Beyond Compassionate AID: Precarious Bureaucrats and Dutiful Asylum Seekers in Italy

Abstract

So here I am, a victim of a violent system, exactly like those who are in front of me [i.e., the asylum seekers] and unload on me their frustration. And me, who I am actually a human being, I respond to another human being with my own anger, the anger of someone who sees her own aspirations and hopes getting wasted in a ruinous project, with job contracts that do not allow you to plan your life and forge your future, precarious projects for precarious workers, and sometimes a sense of exhaustion and bitterness stands above everything I don’t have the right to holiday or sick leave, because I have a short-term contract. But this, to those who are in front of us, we cannot explain it. Hence, they often see us as distant, bored … and we cannot establish a connection with the human being that lies beyond the “guest.” (Galieni 2015)