Paper short abstract:

This introduction frames "doing and undoing liminality" as a lens that invites us to "stay with the trouble" and focus on people, practices, and objects that constitute the margin.

Paper long abstract:

In this introduction, we re-visit the notion of liminality to critically examine social, political and economic (b)orders, and explore how it is experienced, grasped and articulated differently in diverse contexts and by various actors.

Paper short abstract:

This paper describes the persistent tension in Amazigh imaginations of cultural belonging in North Africa and the diaspora between a trope of Mediterranean liminality and an increasingly dominant discourse of authenticity and indigeneity, exploring the affordances and entailments of this ambivalence

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the persistent tension in Amazigh imaginations of cultural belonging in North Africa and the diaspora between a trope of Mediterranean liminality and an increasingly dominant discourse of authenticity and indigeneity. While the Mediterranean characterizes an Amazigh—and broader North African—sense of being betwixt and between Europe and Africa, between the Atlantic world and the Middle East, the discourse of indigeneity grounds the Amazigh experience within a set of delimited ancestral territories subject to a history of Roman, Arab, and French settler colonialism. If the Mediterranean frame underlines the dynamic and inclusive qualities of the Amazigh language and its proximity to other regional creoles—from lingua franca to Algerian colonial sabir to Maltese to Darija—a parallel language ideology attempts to purify an entextualized and authenticated Tamazight from its Arabic and Latinate lexicon and transliteration history. Drawing on several decades of archival and ethnographic research with Amazigh activists and everyday speakers in southeastern Morocco and the French diaspora, I trace the history of these two oppositional frames as they emerge in the pragmatics of colonial rule and decolonial resistance. I show how tropes of the Mediterranean and indigeneity continue to divide the contemporary Amazigh movement. I argue that the coexistence of these two cultural ideologies—one open and inclusive, the other closed and exclusive—likewise helps explain how Amazigh activists have ambivalently situated themselves within geopolitics of doing ad undoing, sometimes in outspoken support of the global war on terror, sometimes at the vanguard of movements of anti-racism and social justice.

Paper short abstract:

Through the case of Sicily and its complicated relation to different Mediterranean shores, this paper attempts at situating the contemporary Mediterranean within the current context of "migration crisis" in Europe.

Paper long abstract:

A prominent criticism of "area studies" is the way the scholars lump distant geographies and diverse societies together and claim expertise over them (Guyer 2004). So, why the Mediterranean? Based on ethnographic research, I attempt at both historically and ethnographically informed ways of understanding this (human) geography through Sicily's complicated relation to Mediterraneanness, Italianness, and Africanness. To understand how the “migration crisis” simultaneously divides and unites the shores of the Mediterranean, I offer an approach to the Mediterranean not as a mere body of water where events take place, but as the very stake of power. Within this context, I see the ‘return’ to Mediterraneanist anthropology as a search for potential sites that may unsettle the idea of Europe (as well as Africa and Asia) as a coherent region. Against the European representation of itself as a historically incomparable continent (Ben-Yehoyada 2017), I centralize the Mediterranean in my analysis to underscore both the connections and the inconsistencies within and between the continents surrounding this body of water.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores horse racing as a liminal world and odd imperial debris where politics of class and race are played out on horseback and where the poor and unlucky gamble their last hopes. It addresses complex situated power dynamics in a region that has always defied simplistic categorizations.

Paper long abstract:

Horse racing is one of the Mediterranean topoi par excellence, ranging from mounted bullfighting in Spain, the palio in Italy, to the racing traditions in North Africa. Thereby, horse racing is more than an equine sport: It is a ritual, a cultural performance, and a political arena (Silverman 1979). The race track opens up to a liminal world.

With British colonial rule expanding in North Africa and the Middle East, horse racing became widely popular. Race tracks were mushrooming in Tunis, Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad forming a horse racing network and regional equestrian culture where colonial officers and local elites played out politics of class and race on horseback (Cassidy 2002, Thompson 2012).

Fast forward to 2015, when I conducted research on Arabian horse breeding in Egypt, I found these race tracks still present. Deprived of their colonial prestige, however, they were now located in an invisible, liminal world where the poor and unlucky gambled their last hopes and fortunes.

The paper visits these race tracks and conceptualizes them as odd imperial debris (Stoler 2008) that enables racegoers to perform liminal practices of gambling and resistance. Expanding the view to the Arab Gulf states, new race tracks are built and a new equestrian culture emerges that re-appropriates its colonial origins as genuinely Arab cultural heritage.

Exploring the marginalized and liminal world of horse racing contributes to a better understanding of the complex power relations and situated political dynamics in a region that has always defied simplistic categorizations.

Paper short abstract:

The analysis of the LGBTQ community in Tunisia through the lens of liminality provides a profound perspective on power dynamics and processes of change within this marginalized group.

Paper long abstract:

In the context of Tunisia, the LGBTQ community emerges as a marginalized group engaged in a complex experience of social liminality. This liminality is evident in the contrast between deeply ingrained traditional social norms and aspirations for increased recognition and equality. Members of the LGBTQ community navigate a transitional space, situated between persistent marginalization and the quest for full inclusion in Tunisian society.

Individuals identifying as LGBTQ in Tunisia often find themselves on the periphery of social norms, facing stigmatization and discrimination due to their non-conforming sexual orientation or gender identity. This marginalization creates a liminal space where these individuals question cultural expectations and existing social structures. Struggles for recognition and visibility become modern rites of passage, placing the LGBTQ community in a transitional phase where dynamics of resistance and identity assertion emerge.

The liminality of the LGBTQ community in Tunisia is further heightened by the clandestine nature of many non-heteronormative identities. Members of this community often navigate in the shadows, seeking safe and confidential spaces to express their identity. This secrecy creates a state of suspension, where LGBTQ individuals find themselves on the fringes of social norms but simultaneously bound by a community sharing similar experiences. Thus, liminality becomes a meeting ground, forming a communitas within which these individuals negotiate their identity and build strong bonds.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the experience of Congolese migrants in Cairo. Liminality reveals nuanced political subjectivities by analyzing marginalization, control, agency, and practices. Ethnographic research illustrates how Congolese build structures that support their home-making amid liminal states.

Paper long abstract:

This paper highlights the significance of liminality to understanding the Congolese migratory experience in Cairo. Since the 1990s, a significant migration trend from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Egypt has emerged. The reasons for Congolese coming to Egypt are manifold, ranging from education, to employment in international call centers, or becoming professional soccer players, to seeking asylum with UNHCR. Most of them consider Egypt a transitional stage in their life and migratory trajectory.

Constrained by limited prospects for legal integration, economic uncertainty, and racism in Egyptian society, many Congolese seek ways to move on. At the same time, a tremendous increase in the globally fortified migration policies, mainly initiated by the global North, has severe repercussions for migrants within Africa.

Putting the concept of liminality (Turner 1969) at the center of this paper, I show how Congolese migrants in Egypt navigate precarious economic and legal situations, while settling in a liminal situation. Liminality, offers a nuanced approach to understanding geographies and ambivalences of their political subjectivities, enabling to analyze simultaneous processes of marginalization and control, but also migrants’ agency, and practices.

Drawing on ethnographic research on the role of new Pentecostal churches on the migration routes of Congolese, I enfold how Congolese in Cairo, though seeing themselves in a liminal state, build cultural, political, religious, and economic structures at local, and transnational levels, which in turn support their home making in the city.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the new category of border zones (upon which some of the main innovations of the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum are articulated) has its historical foundation in different governance practices of the EU's Mediterranean states.

Paper long abstract:

Legal anthropology strives to demonstrate the fiction of Kelsen's pyramid and normative order as a construct emanating from legal think tanks. In this paper, my aim is to show that the new category of border zones (upon which some of the main innovations of the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum are articulated) has its historical foundation in different governance practices of the EU's Mediterranean states. This is not a minor change, but one that transforms the way in which the process of 'filtering' migration policy is thought about and validated, implying profound changes in the way we understand international protection or the best interests of child protection, to point out two fundamental issues.

I will present the origins of this category of governance (border zone), paying special attention to the background in Spain. Since the 1990s, the Spanish external border areas, mainly the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla but also the Canary Islands, have been a key scenario where some of the elements that define this new European regulatory reality have been politically forged.

Paper short abstract:

What power does Germany have to respond to migration from places outside Europe characterized by features of liminality? Are there ways to define and regulate the issue beyond the problem of territorial borders? I will pay special attention to my ethnographic work on Syrian migration.

Paper long abstract:

Since Germany has become the primary destination for migrants to Europe, it has, like other countries in the Global North, increasingly sought ways to control this migration. Most of this migration flows through the Mediterranean, although most of the migrants come increasingly from other peripheries to Europe, especially from Africa and Asia. What power does Germany, as an uncontestable hegemonic country, have to respond to migration from places outside Europe characterized by features of liminality? This is certainly a problem of a territorial border, but are there also other ways to define and regulate the issue? I will pay special attention to my ethnographic work on Syria that began in 2015.