Slow Mobility. Processes of agency among refugees eating and living at the Tiburtina station in Rome

The essay is based on ethnographic research conducted in an informal encampment near the Tiburtina station in the city of Rome, where refugees and asylum seekers live in a situation of extreme precariousness. Using an anthropological approach, the researchers explore the trajectories of movement of both the refugees and the activists who support them. Such trajectories radiate out from the encampment to a variety of places in the city, including canteens, medical units, legal support services, police stations, the city’s downtown area, museums, cafés, ethnic restaurants, and sport and social centres. All these places are seen as fundamental moments in the process of domestication of a politically charged urban space in which refugees, or at least some of them, try their best to exercise their agentivity potential. Data are interpreted in line with a review of the mobility turn perspective as well as in light of some theoretical aspects related to the concept of agency.