Lampedusa in Berlin: (Im)Mobilität innerhalb des europäischen Grenzregimes

Abstract

This paper analyses the mobility practices of forced migrants within the European border regime. It investigates the relation between the control and management mechanisms of migration and the attempts of forced migrants to move freely, crisscrossing territorial and juridical borders in Europe. The paper focuses on the experiences of a group of forced migrants, who, after escaping the war in Libya, obtained humanitarian protection in Italy, but because of the current precarious socio-economic conditions in Southern Europe, decided to leave for North European countries. A group settled in Berlin, which gave rise to a protest claiming the right to stay and work against what is foreseen by European Union law. This paper draws on ethnographic work to show the tension between individual desires and practices of free mobility and the structural and juridical constraints implemented by institutions in order to control it and contain it. Focusing on this (im)mobility highlights the internal borders of Europe and how they are continuously challenged by migrant subjects. Three different kinds of mobility emerge across the European space: mobility within national territory, infranational mobility, and “commuting-mobility”. In this way, migrant subjects create new geographies and experience the whole European territory as one place: living in Berlin, renewing documents in Milan, attending education courses in Turin, and working seasonally in Sicily or Apulia. Such mobilities are supported by networks of migrants, who continuously move, and their supporters. This suggests a process of “Europeanisation from below” that continuously challenges EU internal borders.