual.