Onward migration: An introduction

In August 2016, Maslax Moxamed, a 19-year-old man from Somalia, arrived in Italy. He spent two months in Rome, first in via Cupa in the San Lorenzo district, where he met volunteers at the Baobab experience, an occupied social centre that had been turned into a reception centre for migrants in 2015 at the height of the “refugee crisis” (Dines et al., 2018). After eviction in September 2016, he followed volunteers to the various makeshift reception points around the city. His migratory project does not, however, involve spending the rest of his life in Italy. He decides to move on and one evening in October takes a bus to Milan from Piazzale Tiburtino, from where he reaches Belgium with a…