The third research axis was developed at a slightly later stage than the first two, contextually the first fieldwork, which I carried out in Sicily between 2013 and 2014. On that occasion I had the opportunity to witness a hitherto uncommented-on phenomenon, namely a sort of "second escape" by refugees from the disembarkation spaces towards northern Europe.
It differed from what had been defined as "secondary migration" (Brekke and Brochman, 2014) since the abandonment of Italy was subsequent neither to the identification procedures nor to the recognition of international protection. In many instances, in order to present an asylum claim in other European countries, Syrian refugees would overcome the restrictions imposed by the Dublin Regulation by leaving Italy, often without even being identified, their stay in Sicily lasting between just a few hours and one week.
In June 2013, some newspapers reported that Eritrean citizens in Lampedusa were protesting with the cry of "no-fingerprints": this outcry was successful and they were given the chance to continue their journey towards northern Europe (Brigida, 2013). Over the following months, certain social networks documented a number of episodes of refusal to release fingerprints. After this, there were several reports of violent fingerprint collection by the Police authorities, but the issue was almost completely absent in any official media (Carnemolla, 2013; Tomassini, 2013). Yet, the comparison between the official data concerning seaborne arrivals (Ministry of the Interior, 2014) and the number of asylum applications submitted by Syrian citizens in 2013 (EUROSTAT, 2014) confirmed what I had been able to see for myself: that out of over 11,000 landings by Syrian refugees only 700 asylum claims were made. This meant that almost all Syrian citizens had been able to challenge the Dublin Regulation and choose the country where they wished to live.
Since this research work was developed using a comparative approach, including for this third research axis, an extension of this analytical gaze to other territorial realities was needed, realities that could equally be identified as key sites, so as to understand whether this kind of “transit” was an "Italy only" phenomenon or one common to other spaces of access to Europe. Three main research questions concerning this topic have emerged. What were the motivations that pushed those thousands of people not to stop in Italy? What was the
institutional and relational framework in which transit had taken shape? What strategies of co-operation, negotiation and conflict with other actors implicated in receiving migrants had made it possible? By what communication tools, or actions, did the refugees’ voice emerge?
And was it possible to ascribe a political content and meaning to these actions?
In light of these considerations and questions, the third research axis has been configured with the purpose of analysing the agency and voice of Syrian refugees and the strategies of cooperation, negotiation and resistance paths they put in place in order to continue their journeys and choose their own destination countries. Thus it focuses in on the mechanisms of pris de parole and the messages they express, and it questions the political meaning of certain acts, both individual and collective.
This third research axis has to be viewed within a complex and multidisciplinary theoretical framework, characterized by certain open scientific debates. Among these is the fundamental sociological debate on the interaction between individual agency and social structure during the process of transformative social change (Giddens, 1979, Bourdieu, 1972, 1976, Hay, 1995, 2001, Archer, 2003 and many more). In the present case, the hypothesis is that the refugees’ agency, of which the strategies implemented to be able to choose the country of final destination were powerful expressions, has in some cases managed to prevail over the social structures made by regulations of various levels with regard to border control and migration management, by producing social transformations.
Any reflection on refugees’ agency also has to be framed in the academic debate about what Mezzadra (2015) has defined as an "epistemic crisis", which is currently active in migration studies, namely a reduced capacity of some traditional concepts to give and account for reality. Among the most problematic definitions the author individuates the distinction between forced and voluntary migration, from which the distinction between refugees and economic migrants is also derived. Russel King (2002), in his paper “Towards a new map of European migration”, warned scholars about using definitions based on rigid dualisms, raising serious doubts about their explanatory capacity. Even among the examples gathered by this author there was the opposition between regular and irregular migration, between forced and voluntary migration.
The case of Syrian refugees moving towards and across Europe challenges both these categorizations. Firstly, because asylum seekers have been forced to become irregular migrants due to the lack of legal access routes to Europe (Castles, 2014). Secondly, both migration and transit to northern Europe are characterized by a number of voluntary aspects that are in harsh juxtaposition with aspects of the Syrian case where there is a context of undiscussed forced migration.
Finally, a reflection on refugees’ agency has to be fitted into the wider literature that presents them as victims of sovereign powers, and as subject to "structural" and
incontrovertible mechanisms of exclusion. Some examples are the concepts of wasted lives (Baumann, 2005), "homini sacer" and bare lives (Agamben 1995). In addition "grievability"
by Judith Butler (2004), is also important as it explores the mechanisms of public recognition of refugees being considered as human beings and worthy of such.
These conceptualizations give an account of what Blanchot has defined as "the government's will to close them out" (Blanchot, 1969: 292), rather than the real condition of these individuals. But how do these "discarded" people respond to this will? What type of responses, both individual and collective, do they put in place? Is it appropriate to talk about strategies of resistance? And if the answer is yes, is human mobility among them?
Refugees’ voice (pris de parole) takes place through various tools and strategies that need to be read bearing in mind the institutional, social and relational context in which they take shape. Some of them belong to the “traditional vocabulary” of social movements:
manifestations, sit-ins, hunger strikes, acts of peaceful resistance. Others have a more innovative character: they do not seem to have a clear political content, nor can they be categorized as social movements according to traditional definitions (Tilly, 1993). Bayat's reflections on everyday politics (2013) and on social non-movements could perhaps be useful in understanding such phenomena, as he proposes new interpretative categories in order to overcome the limitations imposed by traditional sociological theories concerning social movements.
Another useful conceptualization seems to be the one proposed by Isin (2008) of so-called
“acts of citizenship”; it paves the way for a wider reflection on citizenship, where the figure of refugee has already covered an important role. According to Agamben, refugees were able to "break the continuity between man and citizen" by “putting into crisis the original fiction of modern sovereignty" and "by showing the gap between birth and nation" (Agamben, 1995:
145). And it is precisely this "interrupted" continuity that this research is questioning in an attempt to shed light on the mechanisms that prevent refugees from achieving human, universal or citizenship rights and, at the other end of the scale, shed light on those mechanisms that do allow their enjoyment.
Furthermore, taking as a starting point the wide-ranging literature that analyses and conceptualizes the mechanisms of exclusion put in place by global societies at the expense of their weaker sections, reflection is required about the role that concepts such as agency and subjectivity play in these readings. In their work entitled “Escape Routes” Papadopoulos, Stephenson and Tsianos (2008), question the structuralist theories that are commonly used in migration studies by highlighting the limited perspective of those readings based on push-pull approaches and theorizing the so-called “autonomy of migration” (Papadopoulos & Tsianos, 2013). Along the same line of thought are Mezzadra’s works (2006, 2015), who, in conceptualizing the "right of escape", places at the core of his reflection the "subversive"
content of human mobility and the configuration of borders as sites of struggle. Cabrera (2010) also identifies new practices of citizenship in the emergence of two social figures:
irregular migrants and activists for migrants’ rights, who are fundamental actors in a process of global civil disobedience. These are studies that, without denying the relevance of the serious consequences of the exercise of sovereign power (no longer national, but global, and globalized), of which migration and migration regimes are expression, decide to focus on those who are usually defined as "victims" and deprived of agency and to shed light on their generally marginalized voices (Sigona, 2014).
More precisely, starting with Hirschman's theorization of "Voice, Exit and Loyalty" (1970, 1978), and in light of its re-elaboration in diaspora studies (Spivak, 1998) and in migration studies (Fargues, 2011), the third axis of this research work focuses on refugees’ voice during their migration paths to Europe and beyond, namely on their "Voice through exit" (Denaro, 2016b).