Silos in Trieste, Italy. A Historical Shelter for Displaced People

The article is concernig a massive semi-abandoned historical building, called the ‘Silos’, located in downtown Trieste (North-East Italy, on border area with Slovenia), few meters away the port and the central railwaystation, which constituted a gathering place for Jews and a reception centre for Italian exiles during WW2. Since 2014 Silos has become an informal shelter for refugees arriving via the Balkans: it is a useful place of anchorage and a free choice of ‘homing’ for migrants in transit. The ambivalence of this shelter is it serves as a protective and collective space, but also as a place where migrants are pushed back to the margins. Silos seems to be a porous filter that allows anchoring and mobility for refugees in the European threshold.