Proximity violence against women refugees and migrants in Sicily. Operators’ testimonies

Abstract

The research presented in this chapter intended illustrating the practices im-plemented to foster inclusion of and support to migrants above all, female refugees/asylum seekers hosted by reception centres in Sicily . At the same time, it sought to outline some of the limits the reception system presents when it comes to supporting victims of proximity vio-lence. A description of these practices and identification of the limits became, therefore, the two-fold purpose of this investigative project (PRoximity On VIolence: Defence and Equity) fouded by European Community Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme -2014-2020). To carry out the research two methodological choices had to be made: one concerned the strategy to apply in order to identify the stakeholders and operators to be interviewed; the other was the soft-ware to use to manage the data provided by the 78 non-directive interviews. The aim was to select operators capable of bearing testimony con-sistent with the skills required to receive migrants within the hosting system while, at the same time, performing the different roles required to take charge of asylum seekers and make choices strategic to the hosting service as a whole. The interviews carried out were non-directive but followed the flow of the narration without interfering when it seemed to take a tangential direction; on the contrary it treasured the original inputs these devia-tions produced. These interviews were narrative interactions based on profound generative exigencies, permitting the production of social meaning interpreted and re-elaborated thanks to the experiences shared during the interviews. Moreover, the choice of software. NVivo 12 (Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing, Live Searching and Theorizing), proved to be a fundamental tool during the entire construction process of the research project. One of its peculiarities is that of functioning as a sort of hypertext, a feature which permits the collection of unstructured data within a procedural framework.