The INRES research project has officially ended. Nevertheless, the information gathered over the years through fieldwork in Senegal will continue to be disseminated and made available to all those who are committed to providing real and adequate support to survivors of gender-based violence.
I am also pleased to announce that the skills acquired through INRES in the analysis of processes of vulnerabilization linked to gender and sexuality of West African citizens will be put to the benefit of another important research project.
This is the “PROTECT. The right to international protection” research project, financed with EU’s Horizon 2020 funds.
From February 1, 2021 I joined the research team of the Department of Political Science, University of Catania, coordinated by Prof. Francesca Longo. Together with the anthropologist Mara Benadusi I will investigate the social and political uses of the category of vulnerability as it is mobilized by the different actors involved in the governance of international protection in Sicily.
The data I will collect from this southern European border will be discussed comparatively with the other anthropologists participating in the project who are engaged in conducting fieldwork in other border areas and cities in France, Greece, Canada, Spain and South Africa.
The theoretical questions that inspire this research are prompted, on the one hand, by legal anthropology, thus aimed at understanding the local impact of two soft laws defined at the UN: the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
On the other hand, it is political anthropology, particularly interested in the humanitarianism-securitarianism nexus, that guides the progress of the fieldwork. The analysis thus dwells on the social and political uses of the notion of vulnerability in this particular border area, in order to understand the ambivalence and criticality in associating the administrative right to stay in Italy with the recognition of specific needs and a need for protection.