Table Of Content

SOCIOLOGY | ANTHROPOLOGY b e Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediter- l l ranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where o so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with n i refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee pop- | T ulations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and H visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred bound- aries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational E marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emo- B tions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations. I G “Milena Belloni’s engrossing ethnography—carried out across time, space, and place— is particularly commendable because of her scholarly commitment to ‘getting things G right.’ The Eritrean women and men whose lives provided its empirical ground will see A their pain, joy, and contradictions reflected back at them. This is scholar activism at M its finest.” LAURA BISAILLON, Professor of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough B L “The Big Gamble is a study of a migrant group that has received very little scholarly E attention. Its focus on the Eritrea to Europe corridor is a novel approach, and Milena Belloni has produced a compelling and courageous account.” PETER KIVISTO, T Augustana College and University of Helsinki H E M “A monumental and perceptive story of migration, taking the reader on a journey not IG R just from Africa to Europe but through reflections on moralities, risk, and trust that are A T central to contemporary mobility and immobility. Belloni’s account of Eritrean migra- I O N tion experiences is powered by formidable fieldwork and written with warmth and O wisdom.” JØRGEN CARLING, Peace Research Institute Oslo F E R MILENA BELLONI is a sociologist at the University of Trento. Her doctoral research IT R THE BIG GAMBLE on Eritrean migration received the 2016 IMISCOE Award. Belloni has published in E A the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. N S T O E U UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS R THE MIGRATION OF ERITREANS TO EUROPE O www.ucpress.edu | www.luminosoa.org P E A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. milena belloni Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Cover illustration: Sidet-Exile, by Ambasager Welday, 2015. Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Anne G. Lipow Endowment Fund in Social Justice and Human Rights. The Big Gamble The Big Gamble The Migration of Eritreans to Europe Milena Belloni UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by Milena Belloni This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC-BY-NC-ND] license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses. Suggested citation: Belloni, M. The Big Gamble: The Migration of Eritreans to Europe. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1525/luminos.82 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Belloni, Milena, author. Title: The big gamble : the migration of Eritreans to Europe / Milena Belloni. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019]| Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019021373 (print) | LCCN 2019980901 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520298705 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520970755 (ebook other) Subjects: LCSH: Eritreans—Social aspects—Europe. | Africans—| Migrations—Social aspects. Classification: LCC DT16.5 .B44 2019 (print) | LCC DT16.5 (ebook) | DDC 304.8/40635—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021373 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980901 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Protagonists ix Introduction 1 1. When Migration Becomes the Norm: Ingredients of an Ordinary Crisis 25 2. Hypermobile and Immobile: Diverse Responses to Protracted Displacement in Ethiopia and Sudan 50 3. An Endless Journey: Transnational and Peer Pressure in Onward Migration in Europe 79 4. Moralities of Border Crossing: Inside the World of Smuggling and Transnational Marriages 101 5. Entrapped: Making Sense of High-Risk Migration through Gambling 125 Conclusion 137 Postscript 145 Appendix. Backstage: Notes on Methodology and Ethics 147 Notes 169 References 197 Index 225 Acknowledgments This work would have not been possible without the help and care of my Eritrean informants, whose real names have been changed to protect their safety. They are the protagonists and the soul of this book. Among them I would like to mention my friends Violetta, Johanna, Lwam, Alazar, Adonay, Gabriel, Esther, Saba, Baba, Gebreyesus, Samuel, Michael, Paolos, Noah and his Kunama family, Maria, Sister Kudussan, and Sister Lethe Brahne and the nuns of her congregation, whose work is of immense relief to many. It is to all of them that I dedicate this book. I am obliged to Ambassador Renzo Rosso for providing me with institutional support while doing fieldwork in Ethiopia, and to Dr. Fekadu Adugna and the Department of Anthropology of Addis Ababa University for facilitating my local academic affiliation. I am also deeply indebted to Martina Messa, who welcomed me in Asmara, Ernesto Molinari and his family in Addis Ababa for their support during the initial phases of my stay in Addis Ababa, and to Khaled Mohamed for facilitating my entering Sudan. I owe a special thanks to Ephrem Tadesse for his logistical support in Shire and to Mohand Hassan Fadeel for his priceless help in Khartoum. The writing process has been long and strenuous and would have not been possible without the encouragement of my family and friends. But money also helps, and I am indebted to the American Academy in Rome for awarding me with the Italian Fellowship in Modern Italian Studies and providing me with the perfect envi- ronment and means to complete the first draft of the book. I am especially grateful to Eric Cazdyn for pushing me to get to the core of the ideas that inspire this book. At the University of Trento, I would like to thank Paolo Boccagni for his patient comments and Giuseppe Sciortino for his wise jokes, which made my doctoral time much more inspiring. Finally, I would also like to thank Jørgen Carling, Nauja Kleist, Michael Collyer and Anna Triandafyllidou, who encouraged me to turn my thesis into a book, and the anonymous reviewers who critically assessed it. vii