Diasporic Marginalities and the Second-Best Destination

This open access book focusing on Turkish and Kurdish trajectories to Italy-an under-examined "second-best destination" within Europe's stratified mobility regime-shows how border governance, legal statuses, segmented labour markets and welfare arrangements shape settlement far from the better-resourced Northern European hubs. Drawing on decade-long ethnographic research and over 100 interviews with families and second-generation young adults, it traces how people arrive through redirected routes (asylum, irregular transit, family reunification and work networks) and gradually consolidate lives while keeping onward-migration horizons in view.

Developing the concepts of "learning to stay" and "diasporic marginalities", the analysis connects intimate family routines to wider transnational social fields, examining gendered work, the role of religious and associational infrastructures, and the digital comparisons that position Italy at the margins of European diasporic centres. By reframing destinations as structurally produced positions rather than chosen endpoints, the book speaks to scholars and students in sociology of migration, and diaspora and transnational studies as well as practitioners interested in integration, legal precarity and everyday bordering.