International Migration Institute

Barbara Pinelli presents her paper 'Violence, surveillance and agency experiences of the women refugees in the Italian reception camps' in Parallel session IV(C) of the conference Examining Migration Dynamics: Networks and Beyond, 24-26 Sept 2013 This paper focuses on the relation between agency and the process of becoming refugees. In the last four years, I have carried out an ethnographic research in southern Italy refugee camps organized by the Italian government for the detention and control of undocumented migrants, in order to document the violence experiences of women asylum seekers who have reached Italy after spending a period of time in Libya, and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. These women have endured terrible abuses in their trajectory toward Europe; once inside the camps, they are subject to forms of moral and institutional violence, surveillance mechanisms, that shape their subjectivities as women and refugees. In particular, they are exposed to the disciplinary regimes of the camps and the ima