Precarity, Affect and Problem Solving with Mobile Phones by Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Migrants in Naples, Italy

Abstract

This article examines mobile phone use among migrants in the Naples region to consider how this mediated technology enables them to mitigate or resolve uncertainties of everyday working life in relation with others. In particular, I am interested in precarity, which has been understood as both an analytical concept and an emergent subjective form of identification for citizens in Europe to express anxiety about work conditions and social alienation. Precarity emerges from the reconfigurations of political economies in neoliberal regimes that force flexible and temporary labour contracts, in contrast to the ‘certainties’ of welfare state labour markets and social arrangements. ICTs recently introduced in European states, such as biometric analysis tools and computer software and networks used to harmonize border entry across EU member states, can create an impediment to legal status and increase the surveillance and exclusion of others, but at the same time ICTs are vital to a forced migrant’s sense of security and wellbeing.

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