Anatomy of a crisis: governing youth mobility through vulnerability

Abstract

In 2018, the Italian Coast Guard rescued 190 migrants onboard an overcrowded vessel from Libya. Held at sea for five days, the Italian government finally permitted the Coast Guard to dock in Catania, Sicily, yet refused to allow the migrants to disembark. This article begins by dissecting the anatomy of this crisis, tracing the diverse actors and institutions involved in its creation and resolution through first-hand accounts. Multi-sited ethnographic research reveals how a diverse set of actors enlisted a hierarchy of vulnerability to secure the release of migrants onboard, privileging unaccompanied asylumseeking children in particular. The article examines how this hierarchy has proven effective in legislating specialised protections and services and accessing limited humanitarian aid. However, a hierarchy of vulnerability has two paradoxical yet mutually reinforcing consequences. First, focusing on the vulnerabilities of increasingly narrow categories of individuals, such as unaccompanied children, distracts from examining how state policies produce vulnerability. Second, the humanitarian organisations' emphasis on vulnerability re-inscribes social boundaries, making state protections and services progressively difficult to access. In so doing, both the state and humanitarian organisations govern youth mobility through vulnerability.

Perceptions of Returnees Concerning Their Rehabilitation and Reinstatement in Swat District, Pakistan: An Evaluative Study

“…The state should ensure inclusive rehabilitation of IDPs (Depetris-Chauvin & Santos, 2017). Heidbrink (2021) argued that a state must perceive internal displacement as a social problem that must be logically addressed. Din (2010) argued that the government should take immediate measures to return the IDPs to their original places of residence and ensure necessary reinstatement facilitation.…”

Gendering Asylum

“…The concept of vulnerability has emerged in the past two decades in political, social and legal theory (Fineman, 2008;Turner, 2006), in ethics and public health (Luna, 2019) and in humanitarian policies (Heidbrink, 2021;Sozer, 2020;Turner, 2019a, b). Martha Albertson Fineman starts from a critique of the liberal notion of the autonomous individual which she argued should be replaced by the vulnerable subject 'describing a universal, inevitable and enduring aspect of the human condition that must be at the heart of our concept of social and state responsibility ' (2008: 8).…”

“…What also distinguishes most of these categories are that they are the most visible and easily identifiable, though those with mental health problems may not want to disclose this. This check list expedites the process of classification, as a hardpressed doctor working with disembarking asylum seekers in Italy, stated (Heidbrink, 2021).…”

“…More comprehensive critiques have surfaced recently in relation to its close association with neo-liberal humanitarianism and rationing of resources with problematic consequences in its redistribution between refugees (Sozer, 2020). For Heidbrink (2021), it is a means that states and humanitarian actors deploy to govern contemporary mobility and restrict access to much reduced services in increasingly privatised welfare regimes. Turner's shift in position is quite instructive.…”

“…So, too, have unaccompanied children been represented as quintessentially vulnerable (Heidbrink, 2021;Pruitt et al, 2018) without taking into account their aims and aspirations, especially for those escaping countries of protracted conflict without any sense of future or opportunities (Belloni, 2020). Their categorisation as vulnerable persons fixes them temporally into a particular status in their life course without taking into account their continuing vulnerability, especially as they confront the insecurity of their transition into adulthood (Heidbrink, 2021).…”