Para além das fronteiras e dos limites: adolescentes migrantes marroquinos entre desejo, vulnerabilidade e risco

Abstract

This contribution analyzes and discusses the case of the migration of "unaccompanied" children and adolescents between Morocco and Europe. This analysis was originally presented as a contribution to the Project "Anthropology of Interfaces" (FCT/ CAPES). The article examines the ways in which young migrants give meaning to the world and to the experience of mobility, in an attempt to explore the construction of the youth's experience between contemporary global and (g)local worlds of experience and meaning. The theoretical perspective inspiring the study lies at the intersection of anthropology, psychology and migration studies and is based on the concept of subjectivity, understood as a form of orientation to the world and embodiment of historically and politically defined norms, values and meaning. This orientation influences the imagination and defines specific forms of thinking, acting, speaking, suffering and giving meaning to existence. The article shows that the subjective construction of postcolonial youth and their families is moulded upon a globally-fashioned "desire for modernity and participation", which clashes with the normative process imposed by the new "discipline of the borders" in Europe, manifested through the bureaucratic and administrative procedures of the so-called "reception". The combination of these two dynamics concurs in producing the experience of marginality and the following risk also in terms of "disposition to be sanctioned". Conclusions delve into the paradox of a process in which young migrants are pushed back to the prescribed marginal place in the world which the infringement of the border had tried to subvert.

Children, parents and non-parents: to whom does ‘the future’ belong?

“…Some are simply rendered futureless. For instance, despite the fact that separated child migrants often see themselves as the hope for their family's futures (Vacchiano 2014), their lives once in new countries are experienced as stuck in time. Waiting on asylum claims is experienced as "an arid stretch of time, where the clock ticks, but no movement happens" (Kohli and Kaukko 2017: 2).…”

“Lending a hand”: the well-intentioned work of a non-profit organisation on the outskirts of neoliberal Lisbon

“…The country of origin, in the logic of this project, functioned as a deposit of lost subjects. A fantasy about the origin was maintained and reproduced based on the premise that, as soon as the immigrant returned to his "roots", everything would be resolved, not only for him, but also for everyone who tried to help him (Vacchiano, 2014).…”