Coping in Precarity: Strategies of Survival and Resistance of Forced Migrants With Precarious Legal Status in Italy

ABSTRACT Legal precarity has been used to describe the relations between ‘space, law and persons’ that produce illegality and shape the sociolegal exclusion of forced migrants. Precarious legal status is demarcated by hierarchies of legal and social membership and degrees of exclusion. Within the context of legal precarity, we explore the coping strategies used by forced migrants preceding and during the COVID‐19 period in Italy. Our analysis focuses on interviews with 31 asylum claimants. We find that forced migrants experienced protracted legal liminality and precarity characterised by extended time spent in migration camps, unpredictable legal status determination, and, more broadly, imperfect knowledge. In particular, their legal precarity was formed or shaped by a fluctuating legal and bureaucratic system, the suspension of asylum determination processes, and the closure of institutions due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The cumulative impact affected their well‐being and limited their full participation in society. This paper's key contribution is in identifying strategies employed in response. Individuals employed social network support, physical exercises, faith, and cognitive reframing of the legal difficulties to cope with prolonged precarious legal precarity. These findings have implications for migration scholarship and for professionals working with forced migrants, and can help inform policy and future research.