Paper Short Abstract:

This paper analyses the funeral practices of Chechen and Ingoush living in France. The families are involved into a complex process of repatriation which combines medical actions with the body, mandatory documents allowing the transfer and Muslim funerals split between different spaces and actors.

Paper Abstract:

This paper analyses the funarel practices of Vaynakh people (Chechen and Ingoush) living in France. Many of them came to Europe as political refugees after years of war and political repressions in Chechnya and a generation of their children has grew up abroad. The link that these people maintain with their land is very strong and the majority of them want to be buried in their native village. After someone's death, their family is involved into a complex process of repatriation which needs numerous documents mandatory for the transfer of a dead body, including medical certificates regarding necessary vaccination. My ethnographic fieldwork held in Nice, Strasbourg and Paris from December 2022 to November 2023 showed that the families are often helped by local religious authorities as imams or other religious leaders to accomplish administrative actions. The Vaynakh imams are also responsible for the religious part of this process and they do the Muslim prayer (janaza), often in special rooms at the morgues. If the family pays a funeral assurance to a funeral agency (mostly always Turkish), the washing of the body and the prayer may be organized by the agency itself. How do people choice between different funeral specialists? Who is authorized to make the funeral prayer? Are all Muslims equal for Chechen and Ingoush in this situation? How do they negociate time limits with the French state? All these questions will be analysed in my paper based on my ethnography of Vaynakh religious practices in France.