| This dissertation provides an anthropological critique of the idea of Europe in the European Union through the perspectives of immigration and socio-political integration. It puts forward the concept of the 'haven,' rather than the more common metaphorical tropes of family, home and fortress, in order to explore how a 'social Europe' can paradoxically serve to further marginalize the disempowered.;The ethnographic analysis explores the experiences of two populations, Kurds and Italians, in the context of tourism in southern Italy. The Kurds, as refugees and immigrants, and as part of a nationalist diaspora, entered into Europe to make claim upon its haven as refuge---where they might be given respite in its modernity. The Italians, as southerners and as European citizens, made claims upon a Europe that might salvage their home. Yet in their experiences of displacement, these people were constrained to sell their selves, their labor, and ultimately their senses of home. I argue that their distinct but operationally similar imaginings of 'home' were expressions of neoliberal geographies mapped within political, economic and social strictures, providing stability and certainty of belonging even as their construction reinscribed its loss.;The dissertation considers the nature of the nation-state at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the context of the transformations of the European Union, appeals of diversity, and recourses to multiculturalism. |
