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This talk is based on 20 months of fieldwork, undertaken in Bologna, Italy, between 2015 and2018, in which I followed activists—primarily those affiliated with Eritrea Democratica, or a Democratic Eritrea—as they engaged with city politicians, church groups, and media organizations to petition for the rights of Eritrean refugees within and across Italy's borders. I draw attention to what I call a crisis of legibility. As Black Africans often constructed as economic migrants, and as internationally recognized refugees, Eritreans trouble the refugee and economic migrant binary that structures both internationalr efugee law and public understandings of “deservingness.” Their position as illegible subjects elucidate the competing logics of the systems that govern them: migration deterrence on the one hand, and the asylum and humanitarian system on the other. This illegibility means that though Eritreans remain formally recognized—in 2015, 91% of Eritrean asylum petitions were recognized across EU member states—they are nonetheless unprotected and exposed to violence. Perhaps worse, efforts to fix Eritreans within specific categories have had serious and often violent material effects: Global North countries prosecute Eritrean refugees as “migrant smugglers” for aiding kin in transit (Hung 2024); and European countries wishing to reduce migrant arrivals collaborate with the Eritrean regime’s violently repressive transnational politics and policies. Activists navigate this increasingly hostile legal and political environment; they must also work to reverse diminishing public solidarity for the displaced. Importantly, in their efforts to render themselves legible to European publics, activists ethnographically attune to European society—its norms, political structures, and moral and political economies. Sponsored by Human Rights Studies and African American and African Studies
