The Most Deserving: Syrian Refugee Resettlement in Salvini&#x27;s Italy

Hefny, Sara Mahmoud

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Year:: 2020
Contributor:: Hefny, Sara Mahmoud (creator); Leinaweaver, Jessaca (Advisor); Kertzer, David (Reader); Faudree, Paja (Reader); Tobin, Sarah (Reader); Brown University. Department of Anthropology (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Refugees; Italy--Rome; Forced migration; Civil War (Syria : 2011-); refugee resettlement; syrian refugees
Extent:: xiv, 316 p.

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Abstract:: This dissertation is an ethnographic study of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the humanitarian workers who resettle them in Italy. Between 2015 and 2020, Italy watched over half a million people arrive at its borders and tens of thousands die trying. In 2015, Catholic NGO Arcobaleno, in cooperation with other Italian religious organizations created a humanitarian corridor to allow Syrian refugees to enter Italy from Lebanon by plane under the protection of a humanitarian visa. This initiative was born into a context of fear from terrorism and economy anxiety. Refugees, in the eyes of the Italian public, present a paradox as people simultaneously at risk and a risk. In examining this paradox, I interrogate the concept of deservingness: how does the state imagine it? How do humanitarian workers evaluate it? How do refugees demonstrate it? How do government encounters validate it? In doing so I demonstrate the limits of refugee exceptionality and argue that the struggle to be seen as “deserving” continues long past when refugees have received asylum. I draw on daily interactions with Syrian refugees and humanitarian workers in Rome to advance a more sophisticated understanding of refugee exceptionality in the context of migration literature. This dissertation builds on anthropology of migration’s discussions around refugee exceptionality by moving past debates around asylum qualification to focus on how refugees, who are generally viewed as worthy of protection, are framed as a threat or burden to host nations. Through an attention to deservingness, this project draws upon theoretical threads from migration and refugee studies, political and religious anthropology, and European studies to produce a multi-dimensional ethnographic study of how humanitarian workers justify refugee resettlement in Italy by conceptualizing a deserving refugee subject and how they expect refugees to demonstrate this deservingness in order to be legible as “worthy” by Italian society and the Italian state.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2020

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Hefny, Sara Mahmoud, "The Most Deserving: Syrian Refugee Resettlement in Salvini's Italy" (2020). Anthropology Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:1129382/

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Anthropology Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Anthropology department.
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The Most Deserving: Syrian Refugee Resettlement in Salvini's Italy