d523bf42-5b3f-42d3-b2ab-5dbd6d8a50c420260426152855Depositor Namedepositor_email@address.comRUA Metadata ExporterMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28The Migration of Eritreans to EuropeTens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.“Milena Belloni’s engrossing ethnography—carried out across time, space, and place— is particularly commendable because of her scholarly commitment to ‘getting things right.’ The Eritrean women and men whose lives provided its empirical ground will see their pain, joy, and contradictions reflected back at them. This is scholar activism at its finest.” LAURA BISAILLON, Professor of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough“The Big Gamble is a study of a migrant group that has received very little scholarly attention. Its focus on the Eritrea to Europe corridor is a novel approach, and Milena Belloni has produced a compelling and courageous account.” PETER KIVISTO, Augustana College and University of Helsinki“A monumental and perceptive story of migration, taking the reader on a journey not just from Africa to Europe but through reflections on moralities, risk, and trust that are central to contemporary mobility and immobility. Belloni’s account of Eritrean migration experiences is powered by formidable fieldwork and written with warmth and wisdom.” JØRGEN CARLING, Peace Research Institute OsloMILENA BELLONI is a sociologist at the University of Trento. Her doctoral research on Eritrean migration received the 2016 IMISCOE Award. Belloni has published in the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.“Milena Belloni’s engrossing ethnography—carried out across time, space, and place— is particularly commendable because of her scholarly commitment to ‘getting things right.’ The Eritrean women and men whose lives provided its empirical ground will see their pain, joy, and contradictions reflected back at them. This is scholar activism at its finest.” LAURA BISAILLON, Professor of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough“The Big Gamble is a study of a migrant group that has received very little scholarly attention. Its focus on the Eritrea to Europe corridor is a novel approach, and Milena Belloni has produced a compelling and courageous account.” PETER KIVISTO, Augustana College and University of Helsinki“A monumental and perceptive story of migration, taking the reader on a journey not just from Africa to Europe but through reflections on moralities, risk, and trust that are central to contemporary mobility and immobility. Belloni’s account of Eritrean migration experiences is powered by formidable fieldwork and written with warmth and wisdom.” JØRGEN CARLING, Peace Research Institute OsloMILENA BELLONI is a sociologist at the University of Trento. Her doctoral research on Eritrean migration received the 2016 IMISCOE Award. Belloni has published in the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.12172019978-0-520-29870-5978-0-520-97075-5978-0-520-97075-5978-0-520-97075-5University of California PressCaliforniahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/10.1525/luminos.82https://www.luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1525/luminos.82https://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/208d8c5d-eebb-410b-8731-6b6c4558d963.pdfhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/208d8c5d-eebb-410b-8731-6b6c4558d963.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28The introduction revisits the debate of refugee and forced migration. It suggests to move beyond current categories, such as refugees and forced migrants, to untangle how mobility and immobility are produced and reproduced along the journey. This means acknowledging the possibility of refugees to choose and its political implications. The introduction argues that not only access to socio-economic resources, but also imagination, morality and emotion are crucial elements to understand the complex trajectories of those who seek asylum in Europe today. It presents the relevance of the Eritrean case in the debate about protracted crisis, long-term displacement and refugees’ migration to Europe. It introduces two of the main notions developed in the book: the one of gamble and the one of cosmologies of destinations. The introduction provides an overview of the multi-sited fieldwork research –the ethnography of a corridor – as well as a summary of the whole book.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.ahttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.ahttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/13cef2ae-d4f0-4eaa-ad61-af2c84885182.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28Chapter 1 investigates the aspirations of young men and women, trapped in the hardships of the national service in contemporary Eritrea. Drawing from ethnographic research in urban and rural areas, the chapter illustrates how, within a context of chronic crisis, emigration, even in its most dangerous and tragic aspects, has become normalized. Many Eritrean youth and their families, tend to perceive migration at all cost as the only alternative to a life “without future”. While investigating the daily struggle of young men and women to evade from the social, generational and geographic immobility, this chapter accounts for the importance of aspirations and imaginaries to understand young Eritreans’ desire to move elsewhere. By elaborating on the concept of cosmologies of destinations, this chapter describes widespread hierarchies of preferred destinations ordered along the perceived possibilities to achieve freedom, stability and self-realization there.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.bhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.bhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/8706ed47-890b-407f-909e-e530b46bf53e.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28Based on participant observation in Ethiopian camps, Addis Ababa and Khartoum, chapter 2 illustrates why most Eritrean refugees are determined to move onwards. Eritreans face several challenges in their first safe countries of asylum, ranging from their limited freedom of mobility outside camps, to the lack of opportunities in local labor markets. However, their desire to move onwards does not only emerge from this disadvantaged socio-economic context. Collectively shared and transnationally diffused sets of memories, norms and images also define Ethiopia and Sudan as undesirable destinations. While describing how the desire for migration is continuously reproduced in camps and shared accommodations in cities, the chapter accounts for the matrix of socio-economic and cultural conditions which stratify the possibilities, as well as the aspirations for geographic mobility. Although most refugees were stuck in spite of their will to move onwards, some chose to stay put, while awaiting their eventual return.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.chttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.chttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/15001310-34e4-4479-b701-0ce7be293244.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28Chapter 3 investigates the reasons why many Eritrean refugees try to move northwards from Italy in spite of significant policy obstacles. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with refugees in Rome, Milan and Genoa as well as with their families in Eritrea, this chapter shows the role of family expectations, peer pressures and individual aspirations in Eritreans’ repeated attempts to seek asylum in Northern European countries. While describing the material world and daily lives of Eritreans living in buildings irregularly occupied in Rome, pre-existing orientations to further mobility are reinforced and kept alive within a context of substantive deprivation and marginality. It is argued that refugees’ decision making has to be studied in a larger transnational frame which includes families back home, as well as relatives and friends in Northern Europe.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.dhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.dhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/192ce82e-13db-4b67-b452-ecb83fe5bdae.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28Chapter 4 investigates emic moralities underpinning unauthorized and semi-authorized migration practices such as irregular border crossings and transnational marriages. While exploring the moral and political claims behind border crossing, this chapter provides alternative insights into the above migration practices. Usually depicted as sites of oppression by the public debate, they are instead perceived by the main protagonists as legitimate ways to attain freedom. Building on refugees’ narratives and on ethnographic research with two smugglers in Ethiopia and in Sudan, the chapter describes the complex world of the professionals of irregular migration and the moral and social embeddedness of their business in the same refugees’ communities. Then, the chapter illustrates the bundle of affection, economic interest and mobility desires among refugees’ transnational couples. Partly emerging from the reproduction of traditional marital arrangements and partly from business occasions, transnational marriages are mostly perceived as legitimate mechanisms to help co-nationals pursue further mobility.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.ehttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.ehttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/6ba8139d-06fd-4e8e-85cd-3cc7e537867c.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28Chapter 5 brings together the findings and observations made in the previous chapters to develop an analytical framework of Eritrean refugees’ mobility. By borrowing the concept of entrapment from gambling studies, this chapter shows that in Eritreans’ migratory decisions, as a sequential process, each stage is marked by a cumulative set of psychological and social pressures to make a further move, even at the price of risking everything again. In fact, every stage makes interrupting the journey more difficult for both structural and symbolic reasons. The concept of entrapment can not only help understanding what immobility means from a cognitive point of view, but can also advance the analysis of high-risk stepwise migration. This analytical framework promises to feed into a more refined understanding of the motivations of high-risk migrants that have, until now, been studied without the sequential nature of their movements being considered.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.fhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.fhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/f8fa491b-8712-42ef-8a4c-c3235a0bfe61.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28The conclusions outline the relevance of the research findings for the general debate on refugee and forced migration studies. It first highlights the importance of moral, imaginative and social aspects in the analysis of refugee movements especially from areas of protracted crisis. In particular, it points out the role of transnational networks to provide not only the economic support, but also to strengthen the imaginaries and moral imperatives related to migration. Second, the conclusions stresses that normative aspects of unauthorized migration, in particular the unwritten moralities that underpin it are key to understand border crossings. Then, it show the relevance of looking at high-risk migration as a cumulative process which progressively entraps migrants into betting more and more on migration at all cost. Finally, it elaborates on the dialectic relation between mobility and immobility and its manifold meanings across the different stages of the migration process.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.ghttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.ghttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/198fe14a-61be-4dcc-ad01-fcdf1b183c29.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x281217201910.1525/luminos.82.hhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.hhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/2124c0a0-8430-469f-ad2f-f9398ab76252.pdfMilenaBelloniUniversity of Trentohttps://ror.org/05trd4x28The methodological note revisits the main challenges of doing research with refugees. This chapter reflects on the difficulties in gaining access to refugees and their living environment, in building mutual trust as well as in managing expectations emerging from complex and unbalanced fieldwork relationships. Drawing from field experiences, the chapter elaborates on researcher’s positionality in terms of gender, age and sexuality. It narrates significant episodes of conducting covert research in an illiberal political environment, avoiding authorities’ scrutiny in refugee camps and deconstructing refugees’ self-representations. Then, the notes discusses ethical issues concerning the researcher’s accountability towards his\her informants as well as the moral and political role of research in the larger debate on asylum.1217201910.1525/luminos.82.ihttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.82.ihttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/94/files/81ca5a02-e36e-4e95-98df-d7606c2ac8af.pdf