Documents, Destiny and Returning to Pakistan

Mahar, Usman (23. Juli 2020): Documents, Destiny and Returning to Pakistan. Making Sense of (Im)mobility. EASA2020: New Anthropological Horizons in and Beyond Europe, Virtual Panel: The Affective Economy of Deportation and Return (P073), 21. - 24.07.2020. European Association of Social Anthropologists.

Abstract

In this article, I inquire how rejected asylum seekers and returning migrants make sense of their (im)mobility. More specifically, I focus on the idea of taqdeer (destiny) to explore how irregular Pakistani migrants experience and interpret restrictive mobility regimes. I outline the complex and equivocal attitudes of these migrants or more appropriately mobile bodies upon the rejection of their asylum –– the only means of acquiring kagaz (papers) available to them in Germany. By contextualising the value of destiny in their migratory lives, I give an insider’s description of how perspectives and narratives of destiny form an integral part of the affective and social lives of (rejected) Pakistani asylum seekers, returnees and deportees. While a shared understanding of taqdeer primarily severs as a means to communicate affective states, it also serves as an important way to accept (or contest) legal realities, for example, the rejection of ones asylum and eventual return to Pakistan. As such, taqdeer which is an integral part of the affective economy of remigration, not only aids returnees in meaning making but also provides people a way to engage with the vulnerabilities and gendered burdens of irregular migration and return.

Abstract

This article is an outcome of ongoing research for the project ‘Return to Pakistan: The Political Economy of the Emotions of Remigration’ at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. I would like to acknowledge funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant SO 435/14-1. I am grateful to Clara Cornaro, David Graser, Diego Guillén, Juliane Müller and Martin Sökefeld for their valuable feedback and suggestions. I am also indebted to my interlocutors for their trust in me and sharing their extremely personal experiences with me. I have changed the names of my interlocutors in order to protect their identities.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Paper)
• Keywords: Asylum; Destiny; Germany; Migration; Mobility; Pakistan
• Fakultät: Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde > Ethnologie
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie
• Sprache: Englisch