Temporalità urbane. Politiche del controllo e reti migranti

In the last years, migrations toward Europe have redefined the geography of the continent at many levels of scalarity. The large incoming flows immediately dislocated national borders' role, despite the creation of detention centers in the edges of Fortress Europe; as well as the urban landscape has been changed, both by migrants' arrival, as the proliferation of different way of life in the city. Far from being exclusively individual migrations, emotional networks and relationshipsare central factors in choosing the destination, thus creating new territories and real network of solidarity in the cities. At the same time, particularly in the last decade, these bonds are thrown into crisis by criminalization and control policies that European Union has applied within its borders, in spite of national specificities and application timing. Such policies are characterized by continuity and similar to those enacted in other Western countries: the U.S. case is emblematic of the effects they may have in migrant communities. The criminalization of foreigners, linked with racial profiling, as well as the risk of deportation are tangible and constant threat that they face in their daily lives. The image of close territories, supported by that social structure always powered by migrants, is deeply challenged by the racialization of the foreigner and his potential removability. The self-perception as a precarious and temporary subject deeply undermines the emotional structure of urban space, banishing the migrant in a temporality of the not-yet (citizen) and provisional.