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- Convenors:
-
Elena Borisova
(University of Sussex)
Jérémie Voirol (University of Manchester)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Lanyon Building (LAN), 01/052
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to generate insights about how migrants carve out lives worth living without reducing their experiences to the suffering inflicted by oppressive migration regimes, and what purchase current trends in anthropologies of the good and morality have to offer to migration research.
Long Abstract:
This panel aims to generate insights about how migrants carve out lives worth living and create the good in different domains of their lives without reducing their experiences to the suffering inflicted by oppressive migration regimes. It explores what analytical and empirical purchase current trends in anthropologies of the good and morality have to offer to migration research. As Katerina Rozakou argued (2019), our gaps in knowledge about migration originate not necessarily from the lack of access to certain sites, such as refugee camps and detention centres, but from our epistemological imagination, which colours our writing with 'particular aesthetic modalities'. Although recent research on migration has paid attention to the relationship between (im)mobility and the imaginative, the desired, and the hoped for, much of current migration scholarship is still produced along the lines of 'suffering slot anthropology' (Robbins 2013). Without downplaying the importance of critically analysing the issues of power, violence and inequalities, we ask, how can moving beyond the 'analytic of desperation' (Elliot 2020) help us understand the multiplicity of lived experiences of (im)mobility in their fullness? How can we balance out the focus between suffering, violence and power with attention to the good? And how can this approach further destabilise the worn out dichotomies, such as forced/voluntary, economic/humanitarian migration premised upon different hierarchically organised types of suffering that dominate public and policy-making discourse? We welcome submissions grounded in fine-grained ethnographic research across different contexts that look at migrants' and their families' projects of self-fashioning and creating valuable lives.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Clayton Van Woerkom (Brigham Young University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Muslims in a small French town seek “the good life” by pursuing a specific kind of personhood. It pushes back on a scholarship of Islam in France which has emphasized power to the exclusion of principles and practices of Muslimness and Frenchness that my interlocutors value.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the ways in which Muslims in a small town in France constitute their beings as they take up, interact with, embody, and (re)constitute various ideas and practices in pursuit of “the good life.” Specifically, I show how they negotiate abstract ideas about what it means to be a good French person and a good Muslim and the practices associated with those identity categories. In so doing, I situate my research within a broader scholarship of Islam in France which has generally centered abstract discourses related to power. Ethnographies of Islam in France have overwhelmingly focused on Muslim activists and religious leaders in large cities, showing how Muslim migrants and their descendents resist Islamaphobic, racist, and xenophobic discourses seeking to marginalize Muslim communities. While important, such an approach has limited the discussion to Islam in France to abstract discourses tied explicitly to oppression and suffering, power and resistance in urban areas. In contrast, I have found that my interlocutors value much more than the power and resistance that has been the focus of ethnographic work in French-Muslim communities. My research examines how Muslims in rural France define and seek after “the good life” by becoming a certain type of good person. To that end, I analyze situations I observed in mosques, homes, and local businesses where my interlocutors discuss and embody principles and practices of Islamic piety as well as principles and practices of Frenchness in the pursuit of their own definition of goodness.
Melanie Griffiths (University of Birmingham)
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on research with UK-based families to explore the pursuit of happiness in the face of chronic legal uncertainty. Using interviews with ‘deportable’ migrants, it explores the transformative space of family life as mediated through the ongoing threat of immigration enforcement.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at the family lives of irregular migrants in the UK, to recognise the richness of life and production of hope in even in the most dire economic and legal circumstances. It draws on anthropological research with UK-based mixed-nationality families consisting of British citizens and irregular male migrants, to explore how people carve out private and personal lives in the shadow of chronic immigration battles and the ongoing threat of enforcement measures. It goes beyond reducing people’s lives to their migration cases and ‘spectacle’ of deportation, to look at how people live, love and produce futures despite the oppressive migration regimes around them. It focuses on two case studies to explore the pursuit of hope and happiness, including marriage plans and starting families.
As with the couples, however, the research cannot ignore the wider context of their lives. The paper recognises the extreme structural stresses and limitations produced by the UK’s immigration system and its restrictions, such as forced worklessness, no recourse to public funds, and the possibility (or reality) of immigration detention and forced removal. The paper unpicks the impact of these processes on people’s personal lives, family roles and gender dynamics, particularly in relation to mental health stresses, (un)employment and parenting. The paper also explores the ways people sought to transform, minimise or compartmentalise the difficulties caused by the immigration system, in order to go beyond the ‘suffering subject’ and produce family lives of hope and transformation.
Sanderien Verstappen (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
Discussions about the consequences of forced migration have in anthropology often been framed through the lens of “displacement.” In this presentation, I propose an anthropology of “reorientation” to broaden the conversation about post-displacement transformations.
Paper long abstract:
Discussions about the consequences of violence and forced migration have in anthropology often been framed through the lens of “displacement.” In this presentation, I add the notions of “disorientation” and “reorientation” to broaden the conversation about the long-term, varied, and dispersed consequences of displacement. This is not to replace displacement, since this notion will remain an important anchor in discussions on citizenship and belonging, but to complement it. The anthropology of reorientation is a contribution to the panel's efforts to move beyond a "suffering migrant subject" in that it allows multiple connotations to arise, including both positive and negative ones.
An anthropology of reorientation is a people-oriented perspective of post-displacement transformation. It is an invitation to think in the broadest possible sense about the social and spatial consequences of violence-induced, forced migration. It allows us to examine how people find their way anew through shifting terrains, how their carving out new pathways is paired with the reconceptualisation of space and sociality, and how, through their adjustments, they themselves become part of producing a changing landscape. An anthropology of reorientation foregrounds the places, practices, and narratives that emerge as significant to the people being researched, including refugees, other residents, and affected people living faraway. The presentation is based on my book “New Lives in Anand" (University of Washington Press 2022), in which I explore the long-term consequences of an episode of religious violence and its aftermath of residential segregation in western India.
Claudia Böhme (University of Trier)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper which is based on fieldwork in Kakuma Refugee Camp I want to show how while stuck as refugees, young people of Kakuma find ways to make use of their talents and are actively making their future through entrepreneurial or educational activities.
Paper long abstract:
The global distribution of new technologies like the internet, mobile and smartphones, and social media has had a significant impact on refugees’ lifeworlds. Through the viral dissemination of information and images, refugees can bridge the distances and engage in transnational social networks, virtual bonds as well as the creation of new social spaces.
Kakuma refugee camp with its 30 years of existence and a population of around 200.000 people from more than 10 nationalities has become an “accidental city” (Jansen 2018) with own grown social organization, politics, culture and economies.
Living in a forced and marginalized home, live is characterised by restrictions, depression and the constant hope to get out. However, Kakuma Refugee Camp is also a place of dreams, hope, opportunities and chances for the future. This becomes most visible through the many entrepreneurial, media, artistic or educational refugee led projects and entrepreneurial activities in the camp.
In this paper, which is based on fieldwork in Kakuma refugee camp in 2021 and 2022, I want to take a closer look at singular makers and how they use social media to reach larger audiences and customers. In my analysis, I want to trace their motivations, inspirations and influences, as well as how they make a brand and find a way of being self-reliant and independent. A special focus will be put on their positive envisioning and future-making (Appadurai 2013) vis a vis their difficult present state in the camp.
Laura Adwan (Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Science)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores experiences of Iraqi professionals displaced in Jordan, following periods of wars. Using the notion of ‘aman (well-being) to explain Iraqis’ ways to make meaningful lives for themselves away from the “refugee” title conditioned by quantified suffering.
Paper long abstract:
The conditions of reduction in ongoing wars in the Middle East are widespread; and not restricted to certain communities categorized as forced migrants or refugees. The media live streaming coming about Syrian, Iraqi, or so-called Muslim refugees entering or banned from entering EU countries only briefly depicted the larger story of forced displacement in the region. Very often details of everyday life experiences and struggles are reduced to statistics and stories of flight and suffering which focus on the urgent need to assist the “victims” or avoid the potential threats of terrorists using humanitarian aid. In this paper, I explain migrants’ way(s) of making their own safety-&-dignity, using details of my ethnographic journey among Iraqi former state professionals displaced in Jordan following the brutal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Many Iraqis did not use the term “refugee” to describe their presence in Jordan conditioned by quantified suffering. Instead they acted as agents in “a complex relation to the possible,” to create their safety with dignity or well-being (‘amān). As elaborated by Jackson (2011) and al-Mohammad (2015), well-being is related to one’s ethical commitment to share ʾamān with others; family members and friends. I explore through Iraqis recollections of past experiences and daily attempts to work as volunteers in Jordan or through circular migration between Iraq and Jordan, how they were able to preserve a professional life that seemed essential not only for their own well-being but also for the well-being of their families and fellow Iraqis.