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Abstract
Known officially as MSNA (minori stranieri non accompagnati), over 80,000 unaccompanied foreign minors entered Italy from 2014 to 2020. This number includes all who plausibly—based upon appearance—claim to be under 18 years old. Under National Law 176/1991 and then National Law 47/2017, Italy must accommodate MSNA within the territory and provide them with state care. Italy must serve their ‘best interests.’ Many migrants, therefore, present falsely young ages at the Mediterranean border. They achieve what so many others cannot, entry into the European Union.
The despair flooding many MSNA migrant centers initially struck me as a conundrum. Sicily ceremoniously welcomes young migrants amid ongoing border carnage. Politicians pose with young asylum-seekers, smiling for reporters, as these migrants disembark at Sicilian ports. “Integrate! Be Italian,” migrant center staff exhort migrants. Despite myriad legal protections, migrants repeatedly told me that Black people could not establish lives in Italy. Young migrants came to such understandings while living in youth migrant centers, spaces where migrants and staff theoretically undertook integration with joy and enthusiasm. In these centers worked Italians least likely to espouse racist or anti-migrant views and who commonly held deep hope for the possibility of young Africans to become future Italians. MSNA arguably receive more state care than any other migrants in Italy but exude incredible despondence and frustration, especially concerning issues of race and racism. How, I asked, do young migrants derive and act upon such forceful understandings of Blackness?
This research unfolded in the city of Catania in eastern Sicily. I cultivated relationships with migrants, migrant center staff, social services, and activists for two summers (2015 and 2016) before initiating my twelve months of fieldwork in the summer of 2017. I selected Catania for three crucial reasons. First, Catania holds a port of migrant disembarkation. This means I could observe the processes of migrant care from the moment that migrants arrive in Italy. Second, as a major port city in Sicily, Catania holds a high concentration of youth migrant centers, at least eight at the time of my research. I focused specifically on research in three migrant centers while remaining attentive to processes and debates of migrant care and integration throughout the city. Finally, as a longstanding port of migrant disembarkation, Catania fashions itself as a diverse and welcoming city—a success story—with relatively elaborated migrant welcome services. Officials laud diversity and multiculturalism as values among local Sicilians. I thus conducted fieldwork in a city constantly and increasingly grappling with the growing presence of African migrants.
Ethnographic fieldwork unfolded in three primary locations: migrant centers, government and NGO offices, and in public spaces. Research in migrant centers, the main sites of migrant care and integration programs, allowed me interact with and observe staff and migrants. In order to better understand migrant experiences, I also volunteer-ran yoga and creative writing groups in migrant centers. To more fully grasp policy approaches, I pursued research with actors in government and NGO offices. These included members the youth court (il Tribunale per i Minorenni di Catania), city social services, law firms, The Red Cross, and Save The Children. Finally, I spent time with migrants outside of migrant centers on city streets, in shops, at parks, and on buses. In each of the spaces, I primarily deployed participant observation and interviews, while also crafting site-specific methods. I collected many legal and historical documents form government and NGO offices. I gathered a great deal of migrant writing through the creative writing groups. I will share and analyze some of this writing in chapters two and four. Finally, and central to this research, I also collected data on sights, smells, sounds, glances, and less-tangible feelings that helped comprise the rich nuances of daily life for migrants.
