Inspired by recent anthropological debates on sociality and on connectivity - namely on the conceptual relevance of multi-scalar and trans-local interaction in the field of transnational migration - our project “Remaking Sociality” aims at investigating newly emerging connectivities and changing visions of sociality characterizing ongoing mass migration from Eritrea. We doubt that cultural frames of social relations are simply re-established elsewhere, but expect that globally interconnected dynamics - the global migration regime, national politics and transnational relations - decisively affect broader social, moral and emotional spheres as much as interpersonal relationships.Narratives of belonging, notions of morality and webs of meanings play a key role in the remaking of socialityin Eritrean migration, where old and new social cleavages along political, ethnic and generational lines have become increasingly influential. In a transnationally outstretched, but fragmentary and uncertain moral economy, Eritreans apparently refer back to transmitted social traditions of the Eritrean pre-independence era in order to invoke stability, reliability, and cultural truth. While being Eritrean is still meaningful and moral obligations such as unity and solidarity, still shape the self-representation of migrants and their social praxis (i.e. reciprocal help at family, ethnic and national level), processes of re-ethnicization and regionalization are opening new scenarios that we intend to investigate. 

Our diachronic and multi-sited research aims at an original understanding of the transformation of social dynamics and boundaries in transnational migration, beyond static perspectives on nation or diaspora and beyond presentist immediacy. “Remaking sociality” is built upon a preliminary interview study on Eritrean refugees in different countries of transit and provisional arrival, initiated by the Felsberg Institute and directed by M. Treiber and H. Quehl. Simultaneous field research (Oct-Nov 2016) was conducted by six researchers (including A. Massa) in six countries (Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Israel, Italy and Germany), which are essential steps along the Eritrean migratory routes to Germany. Our respective research proposal is currently under review.