Malta, an island-state, limits the mobility of non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers who want to leave due to the lived consequences of disintegration. Stripped of any legal entitlements non-deportable refugees only have restricted access to the job market, basic services, and health care. They have no formal legal status whilst their presence and stay are known by the immigration authorities. However, although non-deportability restricts refugees' mobility, they find ways to navigate the system governing their physical and social immobilities. Based on (auto-)ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta and Italy, non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers' lived experiences of first reception in Malta and migrating to Italy are illuminated. While enacting their denied right of mobility, new challenges reveal themselves, resulting in a life in limbo that continues even after they leave Malta. Through the conceptual lens of the 'perspective of migration' we consider the making and unmaking of refugees' (im)mobilities. In doing so, we pursue a three-stage approach. First, we shed light on produced immobilities while in Malta. Second, we explore refugees' practices of appropriation of mobility and third, we turn to new possibilities and challenges they face after a secondary movement to Italy. From a micro-analytical perspective, we examine how non-deportable refugees navigate the system governing their social and physical (im)mobilities. Practices of resistance and conciliation are illustrated.
Even though the relational turn within Island Studies has long revoked the equation of islands with insularity, disconnectedness and backwardness, these ascriptions are still often deterministically attributed to islands, mainly by non-island scholars. Thereby these designations are not only reproduced, but connections, dynamics, different forms of embeddedness and entanglements remain overlooked. This paper has two main goals: (1) Adding to the relational turn in Island Studies by not only arguing for more inductive approaches to seriously engage with these situated and changing manifestations and meaningmakings of islands, and (2) by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta, we introduce the concept of 'islandscape' (Broodbank 2000) to the Island Studies literature. Through the lens of islandscape, islands can be researched as nodal points of the local, national and global without reproducing 'islandism' while still acknowledging the importance of the island. The combination of-scape and assemblage-thinking which is already present within Island Studies makes it possible to address the tension between global and local and, rather, to look at which concrete, situated assemblages emerge within islandscape. In this sense, we propose to think of the island as islandscape from the very beginning of research, then to show how this islandscape is actually constituted and then to describe partial moments of stabilisation in terms of assemblages.
Since 2002, roughly 19,000 refugees have reached Maltese shores. Both European Union law as well as national Maltese policies shape their reception and treatment. In discourse, these refugees are repeatedly represented as a threat to the social order on the island and its unique Maltese identity. Through various practices of separating refugees from non-refugee society, the societal vision of Maltese uniqueness is stabilised as a sociotechnical imaginary. Through these practices a prison spatiality experienced by refugees emerges. The emergence of this spatiality is illustrated by drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with both refugee and non-refugee institutional actors. Pointing to the relationship between the emergent spatiality and societal self-understandings connecting past, present and future visions of Maltese identity, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries is applied in conjunction with theories of islandness. It is analysed how practices of physical separation, the impediment of social participation, legal separation and its partial suspension enact Malta as a prison for refugees and thereby stabilise a concrete vision of Maltese identity.
Scholars conducting research on and about islands face the challenge of countering the epistemic and methodological dominance of external perspectives on islands with an insular internal view, while also avoiding essentializing the island or reproducing Western perspectives. Islands have always been—and in some cases still are—confronted with a colonial gaze. Thus, to avoid producing hegemonic epistemology, we call for critical reflection on how islands are represented in our research, which theoretical concepts are referred to, and what knowledge is produced by applying them. Furthermore, we appeal for a reconsideration of the researcher’s positionality within the field and their role in knowledge production. This special section is a contribution to the decolonial project within island studies.
Since Malta joined the EU in 2004, almost 20,000 refugees have reached its shores. Obliged to remain on the island state, they are required to integrate, despite an absence of governmental integration processes. With Malta being an EU member, its government is, however, obliged to conform to EU policies covering reception procedures. In this chapter, we analyse two fields of tension that result from this situation: (1) saving refugees at sea vs questions of border control and (2) demanding the integration of refugees whilst simultaneously denying them access to mechanisms leading to integration. Thus, we reflect on this ‘shift of duties’ – with a focus on refugees’ coping strategies in this paradoxical situation – by looking at practices of (dis)integration acted out by governing and non-governing actors. This case highlights the fact that integration and disintegration are intertwined. To illustrate this phenomenon, we employ a multi-actor approach. By collecting data and utilising textualisation strategies based on collaborative research, we challenge the issue of representing (dis)integration exclusively from the researchers’ perspective.
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