Milena Belloni
My project will provide a multidimensional framework to the study of forced migration by considering cultural, social, as well as structural factors that contemporary refugee flows. It will primarily develop the idea of “cosmologies of destinations,” which stemmed from my ethnographic fieldwork among Eritrean refugees on their routes to Europe. Drawing from the theories of anthropologists, scholars of forced migration, and scholars of African societies, my work investigates how different sets of ideas concerning the order of the world, its inhabitants, and the position of individual life within it can influence migrants’ trajectories and aspirations. This analysis will contribute to a better understanding of contemporary refugee flows through Italy and forced migration at large. In particular, it can be used to make sense of migrants’ high-risk mobility trajectories as far from irrational or simply emergency-driven behaviors.