Photo: Look, don't look (Photo: Carsten ten Brink, cropped.) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Please view our  conversation with the book author of The Big Gamble: The Migration of Eritreans to Europe.

Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.

Book Author:
Milena Belloni is a post-doc at the University of Antwerp. 

Discussant:
Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East and Director of Women's Rights, Human Rights and Refugees Program at Rice University. 

 Download Podcast