Milena BelloniUniversity of Antwerp | UA · Department of Sociology
Milena Belloni
Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento (Italy)
Coordinator of CeMIS/ The network on Migration and Global Mobility of the University of Antwerp
About
51
Publications
5,778
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456
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am a sociologist of migration with a particular expertise in ethnography, refugee studies and the Horn of Africa. My research interests include borders and migration dynamics, smuggling, secondary movements, transnational families, refugees' local integration/inclusion in urban areas. My empirical work has been based on qualitative methods, most notably, multi-sited ethnography. I have done fieldwork in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands from 2012 onwards.
Additional affiliations
July 2019 - March 2021
FIERI
Position
- Researcher
Description
- Research theme: protracted displacement; Italy; refugees’ socio-economic marginality; segregation in urban areas.
February 2018 - January 2020
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- ERC HOMInG Project (P.I. Paolo Boccagni). Research theme: Home and migration; transnational refugee families; Eritrea; housing and remittances; homing and refugees in countries of arrival and origin; multi-sited ethnography
January 2017 - January 2018
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Research theme: The impact of European family reunification policies on refugees’ integration pathways
Publications
Publications (51)
Remittances have played crucial and shifting roles in Eritrea and its diaspora. They were fundamental to the achievement of national independence and are a resource with which the current government strengthens its power. Households have been reliant on remittances for survival, while for migrants they have been crucial to reinforce their sense of...
This article examines how the experience of protracted displacement interacts with mobility desires and practices of a diverse population of asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants in Italy. Drawing from ethnographic data collected in different Italian localities and among different nationalities, we focus on participants’ translocal con...
When refugees’ access to economic, political, and social rights cannot be guaranteed in one locale, individuals make pragmatic choices about what relationships to sustain with authorities elsewhere, even with those that caused their flight in the first place. This process of return is rarely akin to conventional repatriation, understood as the full...
This working paper is based on empirical research on the Translocal Figurations of Displacement in Greece and Italy. The authors aim to compare protracted displacement in Greece and Italy, looking at the structural forces shaping it and their interactions with migrants' mobility and connectivity. This comparison is based on the analysis of the rela...
This article introduces the notion of ‘accumulated homelessness’ to account for the repeated loss and lack of home experienced by many migrants in Europe today. Through the lens of home and homelessness, we argue that the debate on protracted displacement—often applied only to developing countries—should be extended to Europe. Going beyond the idea...
This special focus section analyses state–diaspora relationships with a focus on the case of Eritrea, a paradigmatic example, as we show in this introduction, to elaborate on the following key questions: What determines loyalty between diaspora and the state? How can we understand the dynamics of co-optation, loyalty, and resistance that characteri...
Can diaspora houses be used as a site to explore transnational citizenship? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Eritrea, this article shows that different kinds of remittance houses reify different categories of transnational citizens with various sets of rights and duties. Drawing on studies on state–diaspora relations and remittance houses, I illu...
By April 2020, Uganda was one of the top refugee hosting countries in the world and the largest in Africa with over 1.4 million refugees. Uganda has been generally described as being friendly to refugees and in 2006 passed a law, the Refugees Act, which has internationally been recognized as a progressive law. However, there is a discrepancy betwee...
Schapendonk and Belloni dive into the ways journeys of displacement involve processes of both constraints and agency. In so doing, they review the growing body of literature on ‘migration journeys’ and ‘trajectories’—with a particular focus on African fragmented migration across international borders. A focus on trajectories, the authors argue, has...
Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo,...
L'inserimento degli immigrati nel mercato del lavoro italiano è caratterizzato da tassi di disoccupazione relativamente bassi ma importanti divari nell'accesso a professioni di status medio-alto. La letteratura ha inoltre mostrato che, al contrario di altri Paesi europei, i divari di status occupazionale sono maggiori fra i lavoratori con un più el...
This article argues that the concept of ‘cosmologies of destinations’ is a useful theoretical tool to provide an emic understanding of the social and moral meanings of migrants’ journeys. By this concept, I refer to the hierarchical representations of the world that orient migration journeys. Drawing from my multi-sited ethnography with Eritreans a...
The sudden increase of asylum applications in the aftermath of the 2015 “refugee crisis”, has sparked the debate on the concept of “deservingness” in public discourse. Who deserves to enter into European territory? Who deserves to receive state-funded assistance? This article unpacks the notion of “deservingness” by analysing the rationalities of c...
Drawing from ethnographic research with five young women living in Asmara (Eritrea), this article investigates the intersection between migration aspirations and the desire for gender –and sexual – emancipation. While an increasing amount of studies focuses on the effect of migration on gender roles and sexuality, this article aims to understand th...
TRAFIG aims to contribute to the development of alternative solutions to protracted displacement that are tailored to the needs and capacities of displaced persons. This working paper contains our central concepts and key terms. We make use of the concept of social figurations as the theoretical foundation for our research. We understand figuration...
Since the beginning of 2010s, the movement of unaccompanied minors from Eritrea has significantly increased and has become the object of international concern. This migration is often explained by media and humanitarian actors as the mechanical reaction to recent conscription campaigns by the Eritrean government. However, these explanations fail to...
This paper offers some behind-the-scenes insights drawn from the collective fieldwork experiences of the contributors to this Special Issue. These include reflections on: how decisions about modes of accessing research participants fundamentally shape the research process and outcomes; the pitfalls of only focusing on young people's migratory exper...
In recent years, a growing number of studies have highlighted the role of technology in facilitating the circulation of the information and images that underpin migrants' journeys and aspirations. However, less attention has been paid to the social circumstances that obstruct these communication flows. Based on ethnographic work in Italy and Eritre...
How can we research mobility, in practice, today? Pleas in favour of multi-sited ethnographies were followed by the implementation of cross-border qualitative data collections. But the transnationalisation of ethnographic methods, developed at a local level, raises new challenges. In this paper, the team of the erc project homing reviews the obstac...
Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untan...
The trafficking and smuggling of humans across international borders have often been treated as two sides of the same coin. Nevertheless, this article argues that the relationships and contexts from which trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling emerge are themselves different. Drawing from eth- nographies on smuggling of migrants in the Horn o...
Cross-Mediterranean mixed migration flows to Europe have gained huge media visibility and political salience, in particular since their steep surge started in 2015. In spite of (or maybe in part due to) their intensity and size, not only the collective perceptions but also the actual public knowledge of these flows is still patchy and too undiffere...
Questo numero speciale di Studi Emigrazione in particolare esplora le tensioni, le aspirazioni, i desideri, e i sentimenti dei soggetti migranti e le dinamiche socio- economiche, i dispositivi legislativi di controllo e di governo delle bu- rocrazie statali e internazionali. Nel corso dell’esperienza migratoria, diverse forme di legami affettivi ‒...
Drawing from research with Somali refugees in Umkulu refugee camp (Eritrea) and Eritreans in Shimelba (Ethiopia), this article explores the shifts and continuities in marriage practices of refugee populations navigating the constraints and the opportunities of life in camps. On the one hand, we consider how resettlement opportunities have influence...
Purpose – Studies have described how migrants progressively transform extraneous spaces into familiar, meaningful environments, turning them into ‘homes’. However, in some contexts the opposite process occurs: what once felt like home becomes alien, unrecognizable and extraneous. Building on ethnographic vignettes on the everyday life of immobile y...
This article revisits ambivalence as a protracted state which does not simply develop as a result of the migration experience but stems from overlapping levels of normative inconsistency. Drawing from my ethnography of Eritreans’ everyday life in the homeland and abroad, I analyse their attitudes of patriotism and disenchantment through an ambivale...
This chapter analyzes Eritrean refugees’ secondary mobility from Italy. Although Eritreans have in the last decade been granted asylum in Italy, most of them intend to move onwards. This mobility orientation has mainly been explained as the result of limited integration opportunities. However, the social and cultural factors underpinning this desir...
Extract:
In many studies on postcolonial cultures in Italy, the presence of migrants is taken as an ineludible reminder of colonialism in Italian society. Migrants embody the ‘postcolonial other’ that crosses borders and extends struggles and inequalities rooted in colonial history to metropolitan societies.1 This perspective has been fruitful in...
Nel Libro Bianco dello sport (2007), la Commissione Europea individua nello sport uno strumento cruciale per promuovere il benessere fisico, psicologico e sociale dei cittadini europei. In quest’ottica diventa fondamentale facilitare l’accesso all’attività fisica regolare, eliminando quegli ostacoli legali, sociali ed economici che non permettono a...
This article investigates the role of transnational family networks in facilitating undocumented migration, by analyzing the case of Eritrean refugees on the move towards Europe. Based on the consideration that irregular border-crossing usually involves not only migrants and smugglers but also family members financing these journeys from abroad, I...
This article investigates the relationship between refugees’ integration and residential segregation by analysing Eritreans’ participation in local squatting practices in Rome. While it has often been assumed that residential concentration is linked to lack of participation in wider society, this case study points to counterintuitive implications o...
A report Commissioned by Women Empower the World (Italy)
Eritrean migration to Europe, only transiting through Italy, has become increasingly visible, but relatively under-investigated and often misunderstood. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Eritrea, in Ethiopia and in Italy between 2012 and 2014, this article investigates the factors and the social dynamics for which most Eritrean refugees d...
Although the Dublin Regulation aims to prevent secondary movements within Europe, refugee flows from Italy toward northern Europe persist. Existing literature has investigated the relationship between refugee flows, policies, and other macro socioeconomic and cultural factors but the individual decision making underlying refugee mobility is relativ...
This report is based on 18 days of desk research and provides a short synthesis of the literature on fragility and migration in relation to Eritrea. It was prepared for the European Commission’s Instrument Contributing to Stability and Peace, © European Union 2016. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, and do not represent th...
Projects
Projects (3)
The project seeks to shed light on to the complex interactions between bureaucratic practices and the geographic, political and social stratagems that refugee families employ to meet or circumvent the necessary requirements for reunification.
Most European states allow refugees to access a facilitated procedure to reunify with their family members. Many studies, however, high-light how issues of timing, documentation and economic resources often make family reunions extremely difficult, if not impossible. If much has been written on the obstacles for migrants to enjoy their right to family life, little is known about the specific case of refugees. The multi-sited design of this project aims to reconstruct the complexity of power-relations, social expectations and structural impediments that influence the possibility of refugees to be with their families.
First, by studying refugees in Europe (Belgium and Italy) and their families residing in transit countries, this project seeks to shed light on the transnational connections and flow of expectations which shape the everyday life of separated families.
Second, by conducting research in diplomatic and migration bureaus in different locations, this study provides insights into the complex interactions between bureaucratic practices and the geographic and social stratagems that refugee families employ to meet – or circumvent – the necessary requirements. The research aims not only to a better understanding of the political and social contradictions of national border controls, asylum regime of European migration policies and their implications on the lives of refugees.
TRAFIG (Transnational Figurations of Displacement) is an EU funded Horizon 2020 research project. From 2019 to 2021, 12 partner organisations from Europe, Africa and Asia will investigate protracted displacement situations (PDS) in refugee camps and cities in Asia, Africa, and Europe. We will analyse the everyday lives of displaced people focussing especially on their transnational and local networks as well as their mobility.
While home is the apparently natural basis of everyday life, the ERC-StG project HOMInG unpacks it, through a systematic analysis of the ways of constructing, emplacing and circulating home under the influence of extended mobility and societal diversity. Home is to be understood, here, both as a bounded place – hence a matter of living and housing conditions, affected by structural variables and inequalities; and as a meaningful and emotionalized kind of relationship with place – an experience that should be based on a sense of security, familiarity and control. In this sense, home is the critical but neglected basis of migrants’ integration, or of how they negotiate their belonging, membership and inclusion across societies. How at home, if at all, they feel (to belong) in a given place/community is a key indicator of their attitudes and long-term attachment to it. This is equally critical to the living experience of their counterparts, to be also analysed in this project – natives or long-term residents in countries of settlement and non-migrants stayers in countries of origin.
