Paper short abstract:

This project examines irregular sub-Saharan migration to Europe with a focus on the experience of arrival. Through a transnational lens, displacement and masculinity is explored illuminating a turbulent political landscape in the host country and controlling expectations from sending country.

Paper long abstract:

Sub Saharan asylum-seeking migrant men are often in conflict with dominant discourses and public expectations to their motives for migrating to Europe. This means they have to position themselves according to fixed terms such as genuine refugee vs. the opportunistic economic migrant as well as dealing with homeland expectations to his role as a man. With a point of departure in fieldwork among 'illegal' West-African (Gambian) migrants in Europe (Italy), this project explores masculinity, contemporary migration-experiences and its interplay with displacement. More specifically, it will trace the intersecting power relations in multifaceted locations within their migratory experience and how it influences and challenge the presentation and perceptions of their masculinities. With a transnational approach, I study migration desires embedded in masculine social expectations that are more complex than classical push-pull theories.

Through life story interviews, the narration of masculinity is interpreted and focus is on how it plays a part in their (re)positioning and decision making while waiting for an asylum in Europe. Their migration narratives are analyzed in retrospect to their hazardous journeys over the Mediterranean however, while still in a state of precarity on the threshold between arrival and desired approved entrance in Europe. With masculinity as a key theoretical framework, I aim to give new insights to contemporary migration to Europe in a time where the movement of young men from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe has increased despite their "global immobility". Understanding gender as a critical dimension to migration research will build new insight to migration motives.