EtnoAntropologia

Ripensare la migrazione di ritorno: esperienze vissute e regimi di mobilità in trasformazione - Rethinking Return Migration: Lived Experiences and Shifting Mobility Regimes

Bruno Riccio — 2026-01-15

The contemporary increase in return migration provides a critical vantage point from which to interrogate the exclusionary logics underpinning current migration governance. Against this backdrop, this special issue examines how the notion of return has been mobilized politically and analytically over time. A review of the literature reveals a marked evolution in scholarly approaches: early work was shaped by skeptical and assimilationist assumptions; this was followed, in the 1990s and early twenty-first century, by a focus on the transnational migration- development nexus. In the past decade, research has increasingly connected both forced removals and state-sponsored “voluntary” returns to broader processes of border externalization and the consolidation of securitization agendas. An anthropological perspective is essential for developing a nuanced, multi-layered understanding of return migration. It brings into view the ambivalent, often contradictory processes unfolding from below that shape return trajectories. By foregrounding these situated experiences, an ethnographic lens helps dismantle dominant political narratives that portray return as an abstract, individualized, and ostensibly unproblematic indicator of success.

Les relations familiales au prisme de l’échec migratoire : les affects, les attentes, les responsabilités (région de Kolda, sud-Sénégal, 2017-2023) - Family relations through the lens of the migration impasse : affects, expectations, responsibilities (Kolda region, Southern Senegal, 2017-2023)

Alice Bellagamba — 2026-01-15

In the context of the southern Senegalese region of Kolda, irregular migration towards Europe is viewed through the lens of involuntary return and the disruption of the domestic moral economy. Ethnographic and historical data spanning 2017 to 2023 serve to question the conventional dichotomies of voluntary versus forced repatriation, prompting an examination of the dynamic reconfiguration of familial affects, expectations, and responsabilities engendered by returns under strain. Adopting a perspective that ‘de-migrantizes’ mobility resituates the migratory episode within a broader continuum of social existence, demonstrating how departure and return are embedded in protracted negotiations of belonging. Foregrounding the circulation of affects – namely shame, guilt, and resilient hope – prioritizes the temporality of life trajectories over the spatiality of border crossing. Such an approach illuminates the dynamic processes of meaning-making that contest and redefine the boundaries of the family in this region of Senegal.

Il coraggio dell’altrove e il coraggio del restare: retoriche, ambiguità e contraddizioni nei programmi AVRR dell’OIM e nei ritorni migranti a Vélingara - The courage to pursue the elsewhere and the courage to stay: rhetorics, ambiguities and contradictions in IOM’s AVRR programmes and unsuccessful migrant return trajectories in Vélingara

Gabriele Maria Masi — 2026-01-15

Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the southern Senegalese city of Vélingara examines the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes promoted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as an ostensibly replicable model of mobility management (modèle voyageur). These programmes function as propaganda mechanisms that discredit the image of the “irregular” migrant while simultaneously valorizing the local, community-rooted micro-entrepreneur. Central to this process is the “deportation twist”: AVRR interventions reframe forced return as a positive, even empowering experience. However, this rhetoric often obscures the persistence, upon return, of the very economic and social challenges that drove the initial migration.
In Vélingara, institutional discourses on reintegration, which propose the ideal of the “rooted entrepreneur,” intersect with the narratives of returned migrants who emphasize the courage required for the migration “adventure.” The myth of “sedentarized happiness” that the IOM has promoted in Senegal since 2016 acts as a form of “enforced rootedness” that places the full responsibility for failed mobility attempts onto individuals, thereby obscuring the structural inequalities that initially compelled them to move. The “deportation twist” ultimately exposes a deeper injustice: the pursuit of happiness is recognized as legitimate, but only when it does not involve a free and human-centered form of mobility. Ultimately, the AVRR model promotes a consensus-driven narrative rather than genuinely challenging the inequalities that drive mobility.

Dopo la backway: famiglie e programmi di reintegrazione assistita in Gambia - Back from the backway: Families and assisted reintegration programmes in the Gambia

Paolo Gaibazzi — 2026-01-15

The article explores the role of families in the reintegration of Gambian young men repatriated from transit countries along the so-called backway, the irregular Mediterranean routes to Europe. Some deportees feel shame and/or face discrimination from their families for having failed their migratory projects. This discourse is taken up by the externalized governance of migration, which provides reintegration programmes. The article complicates this picture, highlighting the limits of governance solutions and the centrality of families in returnees’ reintegration.

Mobilité, postcolonialité et déséquilibre psychique : une lecture ethnoclinique de la migration de retour - Mobility, Postcoloniality, and Psychological Imbalance : An Ethnoclinical Reading of Return Migration

Rita Finco — 2026-01-15

Far beyond simple physical reintegration, return migration entails profound psychosocial challenges. A four-year ethnoclinical engagement, framed as action research with 135 return migrants in the Senegalese regions of Kolda and Sédhiou, shows that the challenge faced by return migrants is not merely one of individual choice or failure, but the result of structural power dynamics inherited from the colonial past and reinforced by neocolonialism, which restrict their freedom of movement and economic development in their country of origin. The central finding of the research highlights the contradiction faced by returnees : their individual and group strategies, developed in response to global politico-economic changes, clash directly with the constraints enforcing population immobility within the globalized economy. This tension generates significant psychosocial vulnerabilities. The ethnoclinical approach reveals how this structural contradiction impacts the mental health and identity reconstruction of the returnees, a dynamic that also affects the investigative process itself.

Appartenenze “mobili”: il ritorno come strategia metodologica e lente interpretativa nelle migrazioni dei rudari romeni e delle donne capoverdiane - “Mobile” Belongings: Return as a Methodological Strategy and Interpretive Lens in the Migrations of Romanian Rudari and Cape Verdean Women

Martina Giuffrè — 2026-01-15

The essay explores the multiple forms of migratory return, conceived as an open, circular, and relational process. Through two long-term ethnographies – among Cape Verdean migrant women, especially rabidantes, and Rudari families in rural Romania – the authors show how returns, mobile and plural, renegotiate identity, gender, labour, and transnational belonging. Return thus emerges as a space of reflexivity, transformation, and the production of new situated knowledges.

Re-integrarsi a casa? Fenomenologia dei ritorni nel nord della Romania - Reintegrating at home? Phenomenology of returns in northern Romania

Pietro Cingolani — 2026-01-15

This article explores the return experiences of migrants in a northeastern region of Romania, historically shaped by patterns of territorial mobility. The analysis focuses on public representations of returnees, their motivations and preparation for return, as well as the employment trajectories and the family and social networks they have mobilized and redefined. A critical perspective is offered on the concepts of voluntariness and reintegration, emphasizing their multidimensional nature – economic, social, cultural, and political. Adopting a layered approach to mobility, the article highlights how the overlapping and succession of different factors over time have rendered the notion of mobility increasingly complex. This complexity challenges conventional distinctions between voluntary and involuntary return, between return and circular migration, and between internal and international mobility.

“Fare famiglia” in transito: ritorni ed esternalizzazione dei confini in Bosnia-Erzegovina - “Family-making” in transit: returns and border externalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Zaira Tiziana Lofranco — 2026-01-15

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), a key transit country along the Balkan Route, is used as a case study to assess how systematic pushbacks at the European Union’s external borders drive cyclical returns, which force mobile populations to establish a presence in BiH. This process fosters crucial socialization dynamics (e.g., “family-making”) that the migrants, as much as the current policies of the IOM (International Organization for Migration), leverage to promote settlement within a country considered on its way toward Europeanization. Ultimately, this evolving dynamic yields novel patterns of BiH-centred circular mobility, directly reflecting the specific consequences of border externalization across Eastern Europe.

Politiche del ritorno e governance dell’accoglienza in Italia: Economie del tempo e degli affetti nelle esperienze di operatori e richiedenti asilo - Return Policies and Asylum Reception Governance in Italy: Temporal and Affective Economies in the Experiences of Operators and Asylum Seekers

Federica Tarabusi — 2026-01-15

The nexus between return policies and the Italian asylum system provides a framework for observing how reception workers and asylum seekers negotiate the discursive and operational repertoires embedded in Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programs in their daily encounters. Ethnographic research conducted in an Italian reception centre demonstrates the complex ways these actors navigate return regimes, recalibrate multiple and layered temporalities, and challenge the normative categories that shape EU border governance.

Salute globale in tempi di crisi contemporanee

Tamara Mykhaylyak — 2026-01-15

Lingua greca in terra italiana. Storia di una minoranza linguistica della Grecìa salentina

Eugenio Zito — 2026-01-15

Editoriale n. 2 - 2025

Alberto Baldi — 2026-01-15

Medicina tradizionale e strategie di cura tra gli immigrati marocchini residenti nell’area metropolitana di Napoli - Traditional medicine and care strategies among Moroccan immigrants living in Naples metropolitan area

Hanane Ettaki — 2026-01-15

The authors present a selection of research materials collected within the framework of an Erasmus+ KA171 project and related to the ethnographic analysis conducted on the care strategies adopted by first- and second-generation Moroccan immigrants living in Naples metropolitan area. The focus is on the persistence and/or transformation of traditional practices compared to official Italian medicine. The research aims to understand how these people cope with their health issues and seek treatment in Naples. Specifically, to what extent they continue to use traditional medicine practices learned in Morocco, where medical pluralism is widespread, and how these may coexist or interact with the treatments provided by the Italian healthcare system.

Sotto il confine della pelle: una prospettiva etnografica sulle pratiche forensi rivolte ai corpi migranti nel Mediterraneo - Beneath the Border of the Skin: an Ethnographic Perspective on Forensic Practices focused on migrant bodies in the Mediterranean

Nives Ladina — 2026-01-15

Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the liquid border of the central Mediterranean, considered one of the most dangerous in the world in terms of disappearances and deaths. Among those who manage to survive and reach Italy are many who apply for international protection. This procedure requires the applicant to tell in front of a member of the territorial commission his or her story and the reasons that led him or her to undertake the journey. In a context where the credibility of migrant’s words is constantly questioned, lawyers assisting applicants may advise them to undergo a medico-legal assessment. This examination certifies the compatibility of marks on the body with accounts of violence suffered in the country of origin and those of transit. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in an outpatient clinic in Sicily for migrants who are survivors of torture and intentional violence, this section of the project explores how medico-legal examinations go beyond the mere certification of physical marks. These marks function as a material substrate for the co-construction of individual and collective narratives between migrants and the multidisciplinary team.