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Abstract
Due to lack of access to work and support services migrants with precarious legal status engage in onward mobility within EUrope and thus contest the migration regime that aims to control and limit their mobility. This article highlights the ambiguous nature of mobility from a critical mobilities perspective based on multi-sited ethnographic research and interviews with migrants in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. By focusing on their interrupted journeys, the article shows how migrants use mobility to secure basic needs and avoid migration control attempts and how this enhanced mobility aggravates emotional instability.
Acknowledgments
My special thanks go to all interlocutors who shared their time and experiences with me and supported this research project. Further, I would like to show my gratitude to the editors of this special issue and to the other contributors, to Annika Lindberg, to Lisa Marie Borrelli and to three anonymous reviewers who all provided valuable feedback. Finally, I want to thank the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle, which generously supported me with a writing-up fellowship.
Notes
1 All names have been anonymized, and I have taken great caution to exclude details (e.g., country of origin and specific dates) that could reveal the interlocutors’ identities.
2 I use the notion “EUrope" instead of “Europe” or “European Union” (EU) in order to expound the problems of the frequent equation of the latter two terms (cf. Bialasiewicz et al. Citation2013). “EUrope” is a more inclusive term that covers associated countries such as Switzerland and takes into account that international legal frameworks go beyond EU borders (e.g., the Dublin Regulation).
3 De Certeau (Citation2002) differentiates between “strategies” of actors holding power to assert control over others, on the one hand, and “tactics” applied by marginalized actors, on the other. The latter he understands as an “art of the weak” that is applied to take “advantage of ‘opportunities’” (2002, 36f). In order to emphasize the unequal power relations at play, I will follow this distinction by using the notion “tactic” when referring to migrants’ calculated actions.
4 A special flight denotes a flight specifically scheduled for migrants expected to resist deportation (Swiss Refugee Council, n.d.).
5 I prioritize data from 2014 because this was the year I started my fieldwork. This covers a period during which interlocutors were already in the Schengen Area.
6 For example, appealing a rejection of an asylum application.