Effects of the Oedipus in the African migration into Europe

condition of helplessness, adoption and disturbing return of the race

Abstract

My research work calls into question the adoption systems of children whose parents have migrated into Italy. I will challenge the forms of construction of a «migrant adoptable child» and at the same time I will try to reproduce the point of view of the mothers who have to face these unexpected separations. These women, mostly Nigerian, end up being protected by the State in
their condition of victims of sex trafficking, but when they become mothers, they are considered not suitable for that role because they are not considered good enough to take care of their children. Their hosting in motherbaby centres coincides with the need to observe them in their daily relationships. If the judges — based on the reports provided by the social services
— consider that they are «not motivated by a responsible maternal feeling», they lose the right to see their children, until there is a complete separation. The rupture of the bonds determined by the figure of the adoption turns
then an African child born of an immigrant mother into a parentless and a product of the State, while the mothers fall back into the dungeons of useless relationships and the anonymity of those without papers. Supported by the literature that questions the relations between migration, the State and the family, I will analyze the concept of decolonization of maternity, in order to understand how these small subjects become Italian as a result of the loss of their black mother (in a process that is parallel to what
the Argentinian medical anthropologist Rita Laura Segato calls «foreclosure of the name of the black mother» in the case of the Brazilian Oedipus).