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- Convenors:
-
Meron Eresso
(Addis Ababa University)
Tilmann Heil (University of Cologne)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-F389
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
Ethnographically zooming into lives in transit, we discuss why people stay or move, why they settle in, or stay detached from a place. We are interested in how they choose and decide, or let things happen, as well as in related dimensions of uncertainty/certainty and planning/spontaneity.
Long Abstract:
By transit migration scholars and policy-makers refer either to 'ongoing mobility' involving undocumented border crossing (Düvell 2006) or to a period of 'involuntary immobility' whereby migrants are stuck in a place despite wanting to move on (Carling 2002; Collyer, Düvell and De Haas 2010). Transit migrants are hence often described as people stranded in a place where they are held against their will. The dominant, structural deterministic discourse portrays transit migrants as agents stranded en route - lacking any power to decide about their state of im/mobility, incapable of negotiating their predicament. However, the decision-making power of transit migrants' hinges on several factors such as available information, resources at their disposal, luck and the degree of determination and interest to move on.
By going beyond the narrative of transit migrants' victimhood and powerlessness, and by drawing on lived experiences of transit migrants from different parts of the world, the panel aims to examine how they build capacities through creative strategies while planning their mobility or coming to terms with (temporary) immobility. The panel discusses conditions of im/mobility and/or settlement of migrants and factors that affect their informed decision-making. The panel welcomes contributions exploring lived experiences of transit migrants from different parts of the globe in reference to how decisions are made at different moments of the migration process: starting from the preference of a specific transit point, the process of re/defining a destination country, to deciding the duration of transiting and the velocity of a travel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
How do people in Kuwait today identify as either ‘settlers’ or ‘migrants’? What does this mean to social life and imaginaries in contemporary Kuwait? And how may long-term perspectives on migration contribute to general anthropological discussions?
Paper long abstract:
Kuwait, in the north-eastern corner of the Arabian peninsula, is an impossible state. Without freshwater and therefore with little resources before the 20th Century discovery of oil, what is today a sprawling metropolis was originally a (non)place people thought they would just travel through, fleeing hardships in neighboring lands. In this paper I will discuss what this means to social life and imaginaries in contemporary Kuwait, and what this long-term perspective may contribute to more general anthropological discussions of ‘why people stay, move or settle in places they wanted to pass through’.
Based on postdoctoral fieldwork for various projects in Kuwait 2013-17 this presentation focuses on how people in this city-state today identify as either ‘settlers’ or ‘migrants’. These categories are cast in the vernacular as ‘urban’ or ‘Bedouin’, ‘bidoun’ (‘locals’ without citizenship), and the overarching Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti, the latter category predominantly Asian labour who may settle but can never be settlers.
Modern Kuwait was formed from the early 18th Century onwards by people coming from the inner Arabian peninsula, followed by other people from Persia, Mesopotamia and the Gulf, and more recently global migration. The Gulf region as such is now a migration hub, but Kuwait arguably has a longer historical trajectory of migration than its Gulf neighbours. A town emerged as Kuwait was found a perfect spot to do legal and illegal trade in the imperial borderzone of Ottoman and British spheres of influence, and with oil this town is now a Gulf metropolis of 4 million people, out of which only a third hold, and can aspire to, Kuwaiti citizenship. The question I will address is what such long term structures of migration may contribute to anthropological discussions of and beyond Kuwait.
Paper short abstract:
Following the recent increase of African migration through Central America, this paper focuses on African migrants in Costa Rica and discusses their entanglements of transit, emplacement and (im)mobility, highlighting the contradictory experiences and narratives of transitory emplacement.
Paper long abstract:
Based on exploratory fieldwork and long-standing, ongoing communication with both migrants and migration experts in Central America, this paper discusses entanglements of transit, emplacement and (im)mobility in the lives of African migrants in Costa Rica. For some years now, the number and visibility of African migrants in Central America has been increasing. Many of these migrants (wish to) travel onwards to North America, but when they do, they stumble upon different Central American countries with their own obstacles and opportunities for ongoing mobility. This paper focuses on African migrants' experiences while waiting, navigating and strategizing in Costa Rica's capital San José and the northern border town of La Cruz, where they often get stuck because of a closed border with Nicaragua. The paper demonstrates the volatility of migrants' trajectories: not only the ways in which they become (temporarily) embedded within local infrastructures of humanitarian organizations, government institutions and smuggling communities, but also the chance of sudden onward travel. The paper aims to explore migrants' experiences and narratives of transitory emplacement. It highlights the tensions, challenges and enjoyments of transitory emplacement, and the particular shape such emplacement takes in a Costa Rican context in which African migrants are relatively secure, yet always on the look-out for continuing a dangerous and uncertain trip north.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on Central Asian labour migrants in Tomsk urban region, their aspirations, dimensions of identity and sense of belonging. I am interested in the place of Tomsk in their personal migration strategies.
Paper long abstract:
Western Siberia has been a beacon for migrants from the European part of Russia, from the national republics and the southern regions of Siberia in the post-war era. In contrast with the other regions of Siberia, the oil- and gas-rich North remains a magnet for migration from the entire former Soviet Union to this day. This paper presents research into the contemporary sociocultural environment of Tomsk urban space (South-Western Siberia). The research focuses on the migrational experiences of ‘new’ migrants and their hopes, destination desires, personal and professional ambitions. I am interested in the place of Tomsk in personal migration strategies of the labour migrants from Central Asian countries. Do they want to stay in Tomsk, or do they want to return back to Central Asia or move forward to the European Russia, particularly Moscow and St. Petersburg? How is belonging to the city expressed? What is home for them? Why have they chosen to come to Tomsk? Through the local identity and migration strategies of the informants I am going to reveal intensity of their social ties, their aspirations and different dimensions of identity.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation concerns refugees' experiences, needs, expectations and strategies while temporarily residing in liminal spaces in the city of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2014 hundreds of thousands of people have made their way from Asia to Europe via Greece. Greece has been transformed from a country of emigration to a host country since 1990s, when the first migrants from Eastern European and Balkan countries arrived to Greece. The past few years, people from Middle East, Asia and Africa reached the eastern shores of Greece and were settled in transitory hosting structures (such as camps or apartments). Although refugees are aware or hope that their stay in these places will be temporary, they form interpersonal relationships with camp employees or the local communities and they negotiate their presence there through individual strategies.
Taking into account refugees' multiple and diverse identities with reference to age, gender, ethnicity, legal status, class and religion in this presentation I seek to highlight the integration processes and the inclusion of refugees in the broader Greek social context and provide a more complete understanding of the concept of temporality. This requires taking into account the fluidity of socio-spatial and temporal contexts in which the participants' old and new priorities and expectations are shaped and reshaped. In other words, I intent to bring out how they recall their past, interpret it and how they place themselves in the new reality and what are their conceptualizations and aspirations concerning their life in Greece.
This presentation is grounded in material collected during field research from October 2016 to May 2017 and another from April 2018 that is still in progress.
Paper short abstract:
The present paper tries to highlight how Immigrants' Cultural Identity effects on the process of migration both 'to initiate migration (voluntary and forced)' and 'to be accepted/rejected in the host society'.
Paper long abstract:
The present paper is an attempt to explore how particular religion and its dominance influences the process of migration both in expelling/enforcing to migrate and accept/welcome a selective immigrant/immigrant group in host country. It aims to highlight how invisible geography of cultural identity (culture, race, belief, language, identity, religion and ethnicities etc) has instigated politics and created issues in contemporary migrations in the forms of immigrant and refugee crises. Culture which is deeply rooted in religion works as psychological agent in stimulating or discouraging and facilitating or rejecting the immigrants. These invisible geographies of identities of both immigrants and the host societies clash with each other and initiates the process of migration be it forced and voluntary. It initiates the migration process, set routs of migration, reroutes, settles and unsettles the immigrants. Despite of legal, human rights and other political and diplomatic reasons how religious dis/similarities leads immigrant/group of immigrants to be accepted or rejected by the host society. The present research will analyse the case of different immigrant groups in India including the politics of "legal/illegal" migrants and refugees. It will examine these immigrant groups through the legal framework and how they are settled/resettled/unsettled in India due to their invisible geographical identities of culture and religion.