Deported as an adult, under plastic planes as an adult, exploited in the vegetable field as an adult - Robert's story.

Nasio Fontaine was a favorite reggae artist of Robert's. Like Robert, he always found hope even in the greatest misery. And Fontaine, too, worked for many years as a day laborer, on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, a continuing colony that is part autonomous country of the Dutch Kingdom and part French overseas territory, and today a tax and offshore paradise. Robert (who came from Senegal and Gambia, formerly French and British colonies), on the other hand, was working in fields in Italy, where he had been deported to from the Netherlands after the Dutch authorities told him (as had the German authorities before him), that he was over 18 years old.

I, Sabine, met Robert at the shelter for unaccompanied minors in a medium sized German city. It was late fall 2018, and the day I met him, he had to leave the shelter because the youth welfare offices didn't believe he was 16. I accompanied him to another town to the camp for the initial reception of adult asylum seekers. Arriving at the initial reception center, a woman fetched forms in English, which she filled out with Robert. “How old are you?” the woman asked him. Robert's rejection notice said that he had given 5.5.2002 as his date of birth - so he would have been 16. The woman pointed her finger at him and said that he should write on the form she put in front of him: 5.5.2000 - with that date, he would have been 18. Robert, however, wrote on the many forms in each case: 5.5.200_, as if he wanted to keep open the possibility of 2 (and therefore an age of 16 years) at the end, and she kept writing another last zero on it (5.5.2000, making him an adult), which then destroyed this hope every time. Tonight he would be redistributed to another camp, nationwide, the lady informed us.

It dawned on me only at that moment, as if I had suppressed it before: Robert was deportable from now on.

Robert had to move to a large camp in Giessen, where I met him a few days later. The camp was quite outside the city, about half an hour from the train station. A big barbed wire fence around several houses. A security man from a private security company stood in front of house VII. There were some of them around this camp, they controlled incoming and outgoing, they wore neon yellow jackets. Since I couldn't find Robert (in house XII), he finally came to me, in front of house VII, he was running. Then we walked together towards Maria, the legal advisor. He gave me two pieces of paper, “information.” On one was a red stamp, “X-ray.” The other piece of paper was documentation of a conversation, “How I can go back to Africa.” He had signed there that he had been informed about the possibility of “voluntary return” with IOM. The next day at 7:30 he would have another interview, probably about Dublin. He wore the reminder of the appointment as a red paper band around his arm. They would then come knocking at 6 tomorrow, he explained to me, to wake him up. Another paper band was labeled with his room number.
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The security woman at the entrance to the camp would not let me come forward to Maria, saying that I was not allowed to come into the camp with her. Maria then suggested that I could join the counseling session over the phone, which I did. During the conversation it turned out that Robert had thrown away all his papers in the meantime, including the youth welfare office’s refusal to take him into custody. Without this paper, however, he would not be able to file an appeal.

A few minutes after the conversation, I called Robert... He immediately told me: “I really appreciate what you have done. But I decided to leave, Sabine. I will go to Holland, or France. I will go and see my best friend, but then I'll leave.”  We met again briefly to say goodbye. Later, looking back, he told me why he had left:

“The situation was no good. Many people. Food wasn't good. It was like a prison. You have to register when you enter and register when you go.” (Interview 18.2.2020)

After that, we talked on the phone every now and then or sent each other short Whatsapp messages. Robert had gone to Holland, and had tried it there again as a minor. But there, too, his age of minority was disputed. He was finally deported to Italy.

In February 2020, just before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, I met Robert in the southern Italian city of Foggia. He had been living nearby for almost a year now. Initially, he had gone to the camp where he had been from 2016. But he had no longer been allowed to stay there, although his asylum procedure was still ongoing. So he had slept on the street for a few nights, Robert told me. Then a man, now his friend, asked him to come and live with him “in the bush,” as Robert called it. There he lived with 10 others in a self made tent made of plastic sheets. Every now and then, some of the residents there would bring water. Robert showed me a video of him boiling water in a barrel on a fire, “If we want to take a bath, we do this.” “There is no place like home,” Robert said. “At home in Senegal, I was never homeless. I never had to suffer like this or experience something like this.” I, the ethnographer with German citizenship, had booked a vacation apartment for this trip, with water, toilets, stove, bed and balcony.From time to time Robert got a job in the fields planting tomatoes, cauliflower and other vegetables for the Italian and European markets. He reported that the work was very hard. 11 hours, 30 euros a day.

“And when you get home, in the night, you cannot sleep because of the pain your body has from the work.”

Robert’s story is not an isolated case. In 2019, the year of Robert’s first deportation, Italy was the country receiving most asylum seekers under Dublin regulations (Eurostat 2020), and most of those deported from Germany headed to Italy (BpB 2022). His experience as migrant worker is a very usual one in terms of deprivation, exploitation and “living” conditions. Most of the vegetables grown in Europe and the fruit offered in German supermarkets are produced by migrant workers in Germany (Schmidt 2021: 13), Italy (Corrado et al. 2018), France and Spain (Gertel and Sippel 2014: 31). Germany is the largest importer of fresh fruit and vegetables in Europe (Miserius und Behr 2021: 12f). In 2020, most of its imports came from Spain (34 per cent), followed by the Netherlands (16 per cent) and Italy (11 per cent) (Fruit and Vegetable Facts n.d.: 6). The global agri-food system makes it possible to have ‘fresh’ fruit and vegetables on the table regardless of the local climate and season. Notably, the fact that products are labeled as ‘organic’ does not mean that they have been produced under humane working conditions (Klawitter, Lüdke and Schrader 2020, Lünenschloß and Zimmermann 2019). The situation of migrant workers in Italy is well researched and reported on (see for example the work of Irene Peano and Allesandra Corrado). I have written about the connection of citizens and migrants like Robert through food production, trade and eating elsewhere (Netz 2023).

When we met in Foggia, Robert was walking very fast, he seemed very nervous and often looked around as if he feared something, someone. While he was talking, and not talking, he kept twitching his face in different ways, very slightly, but noticeably. We had a coffee, then he asked if we could go somewhere else.

He told me about racism in Italy. “I have known about racism before, but here it is the worst. I know people can be racist in Germany as well, but here is number one. Sometimes when I ask people about the way or something, they do not answer because I am black. When I came here and bought a new shirt and new shoes, a man said “uoooh he even buys a new shirt and new shoes”. Sometimes when I come somewhere people leave because I am black”. And he also talks about all the Italians, “Italian youth,” who go to Germany or Britain to work. Italians, he says, don't want to work in the fields here, “they don't want to do this kind of work, no”.

He also told me about Germans, French and British coming to Senegal and Gambia as tourists. They could travel there, but he could not just travel here.

He had come via the dangerous backway - the Sahara, Libya and the Mediterranean - which ended fatally for many. But Robert had survived. And he had learned many things on this dangerous journey, he told me.

We finally sat down on a marble bench in a small park, next to a statue of a saint. We sat down and Robert said:

“I have thought about this, the interview, you know. But here it is not safe for me. There is the mafia, you know. When they see that I give you an interview that will not be good for me.”

He said he didn't want the mafia to see his face on YouTube. After I ask him if it's ok if I just take notes and don't record anything, and change his name, he is very relieved, and so we do.

He told me that he came to Italy in 2016. “I was 16 in Italy..., 17, yeah, actually 17. In Germany I was 18. My friend just told me to say that I am a minor so that I would have a chance.

Now I am 21 years.” In Italy, he said, he was a minor when he arrived in 2016, but he lived with adults. Most importantly, he had not been able to go to school. And he had not received any treatment for his eye disease. That's why he made his way back to Germany. Here in Italy, he has since received his second asylum rejection. “I am tired of this asylum”. “Here I suffer,” he said. He works as a day laborer or weekly laborer. “Sometimes they contact me over my friend when they need more workers. I don't know when I get work. I work there when work is plenty. For 1, 2 weeks”. “And when do they pay you?” “Sometimes after a day, sometimes after weeks”. He was still suffering from an eye disease that he could not get treated for. Because without health insurance, he would have to pay for such treatment himself - and that is expensive. “But it is the work of God. Maybe it is my destiny to suffer”. When I say that I don't believe that God wants to see people suffer like this, he replies, “I sometimes thank God. Some people stay in the hospital. They have wealth but they don't have health. I have health. I get racism, for example. But I pray for him or her not to suffer. Suffering is not only here. I could also suffer in Africa.”

When I met him again a few days later, it was more relaxed. He talked again very fast and a lot. He spoke a lot about God, who plays an important role for him, to whom he is very grateful. He kept mentioning that one day he will have a child, and then he will tell his child his story. He kept repeating “For me, I don't know tomorrow” and said “If I have something better, I will help people. If I see person who suffers or is poor, I will help.”

Again and again Robert spoke of his hope that one day he would reach a point where he would have almost forgotten all this suffering of now. This hope he spoke of seemed unshakable. His plan at that time was to go to Portugal. He had heard that the Portuguese gave people like him a document for 6 months and after that even a residence permit, with which he can also get a work contract. He would only stay here in Italy for one or two weeks, he said, as there was still work in the fields. Then he would be on his way.

A few days after our meeting, the first big Corona outbreak hit Italy. Months later, Robert made it to the Netherlands. In 2021, he was deported to Italy again. In 2022, he made it to Belgium, the last time, he told me, “that I will try this asylum.”

Robert's hope, which he kept expressing to me, brought to mind the song by Robert's favorite singer, Nasio Fontaine, which I quoted at the beginning. And of the saying I had seen on both his and other friends' Facebook pages from Senegambia: “wen dea is life dea is hope.”

The age estimation was only one junction on Robert’s ways through Europe’s migration system and had enormous consequences for him.

As an adult, he was camp-imprisoned and deportable to Italy, where he actually ended up as an undocumented worker. Coming from a West African country listed as a “safe country” according to German law, he would have anyway barely had any chance for a refugee status. As a minor, he would have been able to go to school and then apply for an apprenticeship. This apprenticeship, again, could have entitled him for a residence permit that he could have prolonged if he would have found work afterwards.

Now, as an adult, Robert keeps on going back and forth - hopefully he can once settle somewhere and build his life the way he wishes to.