‘Europe was a dream for me. This dream came true but remains unfulfilled at the same time’: Navigating life aspirations among forced migrants in Austria and Italy

In this article, we analyse the interplay between forced migrants’ retrospective expectations and their current experiences in the host country, and how this interaction informs their aspirations in relation to their potential life trajectories. By zooming in on the Austrian and Italian cases derived from qualitative data, this article investigates forced migrants’ retrospective perspectives on the ‘good life’ in (imagined) Europe and their experienced-informed perspectives of the host country context—reception policies—after migration by tracing individuals’ self-reported perceptions of life aspirations over the course of their migration journey. By applying the aspirations-capability framework, our analysis traces what ‘happens’ after people have submitted their asylum applications. In this way, this research sheds light on the process of adapting to a new context with gravely restricted capabilities and how this affects people’s life aspirations. By doing so, we demonstrate that aspirations are not only dynamic and flexible, but capabilities also change due to the structural confines of national asylum procedures. This study therefore brings an innovative perspective to study life aspirations and capabilities by showing the importance of reflecting not only aspirations but also the (in)capability of acting in the present which informs the process of revisiting original life aspirations for individuals seeking asylum. This process begins after the arrival, based on changes in their capabilities, specifically the national asylum structures that confine them.