Introduction

The introduction revisits the debate of refugee and forced migration. It suggests to move beyond current categories, such as refugees and forced migrants, to untangle how mobility and immobility are produced and reproduced along the journey. This means acknowledging the possibility of refugees to choose and its political implications. The introduction argues that not only access to socio-economic resources, but also imagination, morality and emotion are crucial elements to understand the complex trajectories of those who seek asylum in Europe today. It presents the relevance of the Eritrean case in the debate about protracted crisis, long-term displacement and refugees’ migration to Europe. It introduces two of the main notions developed in the book: the one of gamble and the one of cosmologies of destinations. The introduction provides an overview of the multi-sited fieldwork research –the ethnography of a corridor – as well as a summary of the whole book.