Immigrants as Reverse Anthropologists

This article explores nationhood and migration through a policy-adjacent ethnographic lens, observing the centre from the margins. It focuses on two Pakistani-born young men, Abbas and Nadeem, who work as social workers in an Italian refugee shelter. As children of migrants, they straddle roles of care and control within the asylum reception system. Their narratives reveal the paradox of being ‘domesticated’ into Italian society while instrumentalised in disciplining newly arrived migrants. They negotiate complex migrant temporalities and clashing perceptions of Italian-ness—both their own and that of native hiring managers. Can 1.5-generation migrants act as ‘reverse anthropologists’? And how can the ethnographer acknowledge their contributions as co-analysts of the field? The article examines these tensions and the fragile reciprocity of perspectives they enact.