Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the experience of Congolese migrants in Cairo. Liminality reveals nuanced political subjectivities by analyzing marginalization, control, agency, and practices. Ethnographic research illustrates how Congolese build structures that support their home-making amid liminal states.

Paper long abstract:

This paper highlights the significance of liminality to understanding the Congolese migratory experience in Cairo. Since the 1990s, a significant migration trend from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Egypt has emerged. The reasons for Congolese coming to Egypt are manifold, ranging from education, to employment in international call centers, or becoming professional soccer players, to seeking asylum with UNHCR. Most of them consider Egypt a transitional stage in their life and migratory trajectory.

Constrained by limited prospects for legal integration, economic uncertainty, and racism in Egyptian society, many Congolese seek ways to move on. At the same time, a tremendous increase in the globally fortified migration policies, mainly initiated by the global North, has severe repercussions for migrants within Africa.

Putting the concept of liminality (Turner 1969) at the center of this paper, I show how Congolese migrants in Egypt navigate precarious economic and legal situations, while settling in a liminal situation. Liminality, offers a nuanced approach to understanding geographies and ambivalences of their political subjectivities, enabling to analyze simultaneous processes of marginalization and control, but also migrants’ agency, and practices.

Drawing on ethnographic research on the role of new Pentecostal churches on the migration routes of Congolese, I enfold how Congolese in Cairo, though seeing themselves in a liminal state, build cultural, political, religious, and economic structures at local, and transnational levels, which in turn support their home making in the city.