Abitare il confine: attori e contesti nell’esperienza dell’accoglienza carioca
Giulia Nistri
The aim of this paper is to examine some of the critical issues which came to light in the course of an ethnographic research project carried out from March to August 2016 concerning the refugee and asylum seeker reception system in the city of Rio de Janeiro. I have decided to focus in particular on the main protagonists in Rio de Janeiro at the time of this study, namely migrants from the People’s Republic of Congo. This article represents a segment of a more extensive study. I will try to shed light on the challenges, the opposition, the viewpoints, and particularly on the desires and experiences of those who interact with and those who work within Brazilian agencies and institutions in a more or less openly conflictual and strategic manner. Thus, this paper takes into consideration both the asylum seekers and the service providers, whose complex relationship reveals them to be much more than mere cogs in the reception system. A system from which migrants’ life emerges as characterised by an unfortunate continuity between their old and new contexts.
Keywords
Reception system, humanitarianism, borders.