Exposing the private, engaging in the public. Asylum seekers, intimate publics and normative performances of public participation

By bringing together scholarship on affective (non)citizenship and critical geographies of public space, in this article we examine how the exposure refugees’ intimate lives, private relationalities personal histories mediate their conditional access to “the public”. Drawing long-term ethnographic engagement field asylum Italy, show seekers are confronted with changing patterns obligation dependency both lives. On one hand, elicitation multiple life details is only currency for them negotiate state institutions a potential “right stay”. other “hosting community” increasingly contingent normative performances participation, which often involve domestic activities relations be cultivated or semi-public spaces. These reconfigurations speak about broader redefinitions sphere, oriented towards rising importance as proper terrain legitimacy inclusion. Yet, exposing self does not guarantee recognition; rather, incorporation refugees sphere most naturalises belonging national space.