Motus Internus: Narrative Turning Points and the Intragroup Emergence of Dehumanizing Ideologies Among Migrants

Abstract

This article explores how forced migrants in Italy come to adopt morally distancing and dehumanizing views toward fellow migrants, and how these ideological shifts are narratively justified through turning points. Drawing on longitudinal narrative interviews with 52 forced migrants in Italy conducted over six years (2019–2025), the study analyzes how moments of rupture — relational, institutional, aspirational, and symbolic — prompt migrants to reorganize moral evaluations and redefine group boundaries. Through a typology of corrective, disillusioning, and liberating turning points, the article shows how migrants reposition themselves in response to betrayal, exclusion, or the desire for civic recognition. Dehumanization emerges as a discursive strategy for asserting dignity and legitimacy under precarious conditions, rather than as a mere rhetorical excess. The study contributes to research on narrative, ideology, and migrant integration, and highlights the need for policy approaches that address the relational and moral dimensions of belonging.

Turning Points and Ideological Repositioning in Migrant Narratives

Moments of rupture — triggered by disappointment, symbolic injury, or unmet expectations — often prompt individuals to reassess how they interpret the social world and allocate moral worth. Such reassessments are not purely internal processes, but discursively constructed responses to lived tension, especially under conditions of precarity and marginalization. In forced migration contexts, these ruptures acquire particular significance, as migrants navigate instability, exclusion, and fractured solidarities.

A key narrative mechanism for processing these experiences is the turning point: a moment retrospectively framed as signaling a meaningful shift in perception and judgment (Wieslander and Löfgren 2023). While rooted in biographical disruption, turning points gain their force from how they are narrated — how they reorganize meaning, establish symbolic distance, and justify new moral distinctions. For a subset of participants, these shifts involve reconfiguring a previously solidaristic stance toward other migrants who had been narrated as “peers in struggle” or as sharing a broadly similar predicament, but are later recast as undisciplined, undeserving, or socially dangerous.

The analysis does not assume that migrants generally experience one another as “peers in struggle.” It instead focuses on cases in which solidaristic framings appear in earlier interview waves and are later revised, suspended, or inverted at narratively salient turning points. In these narratives, co-migrants who were once described as allies or fellow sufferers become repositioned as reputational risks, moral liabilities, or even threats.

These framings often echo dominant anti-migrant discourses, yet they emerge from within segments of migrant populations. Their internal emergence complicates the conventional binary between host and migrant discourses that has long structured migration scholarship. It also highlights migrants as active agents in the reproduction and transformation of ideology, rather than as passive subjects of it. By positioning others as culturally backward or morally inferior, narrators assert vertical distinctions that legitimize exclusionary logics and reassert personal value. Dehumanization thus appears as a narrative strategy — an attempt to restore coherence and claim legitimacy in the face of social degradation and symbolic competition (Bruneau, Kteily, and Laustsen 2018; Moore-Berg, Hameiri, and Bruneau 2022).

The study examines how forced migrants in Italy come to adopt dehumanizing stances toward other migrants, with particular attention to the narrative processes that render these positions intelligible and legitimate. Drawing on longitudinal narrative interviews with 52 forced migrants, the analysis traces how moments of rupture — relational, institutional, aspirational, and symbolic — prompt cross-wave shifts in perspective, as participants recount turning points that reorder moral evaluations and redraw intra-group boundaries. In this way, the study offers a situated account of ideology as an affectively charged, narratively mediated response to precarious forms of belonging. Throughout the article, “migrants” refers to individuals categorized within the legal-administrative frameworks of forced migration in Italy, internally differentiated by gender, nationality, length of stay, legal status, religion, and forms of social and cultural capital. No assumption is made that they form a cohesive or intrinsically solidaristic community; the analysis instead focuses on narratively observable boundary work directed at co-migrants and on how these imaginaries of “co-migrants” and shared struggle are invoked, contested, or rejected at narratively salient turning points.

Ideology, Narrative, and the Discursive Reproduction of Dehumanization

This study adopts a synthetic view that treats ideology as both a mental schema and a discursive practice: internalized frameworks that guide perception and moral judgment, and narrative resources that organize meaning, position the self, and negotiate legitimacy. This framing is consistent with cognitive-sociological accounts that locate moral and emotional perception in socially shared interpretive environments rather than in isolated individual psychology (see Zerubavel 1999).

Ideology is central to both social psychology and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), although these fields approach it from complementary perspectives. In psychological research, ideologies are understood as internalized systems of meaning that help individuals and groups interpret the social world (Zmigrod 2022). They function as cognitive and evaluative anchors, shaping perception, behavior, and moral judgment in contexts of complexity and uncertainty (Jost 2017; Claessens et al. 2020; Pennycook, Bago, and McPhetres 2023).

In discourse-oriented traditions, Van Dijk (2022) defines ideologies as “socially shared representations” that structure group identity and legitimize boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. CDS builds on this view by conceptualizing discourse as the arena in which such ideologies are enacted and contested. Lexical choices, framing devices, metaphors, and syntax do not simply reflect pre-existing beliefs; they help construct social realities and normative hierarchies (Kølvraa and Forchtner 2019; Hart 2020). Metaphors such as “flood” or “invasion” activate threat schemata and reinforce dehumanizing representations. In this perspective, ideologies operate simultaneously as cognitive structures and discursive mechanisms that shape perception and interaction.

Although scholarship often focuses on institutional or media discourse, ideologies are also reproduced through everyday storytelling (Poppi and Gattinara 2018; Coticchia and Catanzaro 2022; Poppi 2025f). Personal narratives are key sites where ideological meanings are negotiated and transformed. Through storytelling, individuals align with, resist, or reinterpret dominant value systems (Lejano and Dodge 2017; Wodak 2017; Berezin 2021). Related work shows how narrative structures can organize, legitimize, or contest criminal and exploitative practices across classed and migratory contexts (Poppi and Travaglino 2019; Poppi 2024, 2025a, 2025d). In moments of dislocation, narratives become tools for reframing experience and navigating symbolic boundaries. This is particularly evident in research on hauntological and chronotopic disruptions in migrants’ narrative identities along the Balkan route and in deviance narratives (Poppi 2025b, 2025c). As Gómez-Estern and de la Mata Benitez (2013) argue, narrative identity is inherently ideological — shaped by emotional needs, biographical tensions, and discursive affiliations with hegemonic meanings.

An emerging body of literature examines how ideologies shift following biographical disruptions. Whereas most research focuses on ideological stability and transmission (Mees-Buss and Welch 2019; Sullivan 2022; Weiss 2023), fewer studies investigate how ideologies are challenged or restructured. This gap is particularly salient in contexts of forced migration, where ruptures destabilize normative frameworks and compel individuals to seek new moral anchors. Under such conditions, ideological repositioning becomes embodied, affectively charged, and narratively articulated.

Turning points provide a productive lens for analyzing these shifts. They are biographical junctures that disrupt narrative coherence and prompt revisions in self-perception, moral interpretation, and group boundaries. Emphasizing turning points does not imply that hierarchical perceptions, prejudices, or intergroup hostilities originate in discrete events; such orientations may predate the narrated rupture or operate in latent form. Turning points are analytically useful because they reveal moments when these orientations become narratively salient, are reclassified as morally justified, or are aligned with new interpretive frameworks. Following experiences of disappointment, betrayal, or symbolic degradation, individuals may seek new anchors for meaning and sometimes adopt vertical moral hierarchies that distinguish between deserving and undeserving others. This can involve the internalization of dehumanizing ideologies toward fellow migrants, marking a shift from horizontal solidarity to hierarchical differentiation.

Within this narrative-ideological framework, dehumanization appears as a phenomenon co-produced through lived tensions, relational dynamics, and the search for coherence, rather than as a sudden imposition from above. Narratives become the medium through which ideological realignment is rendered intelligible and morally defensible. Critical episodes do not directly cause ideological change, but provide the discursive scaffolding through which belief shifts are retrospectively rationalized and biographically integrated. In this sense, the analysis outlines a framework for understanding how ideological repositioning occurs not only in relations between migrants and majority populations, but also in interactions among differently positioned migrants, including those who share legal-administrative labels yet occupy distinct social, economic, and symbolic locations.

Seen in this way, turning points function as narrative sites where ideological transformations are articulated through opposition, contrast, or symbolic distancing. At the intersection of narrative, ideology, and dehumanization, it becomes possible to trace how systems of exclusion are not only imposed but also inhabited and sustained from within. These dynamics support moving beyond abstract models of belief change toward situated analyses that track the emotional, discursive, and moral work through which ideological repositioning is narrated.

By foregrounding this integrated approach, the analysis contributes to broader debates on how ideologies operate across cognitive, affective, and discursive domains. Ideological change emerges as a reconfiguration of self-narration in response to biographical rupture, rather than as a simple shift in opinion, shaped by both internal needs and external symbolic economies.

Migration, Narrative, and the Discursive Dynamics of Dehumanization

Migration offers a particularly fertile site for examining the dynamic interplay between narrative and ideology. Despite substantial attention to external representations and dominant discourses, less is known about how migrants themselves co-construct and internalize exclusionary ideologies in response to lived rupture. This study addresses this gap by focusing not on how migrants are represented, but on how they reposition themselves within symbolic hierarchies through narrative.

As a discursive phenomenon, migration is shaped both by external representations — produced by institutions, media, and political actors — and by internal narration, emerging from the stories migrants tell about themselves and their trajectories (Eberl et al. 2018; Serafis et al. 2021; Van Dijk 2018). These narrative layers are embedded in ideologically saturated master frames that position migrants as threats, burdens, or economic resources, thereby reproducing broader formations rooted in nationalism, securitarianism, economic utilitarianism, and racialized logics of cultural purity (De Fina and Tseng 2017; Boswell et al. 2021).

Yet migrants are not passive recipients of these discourses. Through personal storytelling, they reproduce, resist, or reconfigure dominant ideologies in ways that reflect lived experience and affective investment (De Fina, Golden, and Tonne 2021; Cabieses et al. 2024). Such narrative uptake is shaped by shared interpretive environments that organize what becomes salient, objectionable, or morally relevant in everyday judgment (Zerubavel 1999). Given the analytical and political risks of treating “migrants” as a coherent group category, the empirical focus is placed on other-dehumanization as an observable discursive practice of boundary-making, rather than as an attribute presumed to follow from category membership.

In the Italian context, this dynamic has been documented in narrative accounts of agricultural labor exploitation, shame, revenge, and joint forms of resistance among forced migrants (Poppi 2024, 2025a, 2025d). These counter-narratives may contest dehumanizing tropes, reclaim dignity, and assert agency under precarious conditions. In some cases, they give rise to liberating turning points — biographical episodes that generate a sense of emancipation or moral clarity. While some foster solidaristic worldviews, others legitimize dominant hierarchies by disidentifying from less integrated or morally devalued co-migrants.

Consistent with contact theory, empirical studies show that direct and mediated intergroup contact often reduce dehumanization and meta-dehumanization, disrupting symbolic violence (Bruneau et al. 2021; Borinca et al. 2023). Such encounters may offer discursive resources that challenge threat-based narratives and enable the reconstruction of more inclusive moral frameworks. These are sometimes articulated as moral turning points — critical moments in which individuals reposition themselves within broader orders of recognition and legitimacy.

However, not all narrative trajectories challenge exclusion. Some reflect the internalization of dominant ideologies, particularly when hierarchical views of other migrants are adopted and narrated as reasonable responses to prolonged uncertainty, waiting, and unequal access to resources. Ethnographic accounts of forced-migrant lives in Europe have documented how these conditions can intensify intragroup comparison, resentment, and moral ranking, including the normalization of hostility within legally similar but socially differentiated populations (Boccagni 2025). These stories may reproduce nationalist, racialized, or culturalist distinctions — valorizing “good migrants” while delegitimizing “undeserving” others. Often emerging from experiences of betrayal, competition, or aspirational striving, they take the form of corrective or liberating turning points, where upward mobility is framed as disidentification from stigmatized groups. For instance, Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. (2021) show how Eastern European migrants in the UK navigate deservingness discourses by drawing symbolic distinctions between themselves and “less deserving” co-migrants. Similarly, Hickel Jr., Oskooii, and Collingwood (2024) find that Latinx US citizens may endorse restrictive immigration policies to protect their own status and differentiate themselves from more recent migrants.

Evidence from South Africa highlights how racial stratification continues to shape perceived hierarchies of humanness, with historically dominant groups occupying higher rungs on symbolic ladders (Fourie, Deist, and Moore-Berg 2022). These dynamics illustrate how intra-group dehumanization can operate as a discursive strategy for claiming symbolic capital and proximity to a valued majority. Studies find that naturalized or socioeconomically successful migrants may adopt exclusionary stances toward other migrants and rely on moral disidentification to assert legitimacy, protect a fragile sense of belonging, and distance themselves from stigmatized peers (Dierckx et al. 2022; Nariman et al. 2022; Kaeser and Tani 2023).

At times, these processes draw on ideological frameworks imported from countries of origin, which are then reframed through the lens of new social hierarchies. Nowicka (2020), for example, discusses a Polish woman in the United Kingdom who initially voiced anti-Black prejudice, until a transformative encounter with an African doctor — narrated as a moral turning point — prompted a shift toward empathy. Such moments of rupture underscore the affective and experiential conditions under which ideological repositioning becomes possible.

Digital platforms also make these tensions visible. Among Arab migrants in Sweden, exclusionary distinctions and moral hierarchies emerge in social media discourse, revealing internal struggles over identity, status, and civic belonging (Ezz El Din 2020).

This pattern, in which persons exposed to exclusion reproduce exclusionary logics, directs attention to the moral reasoning that organizes ideological realignment in contexts of displacement. Although migrants are increasingly understood as co-constructors of ideology (Triandafyllidou and Monteiro 2024), little is known about how and when such shifts occur. Most research focuses on the reproduction of ideology, with far less attention to its transformation in response to biographical disruption.

In this context, the concept of turning points gains analytical traction. More than simple transitions, turning points function as narrative mechanisms through which individuals reinterpret rupture, loss, or contradiction by reconfiguring moral coordinates and ideological affiliations. Whether prompted by betrayal, institutional exclusion, or symbolic humiliation, these episodes compel a reframing of what is perceived as legitimate, fair, or aspirational. Such reframing may foster solidaristic identification, but can also give rise to dehumanizing outlooks.

Although scholarship on narrative and ideology in migration studies has expanded, the role of turning points in shaping ideological repositioning remains underexplored. In particular, little attention has been paid to how migrants come to adopt dehumanizing ideologies through personal stories of transformation. These trajectories reveal the fluid and situated nature of ideological identification — shaped by precarity, symbolic hierarchies, and the pressures of moral comparison. Focusing on such shifts shows how narratives not only register change, but also actively structure the moral and ideological grammar through which migrants understand themselves, others, and the social worlds they inhabit.

Dehumanization as Ideological Cognition and Narrative Repositioning

Among ideological formations that underpin narratives of exclusion, dehumanization is a recurrent mechanism. It is treated here as more than a rhetorical escalation or a short-term reaction to conflict. Instead, it operates as a deeply embedded ideological schema and interpretive framework — what can be termed ideological cognition — through which difference is codified, moral boundaries are established, and social worth is unevenly distributed (Kteily and Landry 2022). This framework is acquired and then mobilized through narrative practice. It appears in explicit metaphors, routine framings, and recurring storylines that lower the moral standing attributed to particular groups.

Contemporary scholarship conceptualizes dehumanization as a multidimensional and graded process. Haslam's dual-model remains foundational, distinguishing animalistic dehumanization — the denial of uniquely human traits such as civility or moral sensibility — from mechanistic dehumanization, which strips away warmth, emotionality, and individuality (Haslam 2006, 2022). Both forms are shaped by context and by affective distance, circulating through everyday discourse and becoming internalized as part of one's interpretive repertoire (Bastian and Haslam 2011; Andrighetto et al. 2016).

Affective estrangement plays a central role in this process. Dehumanization tends to crystallize when relational bonds are weakened — whether through migration, social marginalization, or symbolic displacement. Mechanistic dehumanization, in particular, tends to emerge in contexts of disconnection where psychological needs for belonging are unmet (Haslam 2022).

While dehumanizing interactions are often conceptualized as unidirectional, recent studies highlight their reciprocal nature. Bustillos et al. (2023) identify interrelated forms of other-, meta-, and self-dehumanization, which can reinforce one another and generate cycles of displaced or mirrored devaluation. Nevertheless, despite the conceptual relevance of this triadic model, the present analysis is deliberately delimited to other-dehumanization — that is, the devaluation of others — on both empirical and analytical grounds.

For analytic consistency, other-dehumanization is coded only when talk about co-migrants meets at least one threshold: (a) explicit animalizing or objectifying metaphors (e.g., “animals,” “wild,” and “not human”); (b) recurrent attributions that markedly downgrade moral sensibility or self-regulation (e.g., depicting others as incapable of restraint, civility, or responsibility in ways that naturalize inferiority); or (c) language that frames co-migrants as contaminants or as interchangeable carriers of disorder. By contrast, statements centered on compliance, effort, or “deservingness” (e.g., “they do not want to integrate” and “they do not try”) are treated as moralizing boundary work unless they escalate into one of these thresholds. This distinction limits dehumanization to empirically strong cases and avoids collapsing it into general negative evaluation.

From an empirical standpoint, the interview corpus contains consistent and narratively explicit instances in which migrants describe fellow migrants in dehumanizing terms. These framings include metaphorical animalization, negative moral characterizations, and symbolic distancing from co-migrants perceived as deviant, irresponsible, or undeserving. By contrast, direct evidence of meta-dehumanization (expecting to be dehumanized) or self-dehumanization (internalizing dehumanization) is sparse and often inferential. Incorporating these dimensions would risk weakening the analytical precision of the study and attributing implicit meanings not firmly supported by the data.

Analytically, focusing on other-dehumanization makes it possible to examine more precisely how exclusionary ideologies — typically directed against migrants by dominant institutions — are internalized and then projected by migrants onto other migrants. This process shows that ideological realignment involves discursive acts of appropriation, redirection, and moral boundary-setting among migrants, rather than merely mirroring exposure to dominant discourses. Related analyses of migrants’ revenge narratives and possible and future selves further illustrate how ideological repositioning is entangled with emotional and temporal reconfigurations (Poppi 2025d, 2025e). In this sense, other-dehumanization becomes a key mechanism through which hierarchies of worth are reproduced from within, rather than imposed exclusively from without.

This focus also makes it possible to trace how ideologies historically deployed to stigmatize, criminalize, or essentialize migrants are reactivated and repurposed as narrative tools for asserting status, claiming legitimacy, or distinguishing oneself from negatively marked others. Such dynamics underscore the paradox whereby individuals subjected to systemic devaluation may adopt and rearticulate the very logics of exclusion against those positioned even lower on perceived moral or social hierarchies.

Empirical research supports the salience of these processes. A Hungarian survey conducted at the peak of the 2015 “refugee crisis” found that a general tendency to dehumanize strongly correlated with perceived threat from migrants; notably, this association weakened among respondents who endorsed group malleability — the belief that social groups can change over time (Paskuj and Orosz 2022). These findings suggest that rigid, essentialist framings of migrant groups facilitate the uptake of exclusionary worldviews. Conversely, studies on intergroup contact demonstrate that positive, meaningful interactions reduce both overt and subtle forms of dehumanization (Borinca et al. 2023). Such encounters disrupt recursive cycles of moral distancing and highlight the malleability of humanness attributions.

Dehumanization extends beyond host-society representations of migrants and also manifests among differently positioned migrants, particularly in contexts of status competition, aspirational differentiation, or failed solidarity. These intra-group dynamics resonate with research on interpersonal dehumanization, which shows that individuals may deny humanness to others when instrumental goals or relational power asymmetries are at stake (Karantzas, Simpson, and Haslam 2023). In such cases, dehumanization becomes a narrative strategy of upward distinction, enabling individuals to reassert symbolic worth by disidentifying from those marked as morally or culturally deficient. This pattern is consistent with experimental research linking social exclusion and loneliness to increased dehumanization of others (Haslam 2022). Migrants navigating structural marginality may, under conditions of perceived threat or symbolic injury, redirect exclusionary logics toward proximate others — co-migrants perceived as undisciplined, parasitic, or culturally backward — thereby reinscribing hierarchies of legitimacy through discursive moralization.

Dehumanization, therefore, is approached here as a narratively mediated form of ideological realignment rather than as a background discourse or rhetorical flourish — a discursive means of making sense of disrupted belonging, frustrated aspiration, or moral disorientation. While not the sole mechanism of exclusion, other-dehumanization provides a privileged site for analyzing how ideological positions hostile to migrant groups can be co-produced, recontextualized, and rendered plausible by migrants themselves.

By attending to how such discourses emerge, are affectively charged, and are legitimized in narrative form, the analysis highlights the relational and symbolic pressures through which migrants navigate and reproduce systems of exclusion. These dynamics illuminate both the persistence of dominant ideologies and their recycling within subordinate positionalities, generating new forms of boundary-making under conditions of precarity and moral complexity.

Mapping Turning Points Toward Dehumanizing Ideologies in Migration Narratives

In this study, turning points are understood as narratively constructed ruptures — moments that reconfigure how individuals perceive themselves, others, and the moral order they inhabit. Their significance lies not in the events themselves, but in how they are made meaningful through storytelling. Turning points function as discursive devices through which ideological shifts are retrospectively justified, rather than as simple markers of identity transformation, especially under conditions of displacement, instability, and normative uncertainty.

In such contexts, distancing or devaluing views toward fellow migrants may be narrated as coherent responses to disruption, disappointment, or misrecognition.

To analyze these processes, the study adapts Wieslander and Löfgren's (2023) typology of turning points, which distinguishes confirming, corrective, disillusioning, and liberating categories. Confirming turning points consolidate a prior orientation and are marked by narrative closure rather than redirection. Corrective turning points narrate a reversal prompted by interpersonal rupture or unmet expectations. Disillusioning turning points narrate a breakdown of institutional trust or normative assumptions following systemic denial or perceived injustice. Liberating turning points narrate a shift toward a newly viable self-position, often tied to recognition, regularization, or perceived moral clarity. The analysis focuses on corrective, disillusioning, and liberating turning points because these categories most directly capture cross-wave redirection in the moral evaluation of co-migrants.

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Corrective turning points emerge from interpersonal betrayal, biographical failure, or unmet expectations that disrupt solidaristic commitments. Migrants who initially embraced intra-group cohesion or humanitarian ideals may revise these orientations after experiencing exploitation, rejection, or status competition within segments of migrant populations. Such dissonance opens discursive space for downward contrast, often framed through animalistic metaphors that symbolically position others as less deserving or less civilized. These episodes involve both moral repositioning — where others are recoded as deviant — and social repositioning, where narrators seek symbolic alignment with more valued categories by disidentifying from those marked as problematic. Crucially, these realignments are not always responses to host society rejection, but often originate within migrant-to-migrant tensions.

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Disillusioning turning points are prompted by systemic or institutional experiences — racism, legal exclusion, or bureaucratic indifference — that erode assumptions of fairness and shared humanity. Migrants may respond to these ruptures by aligning with securitarian, meritocratic, or nationalistic logics that prioritize discipline, responsibility, or loyalty over solidarity. Dehumanization in this context may take either an animalistic or a mechanistic form. Other migrants are described as cold, selfish, uncaring, or irrational, and at times are explicitly animalized (e.g., “they behave like animals”). Expressions such as “they don’t want to integrate” do not, in themselves, deny humanness, but they participate in a moralizing discourse that can prepare the ground for dehumanizing framings. In these stories, legitimacy is anchored not in shared struggle but in differentiation from those perceived as undisciplined, transforming frustration into a new ideological position rooted in moral hierarchy.

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Liberating turning points, while associated with personal advancement, may also produce distancing views toward less “successful” co-migrants. Following regularization, economic stability, or symbolic recognition, some migrants narrate their ascent through contrast with those framed as burdensome or non-compliant. These stories reframe upward mobility as the result of merit, effort, and conformity, while those who remain in precarious conditions are depicted as lacking discipline or civic readiness. Binaries such as civilized/uncivilized or integrated/unintegrated emerge, positioning the narrator as deserving and others as morally inferior. In these cases, dehumanization becomes a strategy of symbolic separation and legitimation. Rather than opposing exclusionary systems, such narratives may reinforce them from within.

Each type of turning point emerges within specific experiential domains:

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Relational turning points stem from interpersonal ruptures — betrayal, exclusion, or affective breakdowns — that trigger moral re-evaluations of solidarity and belonging.

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Institutional turning points derive from encounters with legal or bureaucratic systems, where perceived injustice or abandonment reorients trust and political alignment.

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Aspirational turning points occur during upward mobility, when individual success leads to a redefinition of who is seen as worthy of respect and inclusion.

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Symbolic turning points are linked to existential moments — illness, sacrifice, survival, unexpected encounters — that provoke reassessment of values, commitments, and group affiliations.

This typology serves as an analytical tool for understanding how ideological repositioning, including the emergence of dehumanizing perspectives, is discursively constructed at moments of narrative rupture. By tracing how corrective, disillusioning, and liberating turning points reconfigure moral perception and relational positioning, the framework supports a situated account of when and how distancing ideologies become narratively plausible. The next section specifies the longitudinal design, recruitment pathways, mediator collaboration, and coding steps used to identify turning-point sequences and cross-wave shifts in the moral evaluation of co-migrants.

Tracing Dehumanization: A Narrative Methodology for Capturing Ideological Turning Points

This study investigates how forced migrants may come to adopt dehumanizing ideologies toward other migrants and how these positions are discursively legitimized through narratively constructed turning points. The analysis focuses on processes of moral and symbolic reordering — that is, shifts in how fellow migrants are evaluated and positioned within perceived hierarchies of worth. The study examines how dehumanizing stances emerge, treating ideology as a dynamic and situated process rather than a static, externally imposed construct — one that is articulated through narrativized experiences of rupture, disillusionment, and reorientation.

A longitudinal qualitative design was employed to trace how such ideological shifts unfold over time across different experiential domains. The final dataset includes 52 participants positioned within Italian legal-administrative frameworks of forced migration who participated in two or more narrative interviews conducted between 2019 and 2025. Category labels such as “forced migrant” are treated as administrative and analytic conveniences rather than as natural group boundaries, given the known political work and methodological risks of migration categorization and the frequent mismatch between official labels and lived trajectories (Bialas, Lukate, and Vertovec 2025; Dahinden 2025). Such categories can also travel across research sites and institutional settings as if they were stable descriptors, which makes it necessary to treat them as objects of analysis rather than as neutral variables (Bialas, Lukate, and Vertovec 2025).

Participants, originating from 13 countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Iraq, Kosovo, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, and Tunisia), were recruited through trusted contacts in segments of migrant populations across four Italian cities: Trieste, Bologna, Naples, and Foggia. These locations are not interchangeable. Trieste functions as a key entry point along the Balkan route; Bologna represents a northern urban center with diversified labor markets and long-standing migrant presences; Naples embodies dense urban marginality and fragmented welfare infrastructures; and Foggia is characterized by highly exploitative agricultural labor markets and informal settlements (Poppi and Travaglino 2019; Poppi 2024). The national and local context is therefore integral to the analysis: the turning points described here emerge within a specifically Italian configuration of humanitarian reception, securitarian control, and racialized public debate, rather than in an abstract or placeless “migrant experience.” This configuration has been described as institutionally fragmented and politically contested, with uneven implementation across governance levels and durable forms of surveillance and abandonment shaping everyday life in reception and post-reception settings (Pinelli 2018; Campomori and Ambrosini 2020). Together, these settings exemplify distinct migration infrastructures and regimes of reception, shaping both the opportunities available to migrants and the moralized comparisons through which they interpret co-migrants’ behavior.

All participants had arrived for humanitarian, political, or conflict-related reasons, ranging in age from 19 to 38 (mean age 27.7); 41 were men and 11 women. Only those who completed at least two interviews at different time points were included in the final analysis. The demographic profile of the sample has direct implications for the scope of the argument. Interviewees are predominantly young adult men in conditions of legal precarity or recent regularization, many of whom oscillate between low-paid, unstable work and periods of unemployment or informal activity. Women, older migrants, long-settled residents, and those with stable middle-class trajectories are comparatively underrepresented. As a result, the analysis captures ideological repositioning as narrated from within specific segments of forced-migrant populations in Italy, rather than from a cross-section of all migrant categories. The findings should therefore be read as situated and partial, attentive to intra-group differentiation but not exhaustive of it. These compositional features and recruitment pathways mean that the narratives analyzed here are likely to foreground experiences of marginality, competition, and fragile upward mobility more than those of secure incorporation.

Each participant was interviewed between two and four times, in person or via video call, with each session typically lasting between one and two hours. Interviews were conducted primarily in Italian, with occasional use of English or French, and the full corpus comprises around 250 hours of transcribed material. All interviews were translated into English with close attention to affective tone, metaphor, and evaluative framing.

Interview prompts invited participants to reflect on moments experienced as formative, disorienting, or morally unsettling, including episodes of disappointment, misrecognition, or what is termed here “symbolic injury.” “Symbolic injury” refers to narrated experiences of humiliation, status denigration, reputational contamination, or civic misrecognition that damage perceived dignity even in the absence of direct physical harm. These open-ended questions encouraged participants not only to recall events but also to construct turning points within the dialogic space of the interview, clarifying how ideological realignments are assembled and made morally intelligible.

Researcher positionality was addressed throughout. The lead researcher, a non-migrant academic, maintained reflexive field notes and collaborated with intercultural mediators during recruitment, field access, and post-interview debriefing. Mediators supported trust-building in local settings, advised on culturally situated meanings of key evaluative terms, and flagged context-specific risks of misinterpretation during translation review. Mediators did not participate in coding decisions or in the selection of focal excerpts, but their contextual input informed the interpretation of idioms, humor, and evaluative stance markers that carry moral weight in accounts of co-migrants. Analytic consistency was supported through intercoder dialogue and systematic review of translation choices for narrative fidelity.

Analytically, the study adapts Wieslander and Löfgren's (2023) typology of turning points to examine how narratives of moral re-evaluation take shape over time. Three types — corrective, disillusioning, and liberating — were explored for their capacity to reorganize moral perception and relational positioning. These were defined not by external criteria but by how narrators framed rupture and redirection, particularly in relation to intra-group tensions and shifting evaluations of co-migrants.

Ideologies were operationalized as narrative frameworks that assign moral worth, construct symbolic boundaries, and legitimize the unequal distribution of empathy, respect, and personhood. Special attention was given to episodes in which participants described other migrants as uncivilized, dangerous, or inferior, often using metaphors or language indicative of dehumanization. These framings were analyzed in relation to the lived experiences that rendered them narratively plausible, including labor exploitation, legal exclusion, status competition, and betrayal.

The coding unfolded in two stages. First, all interviews were scanned for segments in which participants evaluated other migrants morally or symbolically. These were examined for signs of hierarchical or dehumanizing framing — whether explicit (e.g., “they behave like animals”) or implicit (e.g., disgust, blame, and detachment). Second, cross-wave comparisons identified shifts from solidaristic or neutral accounts to exclusionary or hierarchical framings, analyzed in terms of narrative structure, affective texture, and moral justification.

The presentation of six focal narratives in the findings section reflects a further layer of analytic selection. All 52 cases were reviewed to identify sequences in which participants narrated a shift from more solidaristic or neutral framings of co-migrants to more hierarchical or dehumanizing depictions. The six excerpts featured in detail were chosen because they exemplify recurrent patterns observed across the corpus while capturing variation in nationality, gender, city, legal and employment status, and type of turning point. To mitigate subjectivity and enhance credibility, candidate excerpts were independently reviewed by a second coder, discussed in analytic memos, and checked against quieter or more ambivalent accounts in the dataset to ensure that the mechanisms identified did not rest solely on particularly vivid or dramatic stories.

Turning points were treated as narrative devices through which broader ideological realignments are rendered coherent and morally intelligible, rather than as direct causal mechanisms for dehumanization. This approach enabled a situated understanding of when and how exclusionary ideologies become narratively viable under migratory precarity.

By tracing how migrants narrate moments of rupture that reorganize their moral evaluations of others, the study offers a dynamic view of ideology as a discursive, affective, and situated process. It shows how, under structural pressure and narrative contingency, migrants may co-construct exclusionary logics that are not merely imposed from above but produced through everyday reasoning and social positioning. The analysis thus provides an analytic framework for examining the narrative conditions under which dehumanizing ideologies are adopted, legitimized, or contested across migrant life trajectories.

Narrative Repositionings: Turning Points and the Uptake of Dehumanizing Ideologies

The selection does not aim at statistical representativeness. These cases were chosen from a broader set of similar trajectories because they combine a clear turning-point structure with interpretive clarity and, taken together, cover different national backgrounds, legal and employment positions, and local settings. Less vivid but structurally comparable examples were also identified in the larger corpus, which supports the view that the mechanisms exemplified here are recurrent rather than idiosyncratic. The emphasis is therefore on analytic richness: the selected narratives offer particularly clear insight into how ideological repositioning is discursively assembled and morally justified within lived contexts of disruption.

In each extract, the turning point is analyzed in relation to the experiential domain in which it emerges — whether relational, institutional, aspirational, or symbolic — and to the moral reconfigurations it entails. Rather than isolating belief change as a discrete outcome, the analysis foregrounds how narrative form, affective tone, and evaluative framing coalesce to render exclusionary stances intelligible and plausible. The six extracts thus serve as situated examples for tracing the discursive dynamics of intra-migrant dehumanization and its entanglement with personal transformation.

Corrective Turning Point

The first excerpt is about Sahid, a 24-year-old Tunisian man who arrived in Italy as a humanitarian migrant, initially embracing a strong ethic of solidarity. This extract captures a relational rupture that reorients his worldview from communal support to withdrawal and suspicion.

Excerpt 1: “Now, Honestly, I Just Keep to Myself”

When I first came, oh man, I was all about helping, like, we people, we are together I think, we need to stick together, you know? I shared food, even let two guys sleep in my place sacco a pelo for a while — didn’t ask for nothing. But they used me, man. I got robbed. No respect, no thanks, just always asking, and then always taking. One of these, after months, even started lying about me to the boss to get a job I found for him. That … that really messed with my head. I was like, why am I doing this? I stopped seeing them like brothers after that. Now, honestly, I just keep to myself. It's better that way.

This extract exemplifies a corrective ideological realignment rooted in a relational turning point, where a perceived betrayal by fellow migrants prompts a shift from solidaristic ideals to a more defensive, individualistic orientation (see Wieslander and Löfgren 2023). At the outset, Sahid presents himself as someone who actively practiced communal care: sharing food, shelter, and opportunities without expecting compensation. His use of inclusive language — “we people, we are together” — reflects an early commitment to horizontal solidarity, based on a shared sense of marginality and mutual reliance.

However, this ethic is undermined by successive interpersonal violations: theft, exploitation, and, crucially, a case of instrumental betrayal where a co-migrant allegedly lies to an employer to usurp a job opportunity facilitated by Sahid. The cumulative weight of these incidents constitutes a turning point in his moral worldview. This is signaled by the affective charge of phrases like “that really messed with my head,” which marks the moment where the biographical logic of reciprocity collapses.

The ideological realignment is articulated through withdrawal: “I stopped seeing them like brothers,” and “now … I just keep to myself.” This shift marks the erosion of collective identification and the reclassification of co-migrants as relational risks rather than kin (see Haslam 2006). The excerpt does not contain dehumanizing metaphors or explicit denials of humanness; instead, it documents a narrowing of moral and affective obligation through disaffiliation and generalized suspicion. In analytic terms, this functions as a plausible precondition for later exclusionary framings, but it is treated here as boundary contraction rather than as dehumanization. This form of soft dehumanization operates by stripping co-migrants of trustworthiness, loyalty, and moral standing. Rather than confronting structural conditions or systemic precarity, the narrative redirects grievance toward those closest in proximity — thus projecting exclusionary logics horizontally.

This extract illustrates how perceived betrayal transforms solidarity into moral suspicion, enabling a corrective realignment where emotional withdrawal becomes a justified mode of self-preservation.

The betrayal is not merely interpersonal; it is narratively framed as a rupture in the assumed moral fabric of migrant solidarity, legitimizing a worldview in which emotional withdrawal and moral suspicion become rational survival strategies. By transforming solidarity into vulnerability and vulnerability into justification for detachment, the extract exemplifies how corrective turning points enable the adoption of exclusionary moral positions that mirror the logics migrants themselves often confront — only now re-deployed from within (see Lejano and Dodge 2017).

In the following excerpt, Aisha, a 29-year-old woman from Morocco working in a vegetable processing warehouse in Italy, reflects on her experience of upward mobility and the shifting perceptions that followed. The extract captures a turning point triggered by moral distancing and social aspiration.

Excerpt 2: “That Hit Me Hard. I Felt Ashamed”

Back then I thought, like, we all want the same — work hard, make a future. We all need a future, it's a human thing. I really believed that. But after I got my papers, started working steady in the warehouse near the provincial street, I saw how some of them act. Always late, fighting over stupid things, not showing up. One day the boss pulled me aside and asked if I was ‘like the others.’ That hit me hard. I felt ashamed. I worked too hard for that, for people to see me like that. That's when I said to myself: I’m not like them. I’m trying to move up, not stay stuck.

Excerpt 2 illustrates a corrective ideological realignment emerging from a relational and symbolic turning point, in which an experience of perceived moral contamination leads to the withdrawal from prior solidaristic commitments (see Zmigrod 2022). Initially, Aisha evokes a shared ethic of effort and futurity — “we all want the same … it's a human thing” — that aligns with universalist values of dignity and collective striving. The repetition of “we” conveys a sense of common purpose among migrants navigating precarious conditions.

Over time, the initial sense of collective identification begins to erode, particularly as Aisha secures legal status and steady employment. With this shift in positionality, she increasingly perceives a gap between her own behavior and that of others. What she observes — lateness, conflict, absenteeism — is not framed as circumstantial but as evidence of a deeper moral deficiency. Through these contrasts, the narrative establishes a moral divide: her discipline and reliability become markers of worth, while co-migrants are recast as failing to meet the standards required for advancement.

The turning point crystallizes in the moment the employer questions whether she is “like the others.” This confrontation operates as a symbolic insult — an unwanted association that triggers shame. Her reaction — “That hit me hard. I felt ashamed” — marks the biographical rupture (see Fourie, Deist, and Moore-Berg 2022). Rather than resisting the employer's categorization, Aisha internalizes the gaze and redirects its moral force downward, onto her peers. The phrase “I’m not like them” affirms a need to repair symbolic status through dissociation, while the closing statement — “I’m trying to move up, not stay stuck” — reframes progress as conditional upon the rejection of group affiliation.

The excerpt primarily operates through reputational distancing and moral hierarchization rather than through explicit dehumanization. The employer's question (“like the others”) is narrated as a status threat that triggers shame and a repair move: “I’m not like them.” The ensuing contrasts (punctuality, reliability, and “moving up”) construct a vertical moral economy in which “integration” becomes legible as disciplined self-management. In analytic terms, this is treated as disciplinarian boundary work that may prepare the ground for dehumanizing framings, but it is not coded as dehumanization unless it escalates into explicit animalization, objectification, or denial of moral sensibility, consistent with the operational threshold specified in the methodology. This illustrates how aspirational distance and symbolic shame coalesce into a vertical moral logic that reclassifies co-migrants as reputational liabilities.

Disillusioning Turning Point

In what follows, Mërgim, a 29-year-old Kosovar man employed as a gardener in a public-sector cooperative, recounts a moment of acute institutional disappointment. His experience of asylum rejection becomes a site of moral disorientation and disidentification from both the state and fellow migrants.

Excerpt 3: “They Don’t Want to Change”

I waited three years. Three. Papers, commission, always waiting. And then they say no. Just like that. No explanation. And you see them — those guys, they do nothing, don’t even try, smoking all day, fighting. But they get it. It's a joke. They treat you like you’re nothing. Not human. I stopped believing in this system, and I stopped believing in people like that. They don’t want to change. Animals, honestly.

This narrative embodies a disillusioning ideological realignment, rooted in an institutional turning point in which a denial of asylum triggers a dual rupture: trust in the state collapses, and identification with co-migrants deteriorates (see Dierckx et al. 2022). Mërgim frames the moment not as a singular setback but as the culmination of prolonged frustration — “three years … always waiting” — that yields no explanation and no recourse. The affective cadence of “Just like that. No explanation.” signals a breakdown in the logic of procedural justice and the expectation of fair treatment.

Crucially, the perceived arbitrariness of his rejection becomes narratively contrasted with the perceived undeserved success of others. The juxtaposition is stark: while Mërgim portrays himself as someone who waited and complied, “those guys” are depicted as inactive, disorderly, and undeserving — “do nothing, don’t even try, smoking all day, fighting.” This comparative moral economy forms the discursive core of the turning point: the rejection does not only erode trust in the system but also invites a redefinition of who is worthy of support, recognition, and inclusion.

Dehumanization becomes explicit in the closing lines: after “They don’t want to change,” the narrator moves to direct animalization (“Animals, honestly”), converting procedural frustration into an ontological downgrade that licenses exclusion (see Kteily and Landry 2022). This move from disappointment to disgust marks a significant ideological shift. Fellow migrants are no longer framed as peers caught in a shared struggle but as willfully deviant others who contaminate the very notion of legitimate migration. The attribution of animality strips them of moral sensibility and rational agency, justifying their symbolic exclusion.

This narrative turning point demonstrates how disillusionment with state institutions can catalyze the internalization and re-articulation of dominant exclusionary ideologies. Rather than resisting the systemic logic that rendered his suffering invisible, the narrator redirects that logic downward, reproducing dehumanizing discourse from within (see Bustillos et al. 2023). The reference to being treated “not human” by the system is mirrored and inverted as he denies humanity to others, thus embedding his own experience of exclusion within a new moral hierarchy. This narrative shows how institutional betrayal fosters a compensatory moral realignment where dehumanization functions as a logic of self-worth.

In Excerpt 3, dehumanization functions as both a discursive defense mechanism and a tool for symbolic repositioning. The narrator's claim to legitimacy depends on contrasting himself with those seen as unworthy, immoral, or unfit to belong. Disillusionment becomes not only a loss of faith in institutions, but a realignment with the values those institutions implicitly reward: productivity, discipline, and exclusion.

In the next example, Ikechukwu, a 24-year-old Nigerian agricultural laborer living in precarious conditions near Foggia, describes a moment of symbolic rupture triggered by witnessing degradation and violence in a migrant-populated area. His account reflects a loss of belief in shared migrant identity and the moral universality of deservingness.

Excerpt 4: “I Follow the Law. I Try to do Good”

I used to think we were all running from something. War, hunger, prison. I thought that made us the same. But after some time in Foggia, I started to see it different. Especially around Via della Stazione … You go there any day, early morning or night, doesn’t matter — it's full. Guys just hanging around, shouting, drinking, fighting sometimes. The smell is bad, garbage everywhere, you can’t even walk properly. Some sleep on the ground, some piss in corners like animals. I’m sorry, but it's true. One time I saw a man slap a woman outside the shop near the kebab place. Nobody helped, not even looked. Just walked past. That moment … I don’t know, it changed something. I was like: maybe we’re not the same. Maybe some people bring the same problems they were supposed to escape. Same violence, same disrespect. I don’t want to be seen like that. I work. I follow the law. I try to do good. That day I realised: not everyone deserves a second chance. Some people, they choose to stay like animals. You try to lift yourself, and they pull you down. And the worst is, for Italians, we all look the same. But we’re not. Not at all.

A growing sense of disillusionment emerges in this narrative, as the narrator gradually abandons the belief in a shared migrant identity grounded in common struggle and moral equivalence. Ikechukwu begins with a moral premise rooted in commonality — “we were all running from something” — which frames migrants as united by trauma and necessity. However, this foundational belief deteriorates through his observations in Via della Stazione, a space marked by poverty, visible marginality, and conflict (see Andrighetto et al. 2016).

His descriptions are saturated with affective cues: “shouting,” “drinking,” “garbage,” “you can’t even walk properly.” These do not merely index neglect or hardship, but are constructed as evidence of moral failure. The pivotal scene — “a man slap a woman outside the shop” — produces not outrage or critique, but a cognitive shift: “that moment … it changed something.” The narrator moves beyond condemning the act itself and generalizes from it, arriving at a bleak conclusion: “maybe we’re not the same.” What was once solidarity gives way to suspicion, blame, and disidentification.

Dehumanization is narratively central. The metaphor “like animals” appears twice, first descriptively and later judgmentally: “some people … choose to stay like animals.” The shift from environment (“piss in corners”) to agency (“choose to stay”) marks the passage from description to exclusion, reframing social suffering as moral choice. The claim “not everyone deserves a second chance” introduces a logic of moral conditionality that realigns the narrator's ideological position with dominant discourses of merit, civility, and respectability (see Paskuj and Orosz 2022).

Unlike corrective realignments, which primarily seek to distance the self from betrayal or moral contamination, this disillusioning realignment reflects the collapse of an aspirational collective — the belief that migrants are universally striving for dignity and progress. Rather than resisting dominant views, the narrator adopts them selectively, using dehumanization as a discursive filter to reclassify which co-migrants are deemed worthy of recognition.

The final line — “for Italians, we all look the same. But we’re not” — crystallizes a narrative paradox: an effort to escape external stigma by reproducing internal distinctions based on behavior, morality, and value. Disillusionment thus becomes not only a loss of faith but also a re-anchoring of self-worth through the exclusion of others. In this way, symbolic rupture and disgust converge in a disillusioning turning point, where proximity to perceived disorder triggers the moral rejection of co-migrants through animalizing metaphors (see Bruneau, Kteily, and Laustsen 2018).

Liberating Turning Point

In this extract, the moment of transformation is sparked by affective exposure to alternative ways of living and unfolds as a gradual yet decisive process of symbolic detachment from his former environment. The account reveals a liberating turning point marked by a desire to reclaim dignity through behavioral contrast, normative aspiration, and symbolic separation from peers. The fifth excerpt centers on Abdoulaye, a young man from Mali whose trajectory alternates between precarious labor and petty criminality, and who lives between a migrant camp and low-wage jobs in Bologna.

Excerpt 5: “I Want to Live Quiet, be Like Others Here”

In Bologna, when I started working … no, before that, I mean, I was in the camp, but sometimes I go Venice for a few days. Just go and come back. I don’t know, to look around, be away from the camp. You see different people there. It's more clean, more quiet. People don’t shout in the street like in the camp or that place in Piazza dell’Unità. Too much noise, too many guys just staying around, talking too loud, acting … I don’t know, like they don’t care. I remember I was sitting near the train station in Bologna, eating a sandwich, and two guys from the camp came and asked for money. I said no, and they got angry. One of them said, “You think you better now?” But yes. I mean — not better like better, but … I was doing my life. I worked, I had my documents, I took train every day, sometimes early, sometimes late. Not like them, still sleeping until noon, always complaining, not respecting nothing. And also, in Venice, one man I met said to me, “You dress nice, you don’t look like them.” That stayed with me. It made me feel different. Like I was not one of those guys anymore. I left that behind. Maybe I was same before, but now I’m not. I don’t want to go back. They make people think bad of us. I want to live quiet, be like others here, normal. Not wild.

This narrative marks a liberating turning point, in which the speaker repositions himself by detaching from environments perceived as chaotic, morally degrading, and socially damaging (see Zmigrod 2022). The shift reflects a desire for normative integration and symbolic separation from former peer associations. It is rooted in a gradual yet emotionally charged process of distancing from spaces and individuals associated with disorder, noise, and reputational risk. He contrasts the migrant camp and the urban margins of Bologna with the cleanliness and tranquility of Venice, implying not merely an aesthetic preference, but a moralized geography of behavior and identity.

The experiential domain centers on spatial and social contrast. The train station in Bologna becomes the symbolic site of rupture: while eating a sandwich, Abdoulaye is approached by two former acquaintances from the camp who accuse him of acting superior. Their comment — “You think you better now?” — triggers a moment of internal repositioning. Rather than rejecting the accusation outright, he reframes it: “not better like better, but … I was doing my life.” In this formulation, dignity is no longer grounded in shared struggle or marginal solidarity, but in discipline, routine, and civic readability — “I had my documents, I took train every day.”

Dehumanization here operates in a layered and implicit way. The speaker draws repeated contrasts between himself and “them” — “not like them,” “they make people think bad of us,” “not wild” — constructing a discursive boundary between those who perform normativity and those who threaten it. Descriptions of others “talking too loud,” “acting like they don’t care,” or “sleeping until noon” present deviance as a matter of choice rather than constraint. The term “wild,” though indirect, acts as a dehumanizing label, positioning others as uncontrolled and outside the bounds of acceptable civic belonging (see Bustillos et al. 2023).

This moment is framed as liberating because it couples the rejection of past associations with a sense of moral and aspirational release: “Maybe I was same before, but now I’m not.” The narrator imagines a new alignment with the social majority — “like others here, normal” — signaling a shift from abjection to desired normativity. Unlike disillusioning or corrective shifts, this rupture is not driven by betrayal or shame, but by the opening of a path to symbolic self-reinvention. Dehumanization, though still present, serves the narrator's pursuit of recognition, respectability, and detachment from perceived sources of stigma.

This narrative highlights how symbolic detachment and aspirational integration activate a liberating moral framework in which upward mobility is discursively secured through the devaluation of those left behind (see Dierckx et al. 2022).

In the final example, Jalal Hassan, a 40-year-old Iraqi migrant who works as a barber, reflects on a moment of moral and symbolic distancing. His narrative reveals a liberating turning point in which civic conformity and self-discipline become central to reclaiming dignity and countering the stigma of collective misrecognition.

Excerpt 6: “I Want Something Better”

When I started paying taxes, I felt proud. Like, real proud. I earned my place. But then I still saw guys throwing trash in the street, shouting at police, not working. People look at me and see them. I had to say, I’m not like them. I follow the rules. I respect this country. If you act like shit, people treat you like shit. I want something better.

Jalal's narrative in Excerpt 6 unfolds around a deepening contradiction: the more he invests in civic responsibility and lawful conduct, the more he becomes troubled by the behaviors of those around him (see Haslam 2022). This is not a story of sudden rupture, but of accumulating friction — between the self as a striving, rule-abiding subject, and others who, in his view, act in ways that discredit the entire group. Pride in paying taxes and contributing to society marks a personal milestone, a moment of alignment with dominant norms. Yet this achievement is quickly destabilized by what he describes as persistent public disorder — “throwing trash,” “shouting at police,” and “not working.” These observations do not remain neutral; they form the basis of a moral and symbolic distancing. The turning point emerges from an internal decision to break away from what he sees as reputational contamination, rather than from betrayal or external rejection. What follows is a liberating realignment: a shift in self-definition, anchored in aspiration and the refusal to be collapsed into a discredited collective image.

The experiential domain revolves around misrecognition and normative aspiration. Despite his efforts to follow the rules and earn his place, Jalal remains subject to visual and symbolic association with those who, in his view, tarnish the collective image. The phrase “people look at me and see them” signals the core tension: the impossibility of individual differentiation in the face of a racialized or ethnicized gaze (see Dierckx et al. 2022). His response — “I had to say, I’m not like them” — marks the discursive rupture through which he reclaims autonomy and respectability by severing symbolic ties with a discredited group identity.

Dehumanization surfaces implicitly through behavioral contrast and moral stratification. The others are never explicitly labeled in dehumanizing terms; however, the association of their actions with filth, aggression, and idleness frames them as undeserving of recognition or inclusion. The phrase “if you act like shit, people treat you like shit” reinforces a logic of behavioral meritocracy that both justifies exclusion and reaffirms his own claim to dignity. In this sense, dehumanization becomes a functional tool: it validates the speaker's upward repositioning by displacing stigma onto a morally degraded “them” (see Bustillos et al. 2023).

This narrative exemplifies a liberating turning point in which civic conformity and rule-following are mobilized to counter collective misrecognition. Pride in paying taxes and respecting the law becomes the basis for symbolic separation from those framed as disorderly or irresponsible.

Reframing Integration: Turning Points, Dehumanization, and the Discursive Dynamics of Migrant Ideological Repositioning

This study has examined how forced migrants come to adopt negative or distancing ideological views toward fellow migrants, focusing on how such positions are made intelligible through narrative turning points. By tracing moments of rupture — relational, institutional, aspirational, and symbolic — the analysis has shown how migrants reorganize moral evaluations and reposition themselves ideologically in response to dislocation, betrayal, or stigma.

The findings contribute to existing research in three key areas: the study of turning points, the discursive dynamics of dehumanization, and the role of narrative in shaping integration outcomes.

First, this study advances the understanding of turning points by positioning them as discursive mechanisms through which ideological shifts are rendered meaningful, rather than as simple moments of biographical change.

While turning points have been widely used in life-course and narrative studies, they are often treated as events that shape identity or behavior. This study instead highlights their narrative function: they provide a structure for organizing disruption and for justifying moral and symbolic realignments. The typology developed — corrective, disillusioning, and liberating turning points — offers an analytical framework for capturing how individuals reposition themselves in response to perceived failures of solidarity, institutional exclusion, or aspirations for normative belonging. These shifts are not random but embedded in specific social and affective contexts.

Second, the study contributes to research on dehumanization by showing that it operates both between groups and within segments of migrant populations. The analysis centers on how participants depict and morally evaluate others, rather than on self-dehumanization, although these outward-facing judgments inevitably feed back into how narrators position themselves within perceived hierarchies of humanness. Rather than treating dehumanization as a top-down process imposed by host societies, the findings demonstrate how migrants may themselves reproduce discrediting or denigrating logics by morally disqualifying others perceived as disruptive, irresponsible, or culturally regressive. This intra-group dynamic emerges not as irrational hostility, but as a strategy to reclaim dignity, legitimacy, or symbolic capital in precarious conditions. The analysis aligns with recent scholarship that conceptualizes dehumanization as a graded and relational phenomenon shaped by affective estrangement, status competition, and moral differentiation. By focusing on other-dehumanization in narrative form, the study avoids overextending the concept while still capturing its ideological weight and emotional charge.

Third, the findings reframe how integration should be understood and approached. Traditional models tend to define integration in terms of legal status, employment, or language proficiency. Patterns of downward hostility and moral distancing from those perceived as “below” are not unique to migrants and have been widely documented among precarious and marginalized groups more generally. As noted earlier, this sample is dominated by young men in legally precarious situations, which likely amplifies these dynamics. The trajectories identified here should therefore not be read as exclusive to a migration background. What distinguishes this material is the way such dynamics are entangled with legal precarity, racialized and linguistic difference, and nationally specific regimes of reception and control, which together shape how “deservingness” and “civility” are calibrated and narrated.

At the same time, the analysis shows that integration is also discursively negotiated through narratives of distinction and moral alignment. Migrants who experience upward mobility or civic inclusion may adopt critical or distancing stances toward peers seen as failing to meet behavioral or moral expectations. This suggests that integration does not necessarily foster solidarity; under certain conditions, it may generate new forms of moral hierarchy and social separation. These findings challenge normative assumptions in policy and academic discourse that treat integration as inherently inclusive or cohesive.

By showing that integration can coincide with internal moral distancing rather than cohesion, the study qualifies linear models of incorporation common in migration studies. This argument resonates with narrative work on migrant resistance, shame, and emancipatory trajectories in Italian reception and labor regimes (Poppi 2024, 2025a, 2025d). It foregrounds the emotional and symbolic costs of integration processes that valorize individual mobility without addressing relational fragmentation.

In practical terms, this research also presents implications for policy and social intervention.

First, integration policies should move beyond individual metrics and consider the relational and moral dynamics that shape belonging. Programs that reward individual success without addressing collective stigma may unintentionally reinforce intra-group distancing.

Second, community-based initiatives should foster spaces where migrants can process rupture and disillusionment without resorting to blame or disaffiliation. Encouraging critical reflection on shared struggles, rather than valorizing separation, may help reduce internal forms of marginalization.

Third, efforts to counteract dehumanization should not only focus on public or institutional discourse, but also attend to how such narratives take shape within migrant groups themselves. Interventions should be dialogic, participatory, and attentive to the emotional and symbolic pressures migrants face.

More broadly, the study invites a rethinking of ideology as situated practice. Migrants’ adoption of distancing or discrediting views is not simply a reproduction of dominant discourse, but a discursive effort to make sense of disrupted belonging and moral ambiguity. Turning points function as narrative junctures at which individuals reinterpret experience, assign blame, and seek coherence. Ideology appears here as a lived response to complexity — not a static set of beliefs, but an adaptive mode of narration. The analysis does not claim that corrective, disillusioning, and liberating turning points are specific to migrants or to the Italian context. Similar narrative mechanisms are likely to structure ideological repositioning in other precarious populations, including non-migrants. A fuller account of what is distinctive about migratory trajectories would require systematic comparison with non-migrant groups exposed to analogous forms of economic insecurity and status competition; this lies beyond the scope of the present study.

Future research could explore how turning points relate to other ideological formations beyond dehumanization, including political radicalization, religiosity, or withdrawal. Comparative studies could examine how similar processes unfold in different national or policy contexts, while further work is needed to understand how solidarity can be discursively repaired or rebuilt after moral rupture.

In conclusion, the findings suggest that the paths migrants take toward or away from solidarity are not linear, but shaped by emotionally charged, narratively mediated turning points. By focusing on the moral and discursive dynamics of these moments, the study offers a deeper understanding of how ideologies are co-produced, contested, and inhabited — not only in public discourse but in everyday storytelling.

Author's Note on AI Use

No analytical claims, interpretations, or substantive content in this manuscript were generated by artificial intelligence. Drafting, coding decisions, data interpretation, and all reported findings are the author's own work. AI tools were not used for literature extraction, analysis, or writing beyond routine copy-editing (e.g., spelling, grammar, phrasing, and style).