CYCLES OF (IM)MOBILITY: WAITHOOD AND SEVERELY EXPLOITED LABOUR AMONG YOUNG AFRICAN MALE MIGRANTS IN ITALY

This thesis examines how young African male migrants experience and negotiate the intersecting conditions of waithood and labour exploitation within Italy’s tourism industry. It develops and applies a novel conceptual framework, Cycles of (Im)mobility (CoI), as a heuristic tool to analyse how waithood, labour exploitation, and masculinities intersect to generate recurring patterns of (im)mobility in migrants’ lives. Drawing on a life-course biographical approach, the study analyses narrative interviews with participants whose migration trajectories traverse multiple phases of waithood, insecure work, and fragile advancement. The findings reveal that waithood is not confined to the pre-migration period but persists and mutates through European migration regimes and fragmented seasonal labour markets. Entry into tourism work—initially perceived as an escape from waithood—often leads into renewed precarity, where unstable contracts, long hours, and dependence on employers normalise exploitation. Masculine ideals of endurance and provider responsibility further shape how men interpret and tolerate these conditions, turning survival strategies into mechanisms that sustain immobility. The research identifies agency and social networks as key pathways through which migrants attempt to exit these cycles, yet shows that such exits are frequently partial or temporary, leading to re-entry into uncertainty. The CoI framework illuminates this circularity, demonstrating that mobility and immobility are not opposites but interdependent temporal states embedded in structural and identity dynamics. By situating individual narratives within broader systems of labour segmentation, migration governance, and gendered expectation, the study contributes to debates on waithood, precarity, and mobility. It expands the concept of waithood beyond youth transitions within the context of migrants of African origins to encompass cyclical and cross-border forms of temporal precarity; highlights tourism as an overlooked site of migrant labour exploitation; and underscores the methodological value of life-course biographical approaches for capturing non-linear experiences of time and movement.