The winner of the 2022 Maria Ioannis Baganha Dissertation Award is Hannah Pool. Her dissertation entitled “Doing the Game”. The Moral Economy of Coming to Europe, was defended at the University of Cologne, in June 2021. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography, Hannah Pool describes the dangerous and fragmented journeys of Afghan mohajers from Iran to Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Germany. Travelling and being aided at parts by smugglers is termed “doing the game” by the candidate. The Committee found that the dissertation offers an excellent and in-depth analysis of this practice but also the social groups that are formed before and during the journey.
How is undocumented migration across international borders facilitated, enacted, and impeded? This research project is based on the findings of a multi-sited ethnography from Iran to Germany, which examines how social relations and economic transactions mutually enable, shape, and reinforce each other in undocumented migration. Tracing migrants’ trajectories in Iran, Turkey, Greece, the so-called Balkan route, and Germany, the study develops a dynamic and emic explanation of how migrants’ relationships facilitate economic interactions necessary for exerting mobility. It draws on the concept of moral economy and introduces the concept of a moral economy of coming to Europe. It analyzes how mobility emerged and was maintained through informal loans from families, smuggling services, and financial exchanges with fellow migrants, and explains periods of externally imposed immobility.
Hannah Pool is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Her research focuses on the intersection of mobilities, money, and borders. Hannah has been a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Center and the COMPAS Institute at Oxford University, Columbia University, and the Berlin Center for Social Sciences (WZB). She studied in St. Andrews, Tehran, and Dresden, funded by the German National Academic Scholarship and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Currently, she is a 2023-2024 Mercator Fellow. Hannah was a 2021-2022 Falling Walls Intensive Track Fellow and a 2020-2021 Charlemagne Prize Academy Fellow.