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- Convenors:
-
Miguel Vale de Almeida
(ISCTE, Lisbon)
Raquel Gil Carvalheira (Nova University of Lisbon and Centre for Research in Anthropology)
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- Stream:
- Migration
- Location:
- ZHG 004
- Start time:
- 29 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Focusing on internal and international migration, refugees and asylum seekers, this panel seeks to discuss the relation between different types of mobility and the making of locality.
Long Abstract:
In the past years, several authors have highlighted the ways mobilities are differently segmented according to distinct categories. This means that people categorized as "refugees" are in a very distinct position in relation to global mobilities when compared to "tourists" or "highly specialised workers". Acknowledging such segmentations, this panel seeks to discuss the relation between different types of mobility and the making of locality. Focusing on internal and international migration, refugees and asylum seekers, it unravels the performative role of materialities (archives, remittances and home decorations) and immaterialities (music, religion and radio), in the making of localities, homes and in the construction of citizenship.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Having as a starting point a family's residential compound in rural Morocco, this paper proposes to look at women's migratory projects across generations, with special attention to how it creates different attachments and investments in their homeland.
Paper long abstract:
Having as a starting point a family's residential compound in rural Morocco, this paper proposes to look at women's migratory projects across generations, with special attention to how it creates different attachments and investments in their homeland. Educational and economic backgrounds as well as matrimonial strategies change through generations and have impacts on women's social position inside the family and in their migratory projects. This influences their emotional and economic investment in the family's residential compound. Women described in this paper have mostly migrated within Moroccan borders which reveals that the relation between migrant trajectories, temporalities and notions of home are not only mediated by transnationalism but also by people's movements within their home country. In Morocco, rural and urban disparities have produced mass movements to the cities on the coast where people seek for a better future, access to education, consumption and economic reliability. At the same time, they see rural Morocco as the cornerstone of their traditions and kin relations. The Lahmar residential compound is a good ethnographic example to show that dwelling and place of belonging are two interrelated concepts that also affect internal migrants, often unappreciated in the study of contemporary migrations.
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this communication is to discuss the construction of home in exilic contexts, namely its relation with the production and preservation of exilic transnational archives taking as a starting point an investigation about the production of archives in exile during the Estado Novo regime.
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of this communication is to discuss the construction of home in exilic contexts, namely its relation with the production and preservation of exilic transnational archives - as opposed to national archives (Creet, 2011) and personal archives - taking as a starting point an on-going investigation about the production of archives in exile, namely in Europe (France, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark) during the Estado Novo regime, particularly the period of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974).
In this context we believe that through the example of these archives we can discuss the home left behind, the new home in exile context, the home on the road - on the return to Portugal in 1974 with the end of the dictatorship - as well as the post-exile home, whether in Portugal or in other geographical contexts.
We intend to explore the act of archiving and the archive as an act of distribution of the self (Gell 1998), included in mobility processes. As a cultural artefact, the archive cross borders, being himself a mirror of these processes of mobility allowing, on the one hand, to discuss feelings of belonging, rooting and uprooting, and secondly, to articulate different concepts of home or place of shelter both in individual cases as on collective ones when, for example, political projects within transnational networks are at stake.
Paper short abstract:
This article discusses displacement and belonging by analysing the relationship between consumption and production of music, and the (re)making of individual and collective identities in a community of Malian Kel Tamasheq, also known as Tuareg, refugees in Burkina Faso.
Paper long abstract:
This article discusses displacement and belonging by analysing the relationship between consumption and production of music, and the (re)making of individual and collective identities in a community of Malian Kel Tamasheq, also known as Tuareg, refugees in Burkina Faso. The argument here challenges mainstream perspectives depicting displacement as a mere loss that essentially and definitively de-roots a community: a displaced subjectivity is a-politicied and a-historicised because the only factor defining his/her individual's position is being a refugee. On the contrary, this paper argues that "being displaced" is not only represented by the status of refugee, but it involves transformative productive processes. "Being displaced" has a double-effect on how individual and collective subjectivities express themselves in relation to their feeling of belonging. On the one hand, forced separation from home fosters stronger feelings of attachment to activities perceived as essentially representing the population's traditions; on the other hand, novel contingencies make these cultural factors sometimes redundant or challenged by other practices and expressions of values. While taking care not to belittle the physical and psychological deprivations that forced migration entails, this article underlines the importance of transformative or reactionary processes of cultural making within a context of displacement.
Paper short abstract:
I focus on South Asian Muslim men living in Barcelona. Specifically, I explore how precarious housing and work shape these men’s bodily routines and etiquette and arouse their concerns for religious piety. Thus, my aim is to discuss the relationship between religion, place, dwelling, and belonging.
Paper long abstract:
In the past decades, research on Muslims in Europe has focused on mosques and religious schools. While this focus has provided valuable data on the institutionalization of Islam in this context, much less is known on how the vicissitudes of life shape the ordinary experience of Islam in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal or Spain. In this paper I focus on South Asian Muslim men who live and work in Barcelona. Drawing on six months of fieldwork, I address how the conditions of labor migration in the city constitute the basis for these men's religious practices and discourses. Specifically, I explore how precarious housing and work shape these men's bodily routines and etiquette and arouse their concerns for religious piety. Thus, I argue that, paradoxically, Barcelona becomes an adverse and simultaneously suitable environment for pursuing a pious life based on awareness of daily difficulties and practices of individual and collective care. Ultimately, my aim is to discuss the relationship between religion, place, dwelling, and belonging.