Building Participatory Archives of Somali Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Europe: Proposals, Dilemmas and Challenges

The paper presents preliminary considerations on a research project aimed at co-producing a digital archive of the migrations of Somali refugees and asylum seekers residing in Italy. We structure the paper in four points which represent on-going lines of reflection rather than conclusive thoughts. First, we introduce the historically situated ideas and practices of memory making about migration of young Somali refugees and asylum seekers who during the last fifteen years have travelled from the Horn of Africa to Europe via the Libyan-Mediterranean route. Then, we discuss the possibilities of how a process of co-archiving migration experiences, involving forms of solidarity, violence and social-economic vulnerabilities, can publicly document and represent the memory making dynamics. In the third point we debate the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of co-archiving as a reflexive pathway that leads to subjectivation processes ranging from resilience to emancipation. In the case of Somali young migrants this relates to the individual and collective construction of social membership within the setting of inter-generational relations and the transnational cultural ecumene assembled during the decades of the Somalis’ diasporic dislocation in different continents. Pathways of subjectivation are also framed within and challenged by the everyday conditions of uncertainty generated by the European migration regimes. In the final point, we highlight the ethical and epistemological implications of collecting, cataloguing, archiving and disseminating public representations of this co-produced body of knowledge.