Images of belonging among West African men seeking asylum in Italy

Abstract

In this article I set out to analyze image-making among West African men seeking asylum in Turin, Italy, in relation to the burden of invisibility and hypervisibility, to which they are continuously subjected. Considering blackness not as a skin color but as a social construct that opposes whiteness on an inferior level, this article is about African people who are seen – “coded”– as black and their self-representation in public or semi-public spaces that are “coded” as white. After analyzing the social forces, forms of institutional and racist violence and institutional abandonment that shape the migratory experience in Italy, I will argue that these images open up an expressive space, where it is possible to articulate the rejection of being rejected, or rather the right to live and be happy in Italy, visualizing precarious forms of belonging, which are remindful of the notion of “Afropean”.

This analysis is based on ethnographic research I have been conducting since 2017 in Turin on the intersections between digital technology, social inequalities, and the application for political asylum.