Asylum Seekers, Power Relations, and Everyday Resistance Practices: an Ethnographic Study

In Italy, the experience of applying for asylum exposes many asylum seekers to lengthy and depersonalizing procedures to have their refugee status acknowledged and to their social and spatial segregation inside various reception centers dotted around the country. Many studies have shown that this situation can contribute to making asylum seekers feel inert, disempowered, infantilized, and subjugated, but it can also generate forms of resistance. Based on an ethnographic study conducted at three reception centers in northern Italy, this article, utilizing James C. Scott's famous concept of everyday resistance, explores some of the practices adopted by asylum seekers to cope with the bureaucratic rituals involved in their acknowledgement as refugees, and with the restrictions of everyday life at these centers. Studying asylum seekers' resistance practices can shed light on the workings of some of the power relations in which they are entangled that aim to control and discipline them.