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Producing memory: Narratives of suffering in the asylum experience

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Abstract

When someone applies for asylum in Italy, he or she is supposed to compose a personal story – referred to literally as his or her ‘memory’ [memoria] – and to present it in front of a commission. There is a coral work on the assembly of someone’s memory: memories are recounted orally, translated, reported, reconstructed and evaluated. This article focuses on the duality of memory production within the asylum procedure, analyzing the work of legal operators in relation to the act of remembering traumatic events. The former is based on the legal procedures for the recognition of international protection, while the latter is deeply related to the asylum seeker who is required to remember, demonstrate and perform memories, especially traumatic ones. On the one hand, memory represents the key to accessing social rights and thereby promotes the practice of citizenship. On the other hand, memory can be part of a victimisation process that reinforces the refugee label.

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Notes

  1. The Italian definition of this professional figure is operatore legale, as indicated in the Handbook (Manuale Operativo) published by the Servizio Centrale of the SPRAR Project.

  2. Commissione Territoriale per il Riconoscimento della Protezione Internazionale. The Territorial Commission is composed by four members, two from the Ministry of the Intern, one representing the local authorities and one from the UNHCR. There is also an interpreter.

  3. Centri di Accoglienza per Richiedenti Asilo.

  4. Emergenza Nord Africa.

  5. Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati, SPRAR – www.serviziocentrale.org

  6. In the present article the quotes from interviews and authors were translated from Italian into English by the author herself.

  7. The Italian word used by Beneduce is ferita. It could be translated either as wound, injury either with a figurative meaning as hurt, suffering.

  8. The literally translated CLMs. In this work the role of CLMs is not treated but is important to underline the fundamental role covered by them in the construction of asylum stories and in general in the refugee experience.

  9. There is a further set of phases in the asylum application process after the Territorial Commission has listened to the applicant; they consist of the communication of the Commission’s decision and, in case of rejection, of the possibility for the applicant to appeal against such decision. In this article I will only refer to the phases before the Commission’s decision.

  10. In this article I will cautiously refer to the concept of trauma as concept broadly discussed and written about; Beneduce (2010) refers to the ‘economy of the narration and the witness’ (p. 44) when speaking about the concept of trauma, and questions himself how Levi or Jean would react in front of the summarization of their ‘memories’ and their ‘sense of death’ with a term such as trauma (p. 44), used as explication of their post-condition. In this piece I do not have the pretension to discuss the complexities involved in the use of a concept such as trauma.

  11. In Italy there are two possible statuses related to international protection and another additional status. The first one is the refugee status, which has the highest level of facilitation in accessing several rights, such as the possibility of applying for citizenship or family reunification; the second one is the subsidiary protection that has a length of 3 years; finally, there is humanitarian protection that is of 1 year’s duration and is a particular Italian type of residence permit.

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  1. University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa 1, Trieste, 34128, Italy

    Virginia Signorini

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Signorini, V. Producing memory: Narratives of suffering in the asylum experience. Subjectivity 8, 382–408 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2015.17

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