Dynamics of alliances and isolation of asylum seekers in Italian reception centers. What music can tell about?

The crisis of the reception of irregular migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe became a prominent issue in 2015, prompting the extension of the action research project I had just started in Cremona and its surroundings on music and migration to asylum seekers. The organisation of music workshops in extraordinary reception centres, with the assistance of my students and former students, was undertaken to address the following research question: Is the music they listen to, the music they eventually play and compose, a means to isolate themselves from others or a means to create some kind of communality, and if so, how and why? The workshops that my students and former students carried out with my collaboration between 2015 and 2017, and the fieldwork that I’m still doing myself, have enabled the collection of a substantial amount of data for analysis. In this contribution, I will commence with a concise delineation of the Italian reception system. This will be followed by a reflection on the potential to conceptualise the situations we dealt with through the prism of minority studies. The subsequent section will present the emergent findings concerning musical behaviour in the reception centres where workshops and fieldwork have been conducted. The concluding remarks will address the implications of listening to music and composing among asylum seekers in Italian reception centres with respect to the dynamics of isolation and aggregation.