‘Vertical mobility’. Migrants’ trajectories within/between the western Alps and southern Italy

ABSTRACT

In the past twenty years a renewed trend of migration has flown into the Italian Alps, inverting the out-migration trend. New mountain dwellers, a heterogeneous population ranging from former urban residents who chose to inhabit highlands, to asylum seekers forced into a highland life while waiting for their documents, have adjusted to the socio-ecological environment which imposes mobility. The contribution analyses in the first place the twofold mobility of the mountain dwellers, vertical in altitude and latitude, and stresses, on the side, the inequalities and exploitation at the basis of the latitudinal mobility and, on the other hand, the mobility power and capital migrants agentively play in such regime of mobility. Questioning the extent to which mobility can affect the multiple and varying migration projects, the contribution argues that juridical tools, such as the network contract within the Alpine farming system, can emplace migrants and enhance their social mobility.

RIASSUNTO

Negli ultimi vent'anni un nuovo flusso migratorio verso le Alpi Italiane ne ha invertito l'andamento, sino ad ora caratterizzato dall'abbandono di questi luoghi. I nuovi abitanti di queste montagne, una popolazione eterogenea che spazia da ex-residenti urbani che hanno scelto di abitare le terre alte ai richiedenti asilo forzatamente ivi ricollocati in attesa dei documenti, si sono adattati ad un ambiente socio-ecologico che impone mobilità. Il contributo analizza in primo luogo la doppia mobilità degli abitanti delle montagne, verticale in altitudine e latitudine, sottolineando, da un lato, come diseguaglianze e sfruttamento siano alla base della mobilità latitudinale, e, dall'altro, come i migranti dispongano di un potere e di un capitale n/della mobilità che agentivamente esercitano in questo regime di mobilità. Inoltre, nell'interrogarsi su quanto la mobilità possa influire sui multipli e mutevoli progetti migratori, il contributo discute lo strumento giuridico del contratto di rete che si rivela essere, nell'ambiente agricolo alpino, un mezzo per il radicamento e il miglioramento della mobilità sociale della popolazione migrante.

KEYWORDS:

• food
• vertical mobility
• agriculture
• mountains
• asylum seekers

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• cibo
• mobilità verticale
• agricoltura
• montagne
• richiedenti asilo

Notes

1. The four valleys hosted seven medium–small CAS, sheltering between eight and fifteen young male asylum seekers, between eighteen and thirty years old, mainly of African origin: Mali, Nigeria, Gambia and Ivory Coast. Since the fieldwork was carried out between 2018 and 2020, the political turnover has severely affected the reception system. In particular, the legislative decrees 840/2018 and 53/2019 have imposed new rules centralizing the reception system into bigger lowland centres, therefore half of the highland CASs have closed during this time frame and asylum seekers have been moved around, leaving little or no trace behind.

2. The interviews quoted in the article have been carried out between November 2018 and November 2019. One third of the total interviews is with asylum seekers living in the CAS-SIPROIMI system as well as in apartments, where mostly were physically carried out. All interviewees sought asylum but were still pending, and across the year many had received a denial, therefore they filed appeals (for which they were told they had to wait one more year).

3. D.L. n. 5, 10/02/2009), modified by the D.L. n. 78, 31/05/2010, converted into Law n. 122, 30/07/2010

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gaia Cottino

Gaia Cottino, PhD in Cultural Anthropology is currently Adjunct Professor at the American University of Rome where she teaches Anthropology of Food in the Master of Food Studies and at the University of Milano Bicocca where she teaches Anthropology of Oceania. She has carried out extensive fieldwork first in Oceania, in Hawaii and Tonga, where she focused her research interests on food, agriculture, health and body issues, with a specific focus on the so-called obesity epidemic; more recently, thanks to a grant of the Alsos Foundation, in the Italian Western Alps with a specific focus on the link between food production, mountains’ repopulation and amenity migrations.