Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes that approaching relations of fadl among Iraqi exiles in Jordan as a lens for examining migrant socialities can illuminate alternative modes of being in exile that come to be entangled with, or replicate, the state in a myriad of morally ambiguous ways.

Paper long abstract:

In Jordan, the language of fadl is ubiquitous and has many manifestations. Iraqis and Jordanians alike often bring up the fadl of Iraqis on Jordan’s economic and academic growth, citing not only large Iraqi investments in Jordan’s economy, but also Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime (1979-2003) provision of subsidized oil to Jordan and funded higher education for Jordanian nationals in Iraqi universities. In turn, Jordan’s fadl and grace for hosting Iraqis as “guests” of the Kingdom, especially post-2003, comes to be recognized and invoked regularly in public debate. With a future always postponed and deferred, drying up of one’s savings, and foreclosure of legal employment, fadl also becomes a valuable informal economic practice for many Iraqis in their everyday lives. Fadl then emerges as a complex logic that orders the present because of its indebtedness; one that is not constrained, eradicated, or resolved by the work of time. These multiple layers of fadl co-constitute what I refer to as “indebted citizens;” citizen-migrants who come to mutually recognize each other as such, and come to be interpellated by the state, through the indebtedness of fadl. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Iraqi exiles in Jordan, this paper traces how relations of fadl come to entangle the quotidian lives of ordinary citizen-migrants in webs of corruption, political ambitions, and citizenship claims in both Jordan and Iraq. Fadl, I propose in this paper, opens up a space of possibility for thinking about everyday statecraft in exile, benevolent governance, and the production of “good” citizenship.