Moral Mobility

Abstract

In 2014, a group of male Syrian refugees organized a sit-in protest in Greece. They demanded and gained permission to travel further into Europe. In a world where mobility has become a marker of men's success, Europe's border regime tests "other" men's aspiration for mobility through images of good morality and provider's capability. Within this system, male asylum seekers tend to be rejected as too pitiful, as not real men, or as dangerous distorted men. However, in Greece, the discourse of human dignity has reconstructed people's perceptions of other men's vulnerability. Thus, we argue that the young Syrians could embody an emergent refugee masculinity by visibly performing responsibility, democracy, and strength and by navigating their desires through moral subjectivity. Moreover, they rejected personal political sensibilities in order to maintain solidarity within the group. Thus, the performance by the Syrian refugee men has paved the way for emergent refugee masculinities in Greece, which have since then gained worldwide attention.

The prism of new mobilities. The mobility trajectories of refugees and asylum seekers outside the Italian reception system

“…However, this also implies intense internal mobility (Sanò and Della Puppa 2020) from the northern regions to the southern ones and, again, back to the northern regions; from eastern regions to the western ones; and from the Alpine areas to the towns in the valleys; as well as daily cross-border mobility (Aris Escarcena 2018;Belloni 2016;D'Angelo 2019;Menghi 2018;Wyss 2019). Obviously, such international and internal mobilities intersect and fuel each other (Belloni 2016;Fontanari 2019;Ingvars and Gíslason 2018). Such conditions affect not only migrants lacking regular residence permits but frequently extend even to those who have regular documents (Sanò, Storato and Della Puppa 2021;Schuster 2005;Sigona 2012;Storato, Sanò and Della Puppa 2021;Wyss 2019).…”

Navigating the European Migration Regime

“…While research on precarious migration is often based on interviews where the majority of research participants are male (see, for instance, Collyer, 2007;Schapendonk, 2011;Bhatia, 2015), many studies nevertheless rarely consider gender as a structuring category of the migration process. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in contributions to constructions of migrant masculinities and male migrants' experiences (see, for instance, Ahmad, 2011;Charsley and Wray, 2015;Griffiths, 2015;Allsopp, 2017;Ingvars and Gíslason, 2018;Scheibelhofer, 2018;Turner, 2019;Wyss and Fischer, 2021). Much of this literature draws on Connell's (2005) book Masculinities and particularly her notion of 'marginalised masculinities', which refers to men who are disadvantaged, for instance, because of their class, their sexuality or race, and which thus takes an intersectional approach to study the lived experiences of men.…”

5 “I Live Here; I Have a Right to Be Here” An Afghan Refugee’s Disorientations and Insistence on Inclusion through Theater

“…That said, men in migration have the propensity to mold a cultural blending of masculinities, by which they negotiate their desires for success in a new environment, the stereotypes of themselves that they encounter in that environment, and expectations from their home communities (Howson 2014). In a similar manner, (im)mobile men assess their vulnerability and empowerment strategies in relation to temporal, geo-graphical, technical, and economic changes occurring in the world (Ingvars and Gíslason 2018). In other words, to cite the theories of Arjun Appadurai (1996), they reconcile aspirational desires in relation to the terms of recognition available to them.…”

“…Studies conducted in the last decade tend to highlight Syrian men's experiences of sudden statelessness, loss of class status, and masculine transformations in relation to local settings and shifting global politics (Ingvars and Gíslason 2018;Turner 2019). However, studies have also emerged that show how refugee men may carry with them other forms of fractured identities due to factors such as disabilities (Muhanna-M atar 2020), queerness (Tschalaer 2020), or ethnic duality (Farahani and Thapar-Björkert 2020).…”