Backway to Europe
Backway to Europe: Talking Borders and Migration with Gambians on the Move is a podcast series produced in collaboration with Gambian advocates and activists. It centers their analyses of the border regime through their direct experiences of “the backway” — the local term for the illegalized route to Europe. These experiences resonate with many who have attempted to reach Europe across West Africa and beyond. The first part of the series, composed of seven episodes, features members of Youth Against Irregular Migration (YAIM), an advocacy organization founded by young Gambians who met in a Libyan detention centre. Through their reflections, the series explores why regular migration is often unattainable; documents the journeys, detentions, and returns of migrants; and examines how “return and reintegration” policies are lived, negotiated, and resisted. It considers why the backway remains a widespread response to the economic and structural challenges faced by Gambian youth, and what it means to conduct migration advocacy from an African perspective. The project emerged from an ongoing dialogue between YAIM and Viola Castellano, an anthropologist researching European border externalization policies. The podcast builds on themes identified by YAIM in their advocacy. Castellano provides contextual notes on visa regimes, border infrastructures, and EU externalization, while the core analysis and narration are driven by the participants’ testimonies and political reflections. Each episode is accompanied by a full transcript to foster deeper engagement with the speakers’ arguments, along with an annotated bibliography designed to support students and researchers working on related topics.
Acknowledgements
This series was created with the voices and insights of: Fatou Bojang, Lamin Bojang, Fatou Cham, Madou Ceesay, Fatoumata Darboe, Tijan Jarju, Lamin Kotta, Tombong Kuyate, and Saihou Tunkara of Youth Against Irregular Migration (YAIM).Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the University of Bayreuth Outreach Program. Editing and storytelling co-development by Daniele Lucchini; sound design by Ismael Lo and Daniele Lucchini. Conceptual guidance from Ian M. Cook. Mandinka translations voiced by Samira Marty and Julia Leman.Thanks to all collaborators, friends, colleagues and community members who supported this project, including the Red Cross office in Latrikunda Sabiji, where the podcast was recorded.Illustration by Daniele Castellano, suggestion of scene depicted:YAIMa
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Viola Castellano
Viola Castellano is a social anthropologist whose work examines migration and border policies, welfare systems, and the reproduction of global inequalities. She is currently the Co-PI of a VWS-funded research project investigating the understandings and politicizations of social protection in Germany and Italy. Previously, she conducted DFG-funded research at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth, focusing on EU border externalization in Africa and centering the knowledge of those affected by border regimes.
Castellano holds a PhD in Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity from the University of Bergamo, Italy, which she completed in 2014 after training in Cultural Anthropology at Ca’ Foscari University Venice and the University of Bologna.
Her academic trajectory includes postdoctoral and research positions in diverse international contexts. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (São Paulo Research Foundation) from 2019 to 2021, and has served as Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna. She also held a visiting scholar appointment in the Anthropology Department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).
Her research employs ethnographic and political-anthropological methods to analyze how legal categories, institutional practices, and policy regimes shape mobility, rights, and social inequalities. This includes studies of asylum systems, return programs, welfare services, racialization processes, and advocacy practices. Methodologically, she fosters collaborative and multimodal approaches, exemplified by the podcast series Backway to Europe: Talking Border and Migration with Gambians on the Move, currently being published by Allegra Lab.
Castellano’s work has been published in journals such as Anthropological Theory, Focaal and Journal of International Migration and Integration. She is the author of the monograph Set to See Us Fail, which examines the US child welfare system, and has contributed to numerous edited volumes on migration and transnational mobilities.
In addition to her academic output, Castellano engages with interdisciplinary and public debates on migration governance, citizenship, and policy, bringing ethnographic insight to questions of rights, exclusion, and social transformation. She is part of Alliance with Refugees in Libya, contributing to Refugees in Libya's collective hotline, campaigns, and publications.