Paper Short Abstract:

This paper asks how and why memories and experiences of violence were treated with humour, laughter and smiles by young men from Pakistan living ‘undocumented’ in Greece.

Paper Abstract:

Why were memories and experiences of violence often treated with humour, laughter and smiles by young men from Pakistan living ‘undocumented’ in Greece? Drawing on 18 months of recent fieldwork where I followed a small number of young people as they attempted to survive ‘kaghazaat ke baghair’ (‘without papers’), I analyse moments where the physical violence experienced on the way to and in Greece were recounted as well as experiences of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak 1994). By demonstrating the salience of a dark humour and a shared laughter in the ways these more and less visible experiences of violence were experienced and discussed, I suggest the inadequacy of dominant theories of humour to fully account for these moments of laughter. Instead, I foreground these young mens’ own explanations for the temporal and social relevance of dark humour as the making of a particular ‘mahaul’ (Urdu for ‘vibe’ or ‘atmosphere’) in otherwise violent contexts. I ask why contending with violence has so often been considered to necessarily exclude laughter and what the consequences of obfuscating the experience of laughter among young people living without documentation in Europe might be.