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Abstract
This paper shows how migration can be analysed through the experiences lived ‘from there to here’. Eritrean narratives and experiences of journeys reveal how a certain type of identity is consolidated through trajectories, and systems of movement, in time and space. However, once developed, the narratives of journeys to exile among Eritreans in Milan also become markers of difference. Eritreans produce and reproduce discourses that shape a collective identity, but which at the same time function to divide the community into various generations of arrival. Memories of journeys create ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of being Eritrean which reflect transnational politics and Italian discourses on illegal movement.
Acknowledgements
This a revised version of a paper presented to the AEGIS conference in London in July 2004, and previously to the SAMOMU seminar at the University of Milan. I thank Mauro Van Aken for the stimulus of the latter seminar, and Valentina Mazzucato and Ralph Grillo for that of the conference. I also thank colleagues for their comments. Another version of the issues presented in this paper has been edited by Bruno Riccio and published in Italian in Afriche e Orienti, 7(3), 2005, 82–96; I am grateful to him for his insights.
Notes
1. There was a previous generation of Eritreans who came to Italy in limited numbers during the 1960s or earlier (Galeazzo Citation1994; Melotti et al. Citation1985). Although interesting for the study of post-colonial relations, their situation was very different from that of those who came later and consequently they are omitted from consideration in this paper. The reader should note that, throughout the paper, I use the term ‘generations’ of migrants in the historical sense, not in the more common genealogical meaning, which has already been used in regard to Eritrean-Milanese youth by Andall (Citation2002) and Cologna and Breviglieri (Citation2003).
2. This expression is significant because it reflects the perception of Eritrea as a country under attack for being a small state.
3. This reflects a perception that annexation by Ethiopia, which was supported by world powers, was not the outcome of a democratic choice, but an imposition.
4. Border practices through time are analysed by Ferme (Citation2004). Handlin (Citation1973) is also interesting for an understanding of systems of movement and their effects.
