Protection Versus Project: Italian Humanitarian Interventions Towards Refugees as a Challenge to Equity

Abstract

The relationship between SPRAR workers and refugees within the Italian Reception System is characterized by the interplay between different meanings ascribed to two concepts, protection and project. Portraying refugees as victims reduce them to silent subjects, where protection simply means passively receiving help, and project is implicitly imposed by "experts". However another approach to protection and project grounds on refugees as vulnerable persons. In this scenario, the dialogic relation between different representations become the contested terrain where a pedagogical discourse on refugees is at work. The risk is also that actions on behalf of refugees will not produce a real enfranchisement, perpetuating instead conditions of marginality, and economic dependency.