Torin Jones

BOYS FEEL BLACK: RACE AND THE EROTICS OF MINOR MIGRANT GOVERNANCE IN SICILY

Known officially as MSNA (minori stranieri non accompagnati), over 80,000 unaccompanied

foreign minors entered Italy from 2014 to 2020. This number includes all who plausibly—based

upon appearance—claim to be under 18 years old. Under National Law 176/1991 and then

National Law 47/2017, Italy must accommodate MSNA within the territory and provide them

with state care. Italy must serve their ‘best interests.’ Many migrants, therefore, present

falsely young ages at the Mediterranean border. They achieve what so many others cannot,

entry into the European Union.

The despair flooding many MSNA migrant centers initially struck me as a conundrum. Sicily

ceremoniously welcomes young migrants amid ongoing border carnage. Politicians pose with

young asylum-seekers, smiling for reporters, as these migrants disembark at Sicilian ports.

“Integrate! Be Italian,” migrant center staff exhort migrants.

Despite myriad legal protections, migrants routinely assert that Black people could not

establish lives in Italy. Young migrants came to such understandings while living in youth

migrant centers, spaces where migrants and staff theoretically undertook integration with joy

and enthusiasm. MSNA arguably receive more state care than any other category of migrants

in Italy but exude incredible despondence and frustration, especially concerning issues of race

and racism.

Through fieldwork in eastern Sicily, I examined how young migrants derive and act upon

understandings of Blackness. My dissertation most centrally explores a forceful human

experience at the heart of Italy’s complex response to young migrant governance:

Black sadness.