After institutional reception: time, im-mobility and social networks in Southern Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT By examining the changes that have occurred in migration policies over the last decade, which have radically transformed the mobility trajectories of migrants, the article analyses the im-mobility produced by these policies through existential, spatial and temporal perspectives. Going deep into two ethnographic settings in Calabria (Southern Italy), one rural and one urban, the article investigates how people involved in the process of going through the reception system can enhance their aspirations, hopes and desires in the attempt to find greater existential, work and housing stability. Together with the initiatives of local groups and social networks, the ‘“capacity to aspire’” of individuals is, in fact, the basis of the possibility to navigate the im-mobility produced by migration policies as well as to imagine and practice the future in present-times.