Minori rumeni tra percorsi migratori e rappresentazioni. Nè soli, nè accompagnati a Bologna
Creators: name: Cristea Pop, Casandra Ioana <1978>
Publisher: name: Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
Year: 2008
Subjects: M-DEA/01 Discipline demoetnoantropologiche

description: The thesis deals with the heterogenous category of the “unaccompanied minors”,
concentrating the scientific work on those who migrate from Romania to the Italian city of Bologna.
Between different migratory routes that include Romanian minors, I chose to explore the ones
linked with the underground and illegal contexts. In order to analyse the reasons and the
morphology of their migratory career, I used the multisituated field research which allowed me to
consider the social policies in both the Romanian and the Italian environment. The main debate on
the situation of the “unaccompanied children” refers to the extent to which these minors leave their
country of origin “accompanied” by different adult figures and it also involves the role played by
these adults.
The first chapter is dedicated to a brief theoretical and methodological introduction to the
main arguments of the thesis such as Romanian migration to Italy, trafficking in human beings,
transnationality of migrant’s migration and decentered cooperation as a means of contrasting illegal
migration and trafficking. Each field of research is characterized by a specific methodological
approach, but they are all linked by the anthropological perspective I adopted throughout the entire
work.
The Romanian context, analized from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective represents
the object of the second chapter. Some aspects of the Regime policies and other characteristics of
the Romanian poscomunist period of “transition” are useful frameworks that become a background
of the migration flows outside the country.
The third chapter focuses on the Romanian patterns of migration. The reconstruction of
some past attitudes that Romanians adopted towards migration are relevant in order to reveal the
continuity with the present migratory practices. A consistent part is dedicated to a concrete example
based on a field research in Bologna on a group of Romanian roma migrating from the south of
Romania. The contact with these persons opened a debate on the limits between legal and illegal
migration practices among the Romanians. The conclusion is that minors’ migration to Italy follows
the adult patterns and flows.
The nucleus of the field researches is included in the fourth and the fifth chapter. Before
presenting the settings and the itineraries of the field researches, some deconstructive reflections are
made on the representations that common sense and social sciences create on concepts as “child”,
“minor” and “childhood”. A first perspective on the Romanian migrant minors emerges from a
research concentrated on a group of roma teenagers engaged in Bologna in activities like
windscreen washing, pocket-picking, begging and street prostitution. The aim of the research was to
gain access to their daily life, to observe their relationship with the adults who “accompany” them
and the strategies they activate in order to take some material profit out of their migratory
experience.
A parallel field research focuses on the Romanian minors who are part of the roma group
coming from the south of Romania. Most of them are reunited with their family in Bologna, but
according to the Italian law, they are all living as illegal migrants. Others are only temporary
sheltered by these families and they meanwhile dedicate to illegal survviving practices. An
interesting point of my participant observation was to reveal the motivations that these minors give
when asked about the refusal to start a legal career inside the local Centres dedicated to the “non
accompanied minors”. Their autoreflexivity brings some light on the controversy regarding the
adequacy of the local and national care system and the migratory projects the minors have. In this
respect, a small part of the research is dedicated to the phenomena of minors’ street prostitution in
Bologna, as a useful contribution to the fragmented vision researchers have on the
“unaccompanied” or “separated” children.
The last chapter focuses on a decentered cooperation project that emerged as an alternative
response the local administration from Bologna had chosen for facing the presence of numerous
migrants coming from the south of Romania. The group of Romanian roma who was also the object
of my field research became the starting point for the cooperation proposals between the city of
Bologna and the city of Craiova. Although there are three projects involving the two
administrations, throughout a period of stage in the Romanian city of Craiova I chose to analyse,
only the one dedicated to the “urgent measures” requested in order to contrast the illegal migration
and the trafficking in minors. This final part of the thesis highlightens the possible contribution that
such a project might bring to the study of a complex and in some parts contradictory phenomena as
that of the “unaccompanied” migrant minors.