Indigesto

Abstract

The article proposes a reflection on the production mechanisms of migrant subjectivity within the Italian reception and integration system and network. It begins with the words of a Gambian asylum seeker, a beneficiary of the system, as a starting point for an ethnographic study. The aim is to connect the experience of the individual with a complex and shape-shifting socionormative framework. By interweaving a multitude of interpretative dimensions, including health, biopolitical, and the role of public narrative and stereotypical representations, this epistemological reflection enables us to consider the diverse pathways to integration. The combination of these hermeneutic lenses provides an ethnography that considers a testimony, a depository of truth guaranteed by the anthropological discipline itself, as it is a public and militant science profoundly engaged in social action. This approach underscores the importance of understanding the intersectional impacts of health, biopolitics, and media on the lived experiences of migrants within the Italian integration context.

Keywords

• anthropology of institutions
• biopolitics
• ethnography of migration processes
• migrants public representations
• migration governance