ABSTRACT

This article argues that the concept of ‘cosmologies of destinations’ is a useful theoretical tool to provide an emic understanding of the social and moral meanings of migrants’ journeys. By this concept, I refer to the hierarchical representations of the world that orient migration journeys. Drawing from my multi-sited ethnography with Eritreans at home and abroad, I illustrate how migration destinations were mapped by my informants along an implicit but widely shared normative and moral scale, with different levels of perceived safety, individual freedom, social recognition and economic achievements. After charting the theoretical field concerning social imaginaries and cultures of migration, I show the importance of symbolic and moral structures for understanding my informants’ mobility choices at different stages of their migration process. I conclude by highlighting the potential of this concept to study the interplay of mobility and immobility, particularly in the framework of increasing constraints.

摘要

本文认为，“目的地宇宙观”的概念是一种有用的理论工具，可以对移民旅程的社会和道德意义进行全面的理解。通过这个概念，我指的是面向迁移旅程的世界的分层表示。从我与国内外厄立特里亚人的多站点民族志中，我说明了我的线人如何根据隐含但广泛共享的规范和道德尺度绘制移民目的地，并具有不同程度的感知安全、个人自由、社会认可和经济成就. 在绘制了关于迁移的社会想象和文化的理论领域之后，我展示了符号和道德结构对于理解我的被调查者在迁移过程的不同阶段的迁移选择的重要性。