The Winner of the Rinus Penninx Best Paper Award 2018 are: Sarah Nimführ and Buba Sesay

11 July 2018

The Rinus Penninx Best Paper Award 2018 has been awarded to Sarah Nimführ and Buba Sesay for their paper entitled: “Lost in Limbo? Moving Contours and Practices of Settlements of Non-Deportable Refugees in the Mediterranean Area.”

Malta, an island-state surrounded by water, limits the mobility of non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers who want to leave due to the lived consequences of disintegration practices. Stripped off any legal entitlements non-deportable refugees only have restricted access to the job market, basic services and health care. They have no formal legal status whilst their presence and stay is known by the Immigration Authorities. Even though the length of their non-deportability status is indefinite, they are not able to leave the island-state regulated and independently. However, although non-deportability and a “Rejected status” cause refugees’ immobility and restricted possibilities in terms of enforceability of rights, new spaces of opportunities emerge as mobility to mainland Europe––against all odds–– can be observed. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta and (Southern-)Italy in 2015 – 2016, as well as resting upon first-hand insights, lived experiences of non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers in Malta and due to follow up migration in Italy are illuminated. While enacting their denied right of mobility, new challenges reveal themselves, resulting in a life “betwixt and between” that continuous even after they leave Malta.
Non-deportable refugees end up in lives of limbo by being excluded from various fields of social participation, particularly social security, and become dependent on precarious work relationships as well as unfortunate living conditions, both in Malta and in Italy. From a micro-analytical perspective moving contours and practices of settlements are illustrated.

Information about the authors

Sarah Nimführ is a cultural anthropologist and DOC-Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) at the Department of European Ethnology, University of Vienna. Between 2015-2018 she carried out research about the impacts of non-deportability on rejected asylum seekers at EU’s external borders in Malta and Italy. Following an approach with a praxeological understanding and ethnographic methods, her research links different levels of analysis and examines the interactions of various migration actors.

Currently, Sarah Nimführ is a lecturer at the University of Vienna: her classes comprise ethics and methods in the field of flight, engaged anthropology as well as forced migration studies with a focus on Mediterranean islands. Her main research interests consist of Critical Forced Migration Studies, European Border Regime, Island Studies and Ethnographic Methods. Before working with Buba Sesay, Sarah Nimführ has already worked together with Gabriel Samateh, who also arrived in Malta as a refugee, in order to practice a collaborative approach towards knowledge production.

Buba Sesay grew up in Sierra Leone and has lived in Europe since 2013. In order not to endanger his current status, at this point no further biographical information will be presented.

 

Latest News

IMISCOE Network Office

UCLan-MIDEX Webinar: ‘Where we meet: how site-specific curatorial interventions impact engagement with Black history in museums in Northwest England specifically, Lancaster and Morecambe’, by Kirsty Millicent Theresa Roberts

7 June 2023
My study will discuss the isolation/ ghettoisation of Black histories and the practices of tacking on or portioning off areas to exhibit these, in contrast to entrenched local histories with positions of permanence and prominence. I will explore how to...
IMISCOE Network Office

Call for papers for the international conference on migration at Ca' Foscari University

30 June 2023
International conference 28-29 November 2023 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION: POLICIES, GENDER, CITIES, IDENTITY, CLIMATE Contemporary international migration is shaped by an ever-growing number...
IMISCOE Network Office

Call for a PhD Candidate in the Economics and Politics of Migration (0.8-1.0 fte)

7 June
The Department of Economics of Leiden Law School at Leiden University has a vacancy for a: PhD Candidate in the Economics and Politics of Migration (0.8-1.0 fte) Research project: The Economics and Politics of Migration Migration is a hot topic. We...
IMISCOE Network Office

Call for Papers — Migration temporalities and migrants’ experience of time in rural and remote places

Deadline for abstracts is 9th June 2023
You are warmly invited to submit an abstract for a Special issue focusing on time and temporalities of migration in rural and remote places. Migration is often understood as a spatial process where time is implicit (Baby-Collin et al., 2017; Griffiths...
IMISCOE Network Office

UCLan-MIDEX Webinar: Challenges of support for children and families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) in policy and practice during Covid-19 pandemic, by Bozena Sojka and Dr Andrew Jolly

7 June 2023
No recourse to public funds (NRPF) is a provision in the Immigration Rules, and Section 115 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 that applies to a range of different people, including undocumented migrants or those with temporary leave to enter or...