Bounded Mobilities: Ethnographic Perspectives on Social Hierarchies and Global Inequalities [1. Aufl.] 9783839431238

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Miriam Gutekunst, Andreas Hackl, Sabina Leoncini, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Irene Götz (eds.) Bounded Mobilities

Culture and Social Practice

Miriam Gutekunst, Andreas Hackl, Sabina Leoncini, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Irene Götz (eds.)

Bounded Mobilities Ethnographic Perspectives on Social Hierarchies and Global Inequalities

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http: //dnb.d-nb.de © 2016 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Hanna Zeckau Proofreading: Philip Saunders Layout: Tomislav Helebrant Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3123-4 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3123-8

Contents Mobility and Immobility: Background of the Project A foreword by Irene Götz | 9

Im/mobilities in Subjects and Systems A foreword by Elena Bougleux | 13

I. I ntroduction Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini | 19

Critical Mobility Studies as a Political Middle-Ground? An interview with Bruno Riccio | 35

II. I dentities and B oundaries “So, now I am Eritrean”: Mobility Strategies and Multiple Senses of Belonging between Local Complexity and Global Immobility Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa | 41

Stigmatised Mobility and the Everyday Politics of (In)visibility: The Intricate Pathways of Palestinians in Tel Aviv Andreas Hackl | 59

From one Side of the Wall to the Other: The Deconstruction of a Physical and Symbolic Barrier between Israel and the West Bank Sabina Leoncini | 75

III. I magination and T ime (Im)mobility, Urbanism and Belonging: Being Immobile and Dreaming Mobility in Greece Eleni Sideri | 95

On Being Stuck in the Wrong Life: Home-Longing, Movement and the Pain of Existential Immobility Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher | 113

Mobility in a Congealed Room? Asylum Seekers (in Munich) between Institutionalised Immobility and Self-Mobilisation Julia Sophia Schwarz | 129

Small-Scale Mobility and National Border Politics: Western European Border Formation in the Nineteenth Century Katrin Lehnert | 145

IV. G endered I m / mobilities From the “Periphery” to the “Centre”: Cross-Border Marriages between Mainland Chinese Women and Hong Kong Men Avital Binah-Pollak | 165

Dislocating Punjabiyat: Gendered Mobilities among Indian Diasporas in Italy Sara Bonfanti | 183

V. V irtual I m / mobilities “The World Has no Limits, so Why Should You?”: Migration through Marriage in Times of Increasing Digitalization and Securitization of Borders Miriam Gutekunst | 209

Virtual Im___mobilities: Three Ethnographic Examples of Socialised Media Usage, Civic Empowerment and Coded Publics Daniel Kunzelmann | 223

VI. F ixations within M obilit y and M ultilocalit y The Economic Diaspora: The Triple Helix of Im/mobilisation in the Hype about Migration and Development Maria Schwertl | 245

The Experience of Multilocal Living: Mobile Immobilities or Immobile Mobilities? Cédric Duchêne-Lacroix, Monika Götzö and Katrin Sontag | 265

Conceptual Notes on the Freedom of Movement and Bounded Mobilities An afterword by Noel B. Salazar | 283

List of Authors  | 291

Mobility and Immobility: Background of the Project Irene Götz Disturbing pictures and reports in the media, difficult to ignore, confront us steadily with one crucial aspect of current forms of im/mobility: the overloaded boats of refugees in the Mediterranean and fleeing families on their way to a hopefully safe place in Europe or elsewhere, queuing up in front of registration centres or crowded into makeshift homes. On a different note, Chinese mobile workers following the tracks of the many striving for better living conditions in the new booming mega cities must often leave family and children behind in their villages. These are pictures often seen, stories often told, dealing with the strategies, practices and metaphors of mobility of the unsettled and uprooted, who are often forced into mobility under precarious and dangerous conditions. The people in these stories are leaving their places of origin, driven by economic shortcomings, political prosecution or war, and many times by a lack of perspectives. Despite their difficult situation, or maybe even because of it, they can also be seen as actors of their lives, attempting to get access to a better future, following their “imaginations”, in the sense of Arjun Appadurai denoting this powerful force of dreams of a prosperous life elsewhere, as they are being distributed by the globalized media. Migration occurs somewhat “autonomously” (Sabine Hess and Transit Migration) despite the powerful consolidation of borders; migrants have always found their different ways to overcome them, even if they have had to pay a high price for their attempts to reach “the other side”, a wealthier place, where they found themselves, for example, as an illegal non-citizen, respectively one with restricted social rights, under conditions that made them more or less immobile. Thus, this collection of new ethnographic contributions is on a very crucial and current topic – mobility and its counterpart, immobility. The focus of these papers, however, is relatively new. They are dedicated not only and primarily once more to mobility and the mobiles, but also address forms and practices of immobility and immobilisation which have not been subjected to detailed research very often before. Many contributions investigate the lifeworlds and strategies of those enclosed within multifaceted borders and hindered from moving freely due to the “wrong”

10  | Irene Götz passport or to a wide range of social and economic inequalities and restrictions. While highly skilled expatriates, for instance, are somewhat hypermobilised and often even suffer from the imperative of changing places and from their unlimited and speedy travelling around the globe, others are stuck in poverty, detained in refugee camps or confined to areas badly connected to industrial zones or to transportation systems that could carry them to potential working places. Others – for example, seasonal workers or female caregivers – manage to move and find temporal work abroad, yet they are sent back when no longer needed or they have to leave their wealthy host countries when their tourist visas expire. Nowadays, the restructured globalized labour market in coalition with neoliberal politics of deregulated national states, and particularly the European Union, make a distinction between those migrants and mobiles welcome due to their qualifications and those who are treated as “scroungers”, even as “parasites”, being superfluous and a burden to the welfare states that they are often supposed to be selfishly exploiting. Border regimes are the powerful agents of the national states keeping up and safeguarding this distinction between those migrants who are welcome and those not admitted. The papers published in this volume focus on particular interrelations between mobility and the mobile, on the one hand, and immobility and the immobilised, on the other hand. Dealing with different groups, milieus and countries, the contributions show once again how crossing borders is a privilege of the few and an existential problem for the many. However, mobility and immobility are not considered to be at two different ends of the spectrum. In fact, this book makes the argument that people often experience both at the same time: people are somehow mobile and immobilised. Thus, mobility/mobilisation and sedentarism or immobility/immobilisation must be regarded as structurally interwoven states, in many respects. Moreover, they are often only temporary and fluid states: moving and settling alternately and in an interrelated way in the life courses of, for instance, mobile workers, who are, every now and then, forced to become mobile in order to find a new job. This is not only the case in recent times. In the nineteenth century, in the wake of industrialization, mobility and immobility alternated in the biographies of mobilised workers, who already had to cope with border regimes which had only recently been built up and gradually strengthened by the newly established national states. The common target of all the contributions in this volume is to provide insights into different ongoing (or recently finished) research projects that all rely on an ethnographic approach. The projects presented in this book reveal that the ethnographic approach based on case studies and thick descriptions, including perspectives from the actors’ points of view, provides deeper insights into the interwoven macro- and micro-contexts of mobile practices, their potentials and their restric-

Mobility and Immobility | 11

tions, which are shaped and governed by the institutions, politics and policies of several local, national and transnational mobility regimes. The contributions presented in the following chapters go back to an international conference held at the Institute for European Ethnology of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University (LMU) Munich. The very inspiring interdisciplinary conference brought together social scientists and cultural anthropologists from Italy, Germany, Greece, Israel, Switzerland and Scotland, most of them not having met before. Providing many vivid discussions and new insights into the disciplinary vocabularies and national research traditions, it served to find contacts and potential foci of co-operation within a wide-spread community of experts in the field of migration, border and mobility studies. The conference was successful in building up or strengthening networks – between junior and some senior scholars from different subjects and countries. The discussions benefited very much from keynote speeches given by well-known scholars, such as Sabine Hess from the University of Göttingen, Bruno Riccio from the University of Bologna and Piero Vereni from the Tor Vergata University of Rome. Finally, it should be mentioned that it was possible to bring this book project to a successful end thanks to the financial support, first of all, of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Institute of European Ethnology (LMU), which both funded the conference and this volume. The former gave generous financial support within the framework of a special programme called “Higher Education Dialogue with Southern Europe”. This programme aims at connecting scholars from Northern and Southern Europe with one another. A warm thank you on behalf of the editing team also goes to our partner university in this DAAD tandem: to Bergamo, in particular to Elena Bougleux from the local Department of Human and Social Science. Last but not least, we would like to thank Claudia Stahl, our project assistant, Hanna Zeckau, our graphic designer, as well as Philip Saunders, our proofreader, and Tomislav Helebrant for formatting the papers.

Im/mobilities in Subjects and Systems Elena Bougleux When I was invited to open this collaborative research volume on im/mobilities, I was struck by the complex task that the team of young scholars had undertaken. Discourses on mobilities are inscribed within opposite and often contradictory rhetorics; they are driven simultaneously by heterogeneous causes and constraints. Mobility is a state of mind, tied to personal narratives and imaginaries, as well as a juridical state, determined by institutions and power structures; mobilities can be provisional and permanent, metaphorical and material. Mobility is an elusive and fragmented matter to deal with. In the context of an academic seminar bringing together scholars from different, mostly European countries, the mind runs to the privileged condition of those very mobile subjects travelling on a regular basis to create occasions of discussion and exchange about their research. However, fellowships for travelling scholars are often granted by countries that, at the same time, establish limiting quotas for migrants; and countries that are weaker in attracting moving scholars, so namely the less competitive in an academic perspective, are, at the same time, the strongest at enforcing defensive politics against migration. The concept of mobility appears to be breaking to pieces and scattering in opposite directions, depending on who is actually moving: the trajectories followed are only occasionally chosen by moving subjects, and their reasons to move can be elective, rather than mandatory. Definitely, an articulated idea of mobility cannot be simply associated with that of freedom, introducing the simple dichotomy free to move/bound to move: rather, such association is mediated by the relation between the individual and the collective dimension, which attributes or denies power to the condition of the moving subjects. In fact, opposite declinations of the concept of freedom are associated with subjects moving along the same trajectories, but in opposite directions, and different degrees of freedom are reversely entrenched in the condition of being in motion, according to the network of power relations among sending and receiving contexts. Whose immobility we are going to discuss is, therefore, a major issue: mobilities keep unfolding in strict conjunction with fixed standpoints, and a theory of im/mobilities must account for the differential distribution of the capacity to be

14  | Elena Bougleux mobile between people of different class, identity and origin. Every event of im/ mobility also has a material side, as moving bodies mobilise resources and call for practical responses, and a metaphorical side, as moving ideas raise reactions dense with emotional and intimate values. Travelling ideas may seem more silent, less demanding and more fluid than bodies. After all, ideas may cross borders “unseen”. However, the figurations they shape when they are displaced far from their original cultural and emotional scenarios bear major linguistic, epistemic, political and aesthetic implications. Both the metaphorical and the material dimensions of im/mobility converge in the trope of the nomadic subject, broadly described in the work of Rosi Braidotti (2011): nomadic subjects happen to walk literally or virtually across separated spaces, creating material connections where there were none through their physical and emotional passage. The action of moving across separated spaces, performed as a state of being, inhabited as a permanent condition, has the power to weave networks of unexpected connections, to link the improbable, to rephrase the speakable, to redefine the primary ideas of presence and distance. However, at the same time, one must acknowledge the continuing primacy of the state in determining and limited such boundary crossings. Thus, even the figure of the nomad is essentially both mobile and immobile. The uneasy positioning of the moving ones, in fact, also demands a broad redefinition of the epistemic categories for those who stay or remain. Social spaces are continuously redrawn and redefined, from the margins to the centre, by their moving, elusive, more dynamic elements. A mobile, nomadic subject is crucially relevant for the emergence of a critical perspective on society: he/she redefines the fields of legitimacy and normated correctness, as his/her moving condition is difficult to catch up with and to grasp, unpredictable and potentially creative. In its metaphoric representations, nomadism becomes a form of existence: it is an appropriated way of existing, chosen or suffered, in order to resist a hetero-directed norm. The nomadic subject is a social and epistemological activist, subject and object, whose languages, desires and frameworks of thought and action appear to be in constant oscillation between unstable states far from equilibrium. Nomadic subjects belong simultaneously to multiple spaces, to multiple phases, to transitory states and also to multiple times: the previous and the following, separated by the discontinuity represented by the mobility event. Why associate the condition of mobility to that of activism? Which rhetoric is at stake when we attribute a more intense transformative power to an im/mobile condition? Is there any empowering advantage in performing im/mobilities in either an open or elusive way? Capitalism resists activism and its elusive forms. In the framework of most research presented in this volume, capitalism does not only appear as a powerful political and economic system, it is also the comprehensive concept that includes multiple and very stable categories of power, sets

Im/mobilities in Subjects and Systems |  15

of norms and mechanisms of control. It is capable of recursively reinforcing its structure, thereby metabolizing the actions of its non-aligned elements, namely its opponents. The same may hold true for the state. A capitalist political economy may be successful and effective in enforcing its norms because it harbours, accepts and copes well with nomadic subjects, elusive or not, incorporating and appropriating them depending on needs and demands. It places and freezes them in ever changing plastic and adaptive categories. Capitalism mutates and devours elusive activism; it is an adapting entity itself, capable of absorbing and shaping desires, transforming deliberate errors, conditions of instability and elusive states into new, modified, adaptive norms. Im/mobile subjects are, therefore, asked to conform to multiple capitalistic norms, as they have multiple duties to comply with and multiple roles to play. Although multiple spaces of resistance in connection with im/mobility exist, the nomadic condition appears to fail in becoming a form of global resistance precisely because it is utilised and accommodated within it. State power and capitalism are often skilful, as they intercept peripheral fluctuations and fragment opponents, or even scatter and displace them into the landscape of incoherent elements. In order to enhance an effective resistance, to open up the potential that im/mobilities contain, one more concept is needed. Echoing many of the cases presented in this volume, I suggest that this element is: multiplicity. The im/mobile subjects are to be transformed into non-unitarian subjects, with superposition of identities and recombinations of identity patterns. Subjects who are continuously ready to draw their own, singular, unique, nomadic synthesis, their own non hetero-directed norms. Identities scatter, reassemble and mutate during processes of dislocation and transfer, as scenarios frequently change: their emotions shift, their networks reconnect or are lost. They are flexible and receptive, subjected to the multiple and contextual interferences between the original and the final socio-cultural environments through which they travel. Identities are always nomadic, but they are also contested and utilised. Maybe these are the most relevant traits that hold together figurations of im/mobility: as power structures continue to displace people, these people are also capable of displacing power structures along their paths. As they can try to represent and modify representations of boundaries, they also become spaces of possibility within a limiting structure. Im/mobile subjects, as the contributions to this volume suggest, are capable of challenging the existing norms, able to wander beyond limits, challenging different political, cultural or capitalistic norms. These forms of empowerment are part of the very same relations that also limit and restrict mobility. This is why this volume is titled “Bounded Mobilities”.

16  | Elena Bougleux

R eferences Braidotti, R. 2011. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

I. Introduction

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini “It was the prospect of immobility that motivated me to become mobile and join this conference”, said Eleni Sideri from Greece at a workshop held in Germany for the purpose of this publication. It was July, 2015, and her home country, Greece, had just held a referendum in which the people had voted with Oxi – no – against another austerity programme dictated by the European Union (which was nevertheless accepted by the government later on). This was also the time when the Greek people could only withdraw 60 Euros of cash a day from the bank. The often praised privilege of academic mobility and international conferencing crumbled and a situation of relative confinement took over in Sideri’s life, a cultural anthropologist with Greek citizenship. Her salary payments had been on hold for three months when she contemplated whether or not she would make it to the workshop in Munich on “Bounded Mobilities”  – the idea to look at a world of immobility within processes of mobility. The theme suddenly felt inconveniently familiar. Eventually she attended, despite the insecurities, not least because her friends encouraged her to do so. They said that nobody knew what would happen in the near future. Immobilisation and privilege do not necessarily exclude each other, particularly in times when such privileges are contested. Social inequalities and global hierarchies in the context of im/mobilities are not only the subject of this edited volume, but also a reality with which many of the contributors struggled, particularly those from Southern European countries such as Sideri. While Greek and Italian academics talked about their increasing immobilities and the fight over funding and positions, the situation for those contributors from Northern European countries, such as Germany, remained comparably good, including the possibilities available for young researchers. Inequality and immobility do not only speak through the research and analysis in this volume, but are also an essential aspect of its making. Although this volume addresses a variety of contexts beyond Europe and migration, it cannot but acknowledge the particular timing of its production – a time of intensified control and exclusion and one of unprecedented movement despite such exclusion: As this publication came into being, its relevance to the current po-

20  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini litical context in Europe and beyond became increasingly apparent too. More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe seemed to be sealing itself off in similar ways through new fences and policing. Therefore, it appeared that much of the enthusiasm about unregulated mobility within the Schengen area has found a sober end. However, at the same time, civil society initiatives and the responsible policies of some states also propelled movement and upheld solidarity temporarily, which, nevertheless, took place within a larger context of unequal mobilities and led to fierce political debates. The seeming ubiquity of borders and immobilisations underpins the growing acceptance of an order in which only the privileged remain mobile, while others are doomed to a world of limitations and control, despite an occasional upsurge of largely humanitarian solidarity. At the same time, however, massive human mobilities are taking place and are propelled within this context of inequality, a realisation that points to the centrality of merging different forms of immobility and mobility into one conceptual framework of bounded mobilities. By August, 2015, it was widely acknowledged that the mass influx of migrants and refugees represented the largest movement of people that Europe has seen since 1945. The policing of borders, train stations and other routes intensified as refugees sought out every possible loophole in the tight border regime, often resulting in tragic incidences and deaths. Having said this, the harrowing accounts of disenfranchised refugees are not the only stories that define this volume, which argues that mobility is always bounded, regulated, mediated and intrinsically connected to forms of immobility and unequal power relations.

The background This volume and the project behind it were funded by the German Academic Exchange Service through a north-south co-operation fund. It fosters academic and socio-political dialogue between those countries affected by the economic crisis and Germany. It is a form of mobility that seeks to overcome marginalisation, but is also a symptom of the very inequality that motivated it in the first place. This financial support made this publication and the workshop behind it possible, allowing the space and time needed for discussion and exchange. It mobilised the ideas and bodies of researchers. The “north-south dialogue” also stands for the ambivalence of mobility, because movement is not only required and supported, but also symbolises the underlying global hierarchies and inequalities. This is exemplified by the difficult conditions of academics in Southern Europe, for example, and their unequal power relationship with funding resources and their host states in the “north”. Power relations are always part of social situations where mobility operates and it is central to acknowledge the role of privilege within the context of academia. This is particularly true between researchers and their field, but equally

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  21

between different researchers with varying degrees of social, physical or linguistic mobility. This shows that writing im/mobilities at a time when academia itself has been influenced by economic decline and immobilisation is certainly no coincidence. Forms of entrapment have developed here despite, or maybe essentially because of the obligation to be increasingly mobile in today’s transnational political economy. The bounded and unequal nature of most forms of mobility stood clearly revealed as this book went to print. The contemporary relevance of the issues addressed are also paralleled by the increasing prominence of mobility as a research topic. Indeed, mobility studies has emerged as a highly specialised research area featuring a journal of Mobilities, research networks, such as ANTHROMOB or Cosmobilities, and research centres, such as the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University or Cultural Mobilities Research at Leuven, thus, providing an ever growing resource of insights and discussion. We hope to contribute to this ongoing discussion by ways of ethnographic research and well-grounded criticism.

B eyond the mobilities paradigm Mobility has experienced an evolution from a rather marginal concept in Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology into a key issue surrounded by vivid debates. One of these debates followed the “new mobilities paradigm” and the idea that “all the world seems to be on the move” (Sheller and Urry 2006, 207). This paradigm took a conceptual turn away from methodological and conceptual “sedentarism” towards a framework of mobility. Not stasis but movement was heralded as the new norm. Within this context, mobility is conceptualised not only as physical movement, but also in its plural forms, including virtual mobility as an increasingly central channel for the transfer of information and worldwide communication, as well as imaginative mobility as a form of travelling to other places without movement. The different mobilities are strongly interconnected: being mobile is linked to social mobility and “moving between places physically or virtually can be a source of status and power” (Sheller and Urry 2006, 213). Not only the movement of people, but also of objects, capital, ideas, information and images within local, national and global media can be analysed in their relations and interdependencies within the framework of mobility. While we underline the importance of thinking about mobility in its plural forms and interrelations, we also share criticism of the “mobilities paradigm” mentioned above – there were critiques that followed, and in some cases also preceded the introduction of the paradigm at the beginning of the twenty-first century (e.g. Cunningham and Heyman 2004; Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013; Shamir 2005;

22  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini Torpey 1998). One element in these critiques is that early mobility studies tended to neglect the global power relations and social hierarchies that structure and stabilize the mobility of a certain group of people. Clifford warned long ago that an unreflected “nomadology” is a form of “postmodern primitivism” (Clifford 1997, 38). Metaphors of travelling, transit and mobility can then become blind to power structures as they are used to describe an age of globalisation; there is also a danger of seeing every form of mobility as relevant and equally important (Hess and Tsianos 2010, 243–244). At the same time, a certain distance from the focus on “migration” is also important, because migration scholars tend to stay within the frameworks established by policymakers (Glick-Schiller and Caglar 2010, 2) as migration becomes an unquestioned category for mobility from or in connection with the Global South. Additionally, the limited ways in which migration studies have been framed influenced the possibilities and limits within which this process can be understood (Oboler 2006, 118). Part of this limitation has been a tendency to think on the scale of nation states, studying only movement that crosses national borders and labelling as mobile only those who move to or settle in another state (Glick-Schiller 2010; Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013, 192; Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2003). Such methodological nationalism is transcended by concepts of transnationalism (Glick-Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992; Pries 2008), which represent yet another important shift in the understanding of mobility, albeit with its own shortcomings and limitations. There is, thus, a tendency to look at either flow or restriction, although there is much more to im/mobilities studies than this tension between borders and movements. In our selection of cases, we prioritized situations where movement and confinement interact in a diverse set of situations. We were also influenced by the idea of “regimes of mobility” within which mobility and immobility define each other (Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013, 195). Such a perspective challenges a range of analytical terms in mobility studies such as “flows” and “hypermobility”. In a similar vein, Urry and Sheller acknowledged that new places and technologies “enhance the mobility of some peoples and places and heighten the immobility of others, especially as they try to cross borders” (Sheller and Urry 2006, 207). However, the idealisation of mobility the paradigm brought with it remains problematic, not least because its lack of emphasis on unequal power relations can depoliticise highly political phenomena.

B reaking up the mobility- immobility dichotomy This volume seeks to analyse mobility through its relation with the conceptual opposite: immobility. However, this is not a question of “either-or” that poses mobility against immobility. Instead, mobilities and immobilities are entangled with one another, which is why we speak of im/mobilites and, more specifically, of bounded

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  23

mobilities. The plural should also express the diversity of mobilities and its many different forms, while “bounded” refers to the centrality of limitations and entrapment within rather than outside these mobilities. Mobility may lead to changes in patterns of inequality (Urry 2007, 187), while inequality and immobilisation affect the “patterns” of mobilities. This volume explores this relationship in multiple directions, while emphasis is given to the dynamics by which mobility becomes bounded and interacts with immobility and inequality in a variety of contexts. Enclosures and mobilities are closely related, yet are often looked at separately: While the first is said to address processes that delimit and restrict the movement of specific goods, people and ideas, the latter is approached as processes that enable and induce such movements (Cunningham and Heyman 2004). However, the enabling and the limiting often go hand in hand and may not always be analytically separable. Shamir (2005, 200) points out that mobility gaps are formed by the very same conditions within which possibilities of movement are determined, and these possibilities are shaped by built-in socioeconomic factors, geographical locations, cultural imperatives and political circumstances. Consequently, constraints always exist within movements and movement often occurs within constraints (Gill, Caletrío, and Mason 2011, 302). This volume is motivated by the prevalence of widespread immobility and inequality amid simultaneous accelerated global exchange. Movement then also takes place “across” people, as boundaries or opportunities are moved while people stay put. Moreover, there may be shifting pressures or even obligations to move across such boundaries, as in the search for faraway opportunities, while at other moments, a desire to remain immobile prevails for the same people who initially decided to move. These are simple ideas with large conceptual consequences. Mobilities across borders and boundaries do not mean that people necessarily become more similar or equal and often the opposite is true. The movement of people may create or reinforce difference and inequality; mobility may well be the key difference- and otherness-producing machine of our age (Salazar and Smart 2011, iii–v). Barth’s (1998, 9–11) realisation may be more valid then ever: Distinctions do not only depend on the absence of mobility, but are also the product of contact and exchange, as processes of incorporation and exclusion are part of the same relations. Mobility and exchange can normalise differences between people and certainly undermine prejudice, but the unequal nature of bounded mobilities also underlines stark differences in privilege and, by extension, identities, class and citizenship if these markers of difference become the factors that determine how one is allowed to be mobile. Looking at im/mobilities as a blended concept where the one always operates within the other, breaks with certain powerful normative divisions between the mobile and the immobile, as reflected in the difference, for example, between “mobility” and “migration”. The first, mobility, has been celebrated as the movement of people from the Global North, while the second, migration, has mostly referred

24  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini to the movements of people from the Global South, who struggle against exclusive and oppressive systems of confinement. Yet privileged mobility must not be enjoyable or necessarily celebrated for its superiority either. As Redfield (2012) argues in “The Unbearable Lightness of Ex-Pats: Double Binds of Humanitarian Mobility”, anthropology has long been divided between those who travel easily and those who do not. Researchers have focused more commonly on the disadvantaged and the relatively immobile, such as “refugees” and “migrants”, while the mobility of the privileged has largely escaped notice. However, his own research of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Doctors Without Borders suggests that even the “lightness” of mobility can be something quite difficult to bear, particularly because “expats” must cope with a so-called double bind – a situation that lacks stability and is motivated by a desire to satisfy competing injunctions, often by ways of much moving and straddling different demands of life. Similar insights emerge from some contributions to this volume, as in the case of people who live multi-local lives (Duchêne-Lacroix/Götzö/Sontag) or those who become obsessed with movement, despite the impossibility of its realisation (Lems/Moderbacher). The question is then not only who can move and who cannot, but at what cost and with which social and political results. Mobility does not have to be positive and fixation is not necessarily negative, and both interact in myriad ways across and within different contexts. Looking at im/mobilities, with their simultaneities and interrelations, opens up a new perspective that takes different dimensions within one reality into account. Such a perspective also has political implications: It makes a critical perspective on the governing norms of mobility possible and finds its way into the hidden spots between these norms, thereby challenging the conceptual rift between mobility and immobility, or between the border and the transgressor, and so forth. There is, thus, a certain critique that speaks through our approach to mobility. In conceptual terms, this criticism is directed particularly towards the idea that movement is free and necessarily positive rather than unequal and mediated by power relations. Secondly, we pose a challenge to approaches that separate mobility from immobility rather than looking at their interrelations. The critique of an approach to mobility that is equated with freedom is very similar to critiques of globalisation, for globalisation “divides as much as it unites – the causes of division being identical with those which promote the uniformity of the globe” (Bauman 1998, 2). The hype about mobilities and globalisation being a symbol for progress, freedom and change is paralleled by the simultaneous desire to fortify and control these developments. Borders are one form of control through which policies of movement regulation operate. These are highly complex regimes that involve a variety of actors, which is why “wall-like metaphors of the border” must be abandoned in favour of a border “as a highly perforated system or regime, a multifaceted plane of struggle” (Tsianos, Hess, and Karakayali 2009, 2). Seeing borders

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  25

and boundaries as planes of struggle and negotiation also reveals simultaneous mobilisation and immobilisation; borders as a site where inequality and the forces that aim to overcome it coincide. Hence, a “mobilities–enclosures continuum” exists at borders which are sites where movement is structured within the context of unequal power relations. Moreover, mobility and immobility, movement and enclosures “join at borders”, exemplified by the many processes of entering, avoiding, detecting, classifying, inspecting, interdicting, facilitating and revaluing that form the everyday routine of such borders (Cunningham and Heyman 2004, 293–295). Approached from these perspectives, mobilities and borders are essentially not antithetical and people can move without being mobile, or be mobile without moving (Salazar and Smart 2011, vi). While bringing immobility and inequality back into mobilities is not a new perspective, we believe that the diverse contributions to this volume suggest that bounded mobilities are a conceptual node point for the many different interacting processes that disable and enable movement and the meanings that people attach to them. Mobility is a meeting point for various social and cultural phenomena, as much as it is a phenomenon in itself. Mobility is then both the junction and the traffic that comes through it, as well as the power-related infrastructure that regulates such traffic. Some directions of this junction are blocked, while others remain open; some leading to the past and others into the future. What is an easy passage for some, may well be an impermeable wall for others.

A differentiated ethnographic approach The ethnography presented in this volume explores a variety of situations in which forms of mobility and immobility interact across and beyond the limitations of the different subfields. Alongside our conceptual move away from the widespread mobility–immobility dichotomy, a second differentiation is necessary on a methodological level. This begins with the acknowledgment that any ethnography of bounded mobilities should contribute to a better understanding of the entanglements, conditionalities and intersections of different mobilities and immobilities (Lenz 2011, 19). Anthropologists have, of course, always researched mobilities and immobilities, even if they have not always named them as such. Moreover, ethnographers have always had to be concerned with the movements of their informants (Vergunst 2011). However, the quickly changing ways in which mobility is regulated, experienced and practiced also poses new challenges to methodology which are answered by a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, geography and performance studies (D’Andrea, Ciolfi, and Gray 2011, 151). Ideas and challenges include the role of visual ethnography, of technology more generally and in ethnography in particular, as well as the requirements of multi-sited research in such a context. Paying close ethnographic attention to the parallel

26  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini dimensions of offline and online reveals new forms of im/mobility, as becomes evident where contributors accompanied people and gained deep insights into their inter-dimensional mobilities because of proximity and a focus on detail (e. g. Gutekunst, Kunzelmann, Sideri). Ethnography also makes sense of the temporal dimension of bounded mobilities, such as “waiting” or a “loss of time”, as Schwarz explored in her fieldwork in temporal spaces that confine asylum seekers in limbo. The moments and situations within which mobile people suddenly experience entrapment or stigmatisation only reveal themselves through detailed accounts and the researcher’s presence, which is why Andreas Hackl emphasises the importance of ethnographic research for the understanding of spatial transitions in a context of political conflict and inequality. However, some im/mobilities are no longer accessible through on-site fieldwork, because they lay in the past, which is why Katrin Lehnert’s historical reconstruction of nineteenth century border mobilities has significant methodological implications. It reminds us of the fact that every border has a past, a history and a story. Furthermore, this story often has two sides, which is why Sabina Leoncini made sense of the Israeli Separation Barrier after having lived with families on both “sides”. Moreover, as is known from insights into multi-sited research (Hannerz 2003; Marcus 1995), multi-locality requires researchers to approach their field of im/ mobility from a variety of perspectives and locations: the expats and their lives between “homes” (Duchêne-Lacroix/Götzö/Sontag), members of the Diaspora and their position in the host country (Schwertl), and the role of multiple boundaries in the migration process, among them the symbolic, ethnic, social, geographical and institutional dimension of emi- and immigration (Costantini/Massa). Close ethnographic attention to and a sensitivity for detail is certainly required, but such proximity can also create problems, as Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher realised with regard to their initial plan of producing a documentary film about and with the Austrian woman Gerti, whose story confronted them “with the very limits of storytelling and collaborative filmmaking”. Answering these and similar methodological challenges, we emphasise the importance of a differentiated ethnographic perspective complementary to existing approaches. Technology may pose challenges to ethnographies of im/mobilities, but ethnography is still “an excellent way to get at important aspects of human movement, especially in relating its experiential and sensory qualities to social and environmental contexts” (Vergunst 2011, 203). It is precisely because immobility and power speak through mobility that ethnography must go beyond a mere focus on human movement. Instead, ethnography can reveal, through temporal depth and spatial proximity over longer periods of time across different contexts, how and where mobility becomes bounded, propelled or enabled, and how these processes are experienced in their overlaps and interactions within a single junction, an individual or a community.

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  27

An ethnography of bounded mobilities should be sensitive to simultaneities, because privileges may allow movement for some in one single place, while they restrict it for others. Take, for instance, a train station, such as Budapest’s Keleti main terminal in the summer of 2015, where privileged travellers with EU passports boarded trains, as refugees and migrants were held up in the thousands, sometimes checked for their IDs and removed from trains despite holding valid tickets. Such a place is also where different stories and living conditions join without actually coming into contact with one another. They coexist as the same set of relations mobilise some people while immobilising others. We learnt from a student in Germany who held Moroccan citizenship that he experienced train stations as places of surveillance and control, a place of threatening confinement, despite being a transport hub. The student adapted by developing his own strategy to escape the techniques of racial profiling: Whenever he entered the train station, he did so with a handbook of political science under his arm, a measure which seemed to successfully evade being checked by the police. People with different social backgrounds, different biographies and, above all, different citizenships have very different experiences, imaginations and expectations of im/mobilities, and such diversity often exists within the same place or the same set of relations. Privilege, mobility and performance are closely connected here, and ethnography has the ability to explore the junction between individual practice and external forces. It is precisely because ethnography creates closeness to individual stories and contextual nuances that it is best equipped to unravel bounded mobilities. Ethnographic methods show what narratives that are commonly used as templates actually mean in each particular case (Götz 2015, 26). Looking at the interstices of mobility and immobility must not only be grounded in the field, but there is also the need to employ a strong analytical perspective that can illuminate the ambiguities of a world in which the highly mobile travel the same distances as the immobilised, yet along different routes and with different means and privileges in another dimension of the same world. Bounded mobility and its research is also always a political matter, which becomes evident if similar processes are labelled differently depending on the idealised metaphors of im/mobile people. Some are stigmatised while others are privileged; some have resources and citizenship, while others do not. A North American living in Geneva for reasons of employment may be called an expatriate, while those coming from the Global South are collectively packed together as “migrants”. In contemporary public discourse, the migrant has become a metaphor for a certain kind of people, and the word is employed as a political tool in the construction of nationalism and its others. The news network Al-Jazeera declared in an editorial in 2015 that it will drop the term “migrants” because “it has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative” (Malone 2015). Working with the concept of im/mobilities should also

28  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini counter the blunt metaphors of mobility that are often featured in public discourse with analytical depth and ethnographic grounding.

I dentities and boundaries One key insight which can be discerned from this volume is the close connection between boundaries, identity and mobility. Movement and stasis influence the social construction of similarity and difference, and vice versa. Sometimes, it is through movement that people learn to see themselves and others in a new light, while at other times, they only find conceptions which are already held strengthened because of exchange and cross-boundary movement. As Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa show in the case of Ethiopians with Eritrean claims, the ability to legally realise a certain identity can determine a person’s ability to move and live elsewhere. The micropolitics of identity are key to an understanding of bounded mobilities. Moreover, social and cultural boundaries move and are moved, sometimes in alignment with borders and sometimes in contradiction to them. Micropolitics of identity are key where individuals must adapt to situations of confinement or forced movement as much as they find ways to challenge entrapment. We see, for instance, that Palestinians within Israel come under pressure to position themselves and their identities in a specific way at transition points or during public events, sometimes concealing or reconfiguring the public face of who they are to avoid stigmatisation and immobilisation (Hackl). Identity and mobilities are also closely related for another reason: just like identity/alterity, mobility/immobility are two dimensions of the same phenomenon, the one bound up with the other, existing simultaneously within and through the other. Bounded mobilities are multidimensional and power-related processes of intersecting fluidities and fixations. Looking at the interplay between identity and mobility, we observed that both movement and confinement may engender processes of boundary-erosion and boundary-maintenance simultaneously or interchangeably. Borders and barriers can then become part of a system within which mobility is distributed unequally, and such differentiation influences how people with differentially mediated mobility capacity then attach varying images and meanings to borders, as Leoncini suggests in the case of the Israeli Separation Barrier. Her research raises questions about the extent to which physical barriers are thought to mirror corresponding social or cultural boundaries, while they are, in fact, imagined from a variety of perspectives in exchange with the physical impact of such a barrier.

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  29

I magination and time Imagination is also a strong force in Eleni Sideri’s research on immobility and “dreaming” mobility in Volos, Greece. Following the stories of several individuals, she shows how the desire to be mobile interacts with the structural conditions and local context within which mobility and immobility are embedded. In the face of entrapment, longing to be elsewhere can not only be a force that leads to mobility, but it can also become an extreme form of nostalgia about the past that leads to new experiences of confinement in the present. Such is the case in Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher’s ethnography of an Austrian woman, who romanticises her past life in the United States as glamorous and fulfilling and seems to try everything possible to return, albeit without success. Her continuous urge to physically move intensifies the feeling of being stuck existentially. One of the major thoroughfares of mobility is imagination; another one is time. As Julia Sophia Schwarz’s contribution reveals, temporary confinement and a form of emptiness form part of recurring immobilisation of asylum seekers in reception centres and communal accommodations. As people are held up and wait for further arrangements in their lives, they experience what they named to Schwarz as “lost time”, where the interplay between confinement, displacement and time creates a particular situation of entrapment. People find themselves in a waiting mode as they experience institutionalised immobility and seek self-mobilisation simultaneously. Different practices allow them to remobilise and to create new spaces while other boundaries cannot be overcome. Time matters in bounded mobilities because boundaries and borders have their own history too. In her historical-anthropological analysis of cross-border mobility between Saxony and Bohemia in the nineteenth century, Katrin Lehnert looks at a particular enclave as a special case of bounded mobilities, a case where boundaries and borders shifted around people and over time, looking at “how people are crossed by borders and how this shifting of boundaries relates to their own border crossing activities”.

G endered im /mobilities Borders and the forms of movement and confinement associated with them have a different character for men and women, whereas women employ different resources and have different capacities to social and geographical mobility than most men. In her ethnography, Avital Binah-Pollak explores the lives of mainland Chinese women who marry Hong Kong men “across the border”. Despite attaining residence in Hong Kong and improving their status, these women struggle to retain mobility after marrying into Hong Kong. However, at the same time, they develop

30  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini spaces of mutual support in which they achieve situational independence despite and within a wider situation of immobility. Sara Bonfanti reaches related, yet also different conclusions in her ethnography of gendered im/mobilities among Punjabi women in Italy. Whether they are itinerant or landlocked, Punjabi women experience that the same regimes which had limited their capacity to be mobile before migration are reproduced in different places thereafter. Bonfanti urges us to reassess the promises and perils of family-engineered migration as the women’s capacity to be mobile depends largely on acts of gender-related bargaining over their status, including the “micro-physics of domestic power” usually held by male householders or paterfamilias.

V irtual im /mobilities Under severe limitations to one’s mobility, “travelling” can become virtually a welcome alternative. It is even more interesting when both dimensions are analysed where they intersect. Miriam Gutekunst does this as she explores virtual mobility among people from Morocco who seek to resettle to Germany to be with their partners. She brings a critical research of virtual im/mobilities into the gendered analysis of border regimes. Digital communication technologies do not only make it possible for those excluded by the border regime to get to know people “on the other side”, but they also facilitate the maintaining of a relationship in the face of the distance forced upon them by border regimes and visa procedures. Virtual mobility becomes a substitute for denied physical mobility as it makes cultivating a relationship across border regimes possible. It even increases the chances of successful migration if these virtual/real relationships are acknowledged as proof of “real” partnerships by the authorities. Making sense of the “virtual” in civil society and political struggles, Daniel Kunzelmann shows that virtual mobility can not only be a source of increased power, inclusion and participation, but also that this requires certain privileges and digital “literacy”. His analysis suggests that borders and barriers continue to exist in today’s digital hypermobile world, sometimes leading to exclusion as a result of virtual immobility. Ultimately, the virtual mobility of power and political ideas remain bound to traditional channels of exercising political power and is, thus, highly dependent on what is not virtual. Ironically, processes of mobility often depend heavily on immobile infrastructures and traditional centres of power.

Fixations within mobility and multi - locality One contradiction appears to be that the mobility and flexibility of some can involve attempts by others to fix and confine these mobile people. People moving to

Bounded Mobilities: An Introduction |  31

live in another country are often versatile in different environments, languages and professional contexts, a plurality that is often simplified from the outside. Maria Schwertl explores how development organisations turn migrants’ transnational solidary activities into precarious, professionalised NGO work that is in need of money, but no longer political. This takes place in what she terms the hype about “Development&Migration”, within which migrants are fixed and classified in relation to their home country, but denied legitimacy as equal professionals within their host country. They are referred back to a simplified essence that remains bound to their origin and the prejudices against it. A common presumption is that the hypermobile do not need a home; that mobility may become a flexible and rootless home in itself. Opening up a “third perspective” on im/mobilities, Cédric Duchêne-Lacroix, Monika Götzö and Katrin Sontag show that responsibilities and needs towards particular places can also increase with the mobility between them. Such multi-local living co-creates space and combines different types of mobility and immobility. The authors explore the personal stories of internationally highly mobile people who see multi-locality as their regular living condition, arguing that such high mobility can also contribute to an increased sense of fixation despite constant movement. It is particularly in situations of relative immobility that mobilisation strategies seek to counter such fixations and overcome immobility. On the other hand, it is often in situations of high mobility, such as multi-local living, that people experience inflexibility and entrapment in a situation of seeming privilege and empowerment. Hypermobility can also be seen as a burden, the weight of which varies from context to context.

A public matter? The aim of this volume is to answer key questions of im/mobility, while also throwing up new question marks. Because of the timely relevance of many of the issues addressed we also wanted to engage a wider public in the thought processes that puzzled the editors and contributors. Part of this engagement was to throw up a suspicion in public space about privileges and ideas about mobility that are often taken for granted. One example for such a public presence was that we put up and distributed posters in spaces of bounded mobilities or other places of interest, with the goal of raising awareness and provoking constructive criticism. Each poster featured a question, written in large capitals, such as: “Are you stuck?” Additionally, each version offered a particular insight in relation to the respective question. The digital versions were distributed online and included a reference to our book. The aim was not to simply promote the publication, but to take it as an opportunity to inspire public debate and discussion.

32  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini We believe that questions of im/mobilities have become highly political issues debated in the public; issues that dominate discussions ahead of elections and determine families’ futures between borders. Because of the political nature and public relevance of the questions and answers raised by research on im/mobilities, we identified a particular obligation and opportunity to engage with audiences beyond the boundaries of academic readership. Such engagement goes beyond the basic purpose of this volume, which is to provide a new collection of ethnographically informed essays about the interstices of mobility and immobility, which would be read by students interested in the topic and more specialised faculty alike. Rather than being satisfied with this objective, we encourage the reader to think about these issues from the perspective of a wider public relevance and co-operate towards ways of making the debate on bounded mobilities a boundary-crossing enterprise rather than another outpost in the academic “border regime”.

R eferences Barth, Frederik. 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press. Cunningham, Hilary, and Josiah Heyman. 2004. “Introduction: Mobilities and Enclosures at Borders.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11 (3): 289–302. D’Andrea, Anthony, Luigina Ciolfi, and Breda Gray. 2011. “Methodological Challenges and Innovations in Mobilities Research.” Mobilities, 6 (2): 149–160. Gill, Nick, Javier Caletrío, and Victoria Mason. 2011. “Introduction: Mobilities and Forced Migration.” Mobilities 6 (3): 301–316. Glick-Schiller, Nina. 2010. “A Global Perspective on Transnational Migration: Theorizing Migration without Methodological Nationalism.” In Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, edited by Rainer Bauböck, and Thomas Faist, 109–129. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Glick-Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. “Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645: 1–24. Glick-Schiller, Nina, and Ayse Caglar. 2010. Locating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Glick-Schiller, Nina, and Noel B. Salazar. 2013. “Regimes of Mobility across the Globe.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (2): 183–200.

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Götz, Irene. 2015. “Fordismus und Postfordismus als Leitvokabeln gesellschaftlichen Wandels – Zur Begriffsbildung in der sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitsforschung.” In Europäische Ethnologie in München: Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Reader, edited by Irene Götz, Johannes Moser, Moritz Ege, and Burkhart Lauterbach, 25–51. Münster: Waxmann-Verlag. Hannerz, Ulf. 2003. “Being There … and There … and There! Reflections on Multi-site Ethnography.” Ethnography 4 (2): 201–216. Hess, Sabine, and Vassilis Tsianos. 2010. “Ethnographische Grenzregimeanalysen: Eine Methodologie der Autonomie der Migration.” In Grenzregime, edited by Sabine Hess, and Bernd Kasparek, 243–264. Berlin, Hamburg: Assoziation A. Lenz, Ramona. 2011. “Focus on Mobility – Temporary Fashion or Paradigm Shift? Reflections on the So-called Mobility Turn.” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 107 (1): 1–19. Malone, Barry. 2015. “Why Al Jazeera Will Not Say Mediterranean ‘Migrants’.” Aljazeera 20 August. Accessed 2 November 2015. http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/ editors-blog/2015/08/al-jazeera-mediterranean-migrants-150820082226309. html. Marcus, George E. (1995): “Ethnography in/of the World System. The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 117: 95–117. Oboler, Suzanne. 2006. “History on the Move … Revisiting the Suffering of the Immigrants from the Latino/a Perspective.” Qualitative Sociology 29 (1): 117–126. Pries, Ludger, ed. 2008. Rethinking Transnationalism: The Meso-link of Organisations. New York and London: Routledge. Redfield, Peter. 2012. “The Unbearable Lightness of Ex‐Pats: Double Binds of Humanitarian Mobility.” Cultural Anthropology 27 (2): 358–382. Salazar, Noel B., and Alan Smart. 2011. “Anthropological Takes on (Im)Mobility.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 18 (6): i–ix. Shamir, Ronen. 2005. “Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime.” Sociological Theory 23 (2): 197–217. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning 38: 63–94. Torpey, John. 1998. “Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ‘Means of Movement’.” Sociological Theory 16 (3): 239–259. Tsianos, Vassilis, Sabine Hess, and Serhat Karakayali. 2009. “Transnational Migration Theory and Method of an Ethnographic Analysis of Border Regimes.” University of Sussex, Sussex Centre for Migration Research; Working Paper No 55: 1–10. Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity. Vergunst, Jo. 2011. “Technology and Technique in a Useful Ethnography of Movement.” Mobilities 6 (2): 203–219.

34  | Andreas Hackl, Julia Sophia Schwarz, Miriam Gutekunst, Sabina Leoncini Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick-Schiller. 2003. “Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology.” International Migration Review 37 (3): 576–610.

Critical Mobility Studies as a Political Middle‑Ground? An Interview with Bruno Riccio You have worked within the fields of migration and border studies. Where do you see the main differences between these specialised fields, on the one hand, and the emerging field of mobility studies, on the other? How could they benefit from each other? Bruno Riccio: I have personally undertaken empirical work mainly on West African transnational migration intermittently seen in the interplay with local migration policies. Compared with the debate within migration studies up to the beginning of the nineties, I think that the transnational perspective helped a lot in no longer representing the migrant as one “uprooted” from a context considered as unchangeable, or as someone who tries hard to “integrate” or “assimilate” within a different context, also considered as monolithic. Migration scholars increasingly emphasised how migrants were living in-between sending and receiving societies and maintaining strong ties to both throughout the migration process. The analytical focus moved to social and cultural practices which were not linked to a fixed territory, but which were parts of multiple spatial networks. In the same vein, what has been called the “mobile turn” tended to avoid the trap of “sedentarist metaphysics”, as Malkki (1997) would have called it, showing that for many people, “being mobile” is not an exception, but rather a “way of life”, as much as mobility is engrained in the history and daily experiences of people. However, the interconnection with borders is important in both transnational and mobile perspectives. Mobility challenges and may overcome some borders, but it does not in itself prevent the creation of other borders that recreate divisions along other lines. What should be studied is the dialectics between the transformation of borders and contemporary modes to live and organise the experience of being mobile (Riccio and Brambilla 2010).

36  | Interview with Bruno Riccio This volume looks at mobility from the perspective of immobility and inequality, therefore, the title “Bounded Mobilities”. Where do you see the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for present and future research? Bruno Riccio: It is very important. It fills the gap stressed recently by, among others, Faist (2013) and Glick Schiller and Salazar (2013), with their critical discussion of “mobile literature”. Mobility is about actual physical movement, as much as it is about imaginaries that affect non-mobile people in one locality of origin or transit. Attention needs to be paid to how images and ideas of “elsewhere” and other possible lives tend to work in daily lives. For many, transnational mobility is primarily experienced in its absence, in the unavailability of departures; it is marked by the unfulfilled but ever growing set of aspirations to a better life. Immobility can mark the beginning and end-point of migratory processes. It can also become one of various stages in the process of a migratory movement. Immobility at home, feeling stuck or being truly unable to move (economically, socially or politically) may provide the initial driving force for moving away. For many, however, the actual move may never happen, due to scarcity of resources (or support), lack of confidence or opportunity (Cantini and Riccio 2014). Some parts of mobility research may be criticised as non-political if compared to other related fields, such as border studies. To what extent do you see potential for a more political approach to researching and theorising mobility, and what are the dangers of such politicisation? Bruno Riccio: Yes, mobility studies has been criticised for classism (the poor transmigrant vs. the skilled mobile, as, for instance, in Favell 2014), and for resisting dealing with global inequality. In our analytical perspective, we should aim at recognising the agency of migrants without underrating the weight of global and (trans)national inequality. It has been suggested that there is a need to bring power and inequalities back into the picture (Faist 2013; Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). In particular, Glick Schiller and Salazar went beyond the limitations of previous approaches by writing about “regimes of mobility”. This is crucial: the term “regime” calls attention to the role of both individual modes of being and of changing international regulatory and surveillance administrations, which affect individual and collective mobility. Such an approach induces one to move beyond the ready equation of mobility with freedom by examining not only movement as connection, but also by seeing it as an aspect of new forms of confinement and modes of exploitation. Furthermore, power and inequality should not only be taken into account in the case of border crossing mobilities, but also with regard to internal mobilities. Indeed, another aspect of some voices of the mobile turn I like is the way

Critical Mobility Studies | 37

it connects different types of population movements. In Italy, for instance, after the turnaround from an emigration to an immigration country, there are signs of change towards a territory of transit rather than of migrants’ destination and settlement. Moreover, it is crucial to stress an important revival of internal (national) migration of autochthons and not only of foreigners. It becomes necessary to develop an approach towards contemporary mobilities that bridges the traditional analytical divides between internal and transnational migration, skilled and unskilled migrations, institutional scales (international, national, regional), settlers and temporary migrants, foreigners and “autochthons”. However, your last question conflated two queries: depoliticisation and overpoliticisation. I often engage critically with contrasting stances about the representation of migrants within Italian social sciences and migration studies. I invoke a “militant middle ground” as my analytical position concerning the constructs with which we tend to think about mobility. On the one hand, we are witnesses to a growing debate which seems theoretically sophisticated and politically radical, where the simple act of migrating is considered a political act. The migrant seems represented as a political hero facing the contemporary Empire and a neo-liberal society. On the other hand, for the sake of tempering this ideological take towards migration, other scholars are obsessed with naturalising, normalising and, somehow, depoliticising the migratory phenomenon. From this latter position, we can appreciate a focus on the internal variety and complexity of approaches to immigration into Italy. However, these readings all too often forget and underplay the “dark side” of such everyday life in terms of blackmail, insecurity, exploitation, victimization and violence. The former reading provides us with sophisticated critical theory denouncing the structural exploitation behind migration. It evokes a Foucauldian language and stresses the importance of migrants’ subjectivity. But we hardly ever read or hear a migrant subject speaking for her- or himself. A middle ground position that is able to remain analytical without the need to depoliticise all dimensions surrounding the migration experience is urgently needed to approach what is still an ambivalent phenomenon. I think we should aim at finding the right balance between celebratory readings of mobility and the portraits of migrants as mere victims caught up in the double-suffering within the global regime of power. Why is it important to research im/mobilities from an ethnographic perspective? Bruno Riccio: An ethnographic perspective provides very useful tools in the attempt to capture the complexities of such social realities adequately. We need to approach mobility with a focus on the agency and the expectations of the migrants from an ethnographic perspective that can capture not only the lived cultures with all their subtleties, but also the global forces that structure them; an approach ca-

38  | Interview with Bruno Riccio pable of taking into account both people’s experiences and the social environment in which this is grounded. For mobility to become a marker in an entire life, it needs to be something existential, such as ideas of not being stuck, of being able to see a future (Cantini and Riccio 2014). In order to understand the agency of mobile people and their subjectivities, it is necessary to not only build on, but also go beyond the investigation of material conditions, social networks and constraints that affect people’s lives. Many scholars argue for the inclusion of ideas, knowledge and world-views with which these social actors are living and acting, as part of a wider realm of their imagination (De Bruijn, van Dijk, and Foeken 200l; Gaibazzi 2015). This is another reason why mobility can analytically just as well be looked at through the prism of immobility, as we mentioned earlier.

R eferences Cantini, D., and B. Riccio. 2014. Ethnographies of Mobility in the Arab Middle East and in Italy. Panel call for papers for the SeSaMo Conference, Venice, 2015. De Bruijn, M., R. van Dijk, and D. Foeken, eds. 2001. Mobile Africa, Changing Patterns of Movement in Africa and Beyond. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Faist, T. 2013. “The Mobility Turn: A New Paradigm for the Social Science?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (11): 1637–1646. Favell, A. 2014. Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agendas in Migration Studies. Colchester: ECPR. Gaibazzi, P. 2015. Bush Bound. Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Glick Schiller, N., and N. B. Salazar. 2013 “Regimes of Mobility across the Globe.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39 (2): 183–200. Malkii, L. H. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, edited by A. Gupta, and J. Ferguson, 52–74. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Riccio, B., and C. Brambilla, eds. 2010. Transnational Migration, Cosmopolitanism and Dis-Located Borders. Rimini: Guaraldi.

II. Identities and Boundaries

“So, now I am Eritrean”: Mobility Strategies and Multiple Senses of Belonging between Local Complexity and Global Immobility Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa Some months ago I met Misan in Rome with some Eritrean friends and she introduced herself as an Eritrean refugee like all the others. This morning we were drinking a coffee together and while I was speaking about Shire [an Ethiopian town, in the regional state of Tigray], suddenly she revealed to me she had come from there, that she was not Eritrean but Ethiopian despite having obtained political asylum as an Eritrean. (Fieldnote, 13 May 2012)

This excerpt from our fieldnotes leads us into the aim of the article,1 which is to shed light on some mobility strategies put in place by migrants travelling from Tigray (the northern Ethiopian region at the border with Eritrea) to Italy. Analysing their migratory paths, the focus will be on the strategies they employed to overcome the obstacles to mobility and to penetrate the porous wall built all around Europe by handling the intertwining of geopolitical borders and social and institutional boundaries at a local level. The freedom to move and to cross borders is not equally distributed, although the intensity and the speed of contemporary population movements have become a catalyst for rethinking the idea of cultures and nations as discrete spatial units with clear physical delimitations(Appadurai 1996; Malkki 1997). Immobility and borders shape and reinforce new kinds of discrimination and marginality and the multiplication of obstacles to mobility is a major factor in the production of social, economic and political inequalities (Fassin 2011). In this perspective, the multi1 | The paper is based on two ethnographic fieldworks which were carried out in Rome, by Osvaldo Costantini, and in Tigray (Ethiopia), by Aurora Massa, among Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants. The multilocal perspective adopted in this chapter allows us to gain a more complete picture of the migratory paths that unfold from northern Ethiopia to Italy. Even though the work is the result of common reflections and analysis, “Introduction”, “Political and historical context”, and “Ruta’s journey”, are written by Aurora Massa; “Eritrean Diaspora between political project and humanitarian reason”, “Misan’s journey”, and “Conclusion”, are written by Osvaldo Costantini.

42  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa plication of institutions regulating the flow of migration from the Global South represents a manifest expression of the securitarian attitude characterising European migration policy and can be considered as part of a border regime that has produced a new global system of differentiation of rights (Berg and Ehin 2006; Vacchiano 2011). Moreover, the immigration control constraints have also affected the logics and practices of asylum, leading to a general diminution of the rights to protection.2 European asylum policies are increasingly restrictive and characterised by suspicion and by the concern about detecting the so-called “authentic refugees” in accordance with established criteria of credibility and reliability (D’Halluin and Fassin 2007; Eastmond 2007; Sorgoni 2011). Supranational institutions and national governments continue to redefine policy and practices in order to manage mobility and, thus, indirectly shape the creative ways by which people force through and handle national borders and logics. In our view, mobility and flows are not in opposition to immobility and borders and the dialectic between the current migratory experiences and the borders’ transformation can be seen as a privileged lens to explore the plurality of meanings and practices of contemporary movements (Richardson 2013). The interplay among borders, mobility and immobility becomes even more evident once we consider both the symbolic, ethnic and social boundaries and the territorial lines at the basis of political entities and legal subjects. Although anthropological perspectives have long held separate symbolic boundaries and institutional frontiers,3 their intertwining represents the specificity of our perspective. This approach allows light to be shed upon the incongruities that often emerge between the assumptions of the geopolitical theory about frontiers and the ways borders are experienced, interpreted and built by those who live and cross them. The conceptual variety of such a field also emerges from its terminological complexity: boundary, border and frontier are used by different authors to define several areas of reflection which partly conflict with and partly overlap each other (e. g. see Donnan and Wilson 1998; Fabietti 1997; Kearney 2004). In this chapter, we will follow the terminology suggested by Didier Fassin (2011), according to which borders are viewed as territorial limits defining political entities, such as the states, and legal subjects, such as the citizens, and boundaries represent social constructs building symbolic differences and generating national, ethnic and cultural identities. Through the im/mobility lens, we will show how the symbolic boundaries and the geopolitical borders between Tigray and Eritrea can become capital for the 2 | The humanitarian system is here intended as a set of rhetoric, images, ethos, languages, actions and practices which are not neutral, but culturally moulded, politically oriented and locally shaped (see Fassin 2010). 3 | The anthropological approach to borders and boundaries can be divided into two main fields of investigation, the one focused on social and ethnic boundaries and introduced by Barth (1969), the other on geopolitical frontiers (e. g. see Cole and Wolf 1994; Kopytoff 1987).

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 43

overcrossing of other borders, particularly those that are raised by European immigration policy. Albeit Tigray and Eritrea are separated by a national border that has been closed since the war between the two countries in 1998–2000, people are connected by familiar networks and by multiple levels of belonging that overlap the political labels.4 Specifically, our focus is on people from the highlands of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia who constitute a relatively homogeneous group, sharing language (Tigrinya), religion (Orthodox Church) and historical and cultural elements (e. g. the land tenure system, political structure and kinship organisation). Due to the human rights violations perpetrated by the government of Asmara (HRW 2009), being Eritrean allows one to obtain protection and credibility with the European institutions establishing the standard that regulate, prevent or permit mobility. As a consequence, the possibility of the Ethiopian–Tigrayan people of playing out their Eritrean-ness by means of investing their social and cultural capital allows those who want to migrate to move along the networks of the Eritrean Diaspora and to adapt their cases to existing humanitarian criteria. Trying to go beyond the common sense according to which African national borders are only artificial divisions introduced and imposed from outside, i.e. from colonialism (Sahlins 1989), the ethnographic cases presented stress that borders, as any social fact, are “made” and cannot be reduced to external agents, because, once established, they are imagined and performed by social actors. The latter handle the institutional, symbolic and social boundaries (that never perfectly correspond to each other), transforming them into resources for mobility, and use geopolitical frontiers that are built to limit movement (e. g. the Ethio-Eritrean border) for regularly entering and staying in Italy. In the following pages, therefore, we will firstly take into account the historical and political dynamics that characterise the borderland between Ethiopia and Eritrea and, secondly, the recent changes in the Italian immigration policy and humanitarian system, linking them with the European border regime. We will analyse the Eritrean diasporic network and focus on the migration paths of two Ethiopian women who reached Italy by means of two different strategies. The one, Ruta,5 married an Eritrean man who is a refugee in Italy and took advantage of family reunification, while the other one, Misan, obtained the status of refugee pretending to be Eritrean and, after that, organised the journey of her sister. Finally, we will propose some conclusive remarks about the intertwining of mobility and immobility, social boundaries and geopolitical borders, and national and local belonging. 4 | Tigray and Eritrea are plural contexts, characterised by the coexistence of a variety of languages, religions and ethnic groups. Our investigations have been focused on the Tigrinya speakers, who are the largest in number and are the community in power. 5 | The names mentioned in this article have been changed in order to ensure the anonymity of our informants.

44  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa

P olitical and historical context When we talk about Ethiopia as a historical and political entity, we refer to the long state tradition that has developed in the northern highlands among the Amharic and Tigrinya peoples in strong alliance with the Orthodox Christian Church. The past of the territory currently known as Eritrea was intertwined both with the historical events of Ethiopia and with those of the Muslim kingdoms beyond the Red Sea (Calchi Novati 1994). Eritrea became a separate geopolitical entity with the Italian colonisation, when the current borderline near the river Mareb was traced. Indeed, while Eritrea was an Italian colony for nearly sixty years (1890–1942), the Ethiopian empire maintained its independence almost uninterruptedly. The end of Italian colonialism heralded a long period of uncertainty with respect to the political future of Eritrea and its relations with Ethiopia (Zewde 2001). On the one hand, the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, back in power after the brief colonial break (1936–1941), claimed the annexation of Eritrea both to gain access to the sea and because its state legitimacy was rooted firmly in the glorious past of the Highlands in the north, of which Eritrea is geographically and historically a part. On the other hand, the post-colonial principle of maintenance of colonial borders in Eritrea favoured the consolidation of the independence movements that were opposed by the supporters of unionist solutions (Calchi Novati 1994; Hepner 2009). After a period of British Military Administration, Eritrea was attached to the Ethiopian Federal State as an autonomous region in 1952, and then unilaterally annexed by the Ethiopian Emperor in 1961, destroying the Eritrean autonomy. Over the next thirty years (1961–1991), Eritrea became the battle-field of the war of independence, whose leadership was taken on by the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front), a guerrilla movement that in the late-1970s assumed hegemony over the Eritrean separatist movements (Pool 2001). Interpreting the Ethiopian domination in colonial terms and promoting a synthetic nationalism, EPLF was able to harmonize the heterogeneous religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the country (Bernal 2004; Conrad 2006; Hepner 2008; Iyob 2000; Reid 2005). In 1974, the Ethiopian imperial power was overthrown by a military coup and by the establishment of the pro-Soviet regime of the Derg, provoking protests across the country. In Tigray, the opposition to it took the form of an armed front, the TPLF (Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front) that formed strong, although ambivalent, ties with the EPLF during the guerrilla war. In fact, even though the ultimate goal of the EPLF was to build an independent state of Eritrea, the common enemy, the similar ideologies and methods of warfare favoured co-operation between the two. It is important to note here that the border should not be understood only as a dispositive imposed from outside, i.e. by colonialism. As pointed out by anthropologist Wolbert Smidt (2010), the borders played a pivotal role in pre-colonial history and have been a very important element in the construction of feelings of belonging. Indeed, the “us”, even in homogeneous linguistic, ethnic and religious

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 45

communities of Tigrinya speakers, has always been characterised by an internal pluralism and related to dynamic processes of creation and demolition of frontiers. On the contrary, since the colonial frontier was drawn up, it has never been questioned, even if it assumed different institutional roles. Even though the Italian colonialism crystallized the separation within the Tigrinya speakers, at the same time, it combined a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous group of people into a single political entity, that is to say that Eritrea, for those reasons, can be considered an “artefact” of Italian colonialism (Calchi Novati 2009; Triulzi 2011). The persistence of the border did not bring about a loosening of the ties between Tigray and Eritrea, on the contrary, guerrilla warfare and famine favoured the movements of people. Many young people of Tigray, for example, moved beyond the Mareb in search of better life opportunities in the thriving and rich Asmara and in the fertile lands of the lowlands. The borderline once again became a national border (maintaining the old colonial track) in the early nineties when the regime of the Derg was overthrown. Within a few days, in May 1991, on the one side of Mareb, the EPLF (which was formed later in 1994 into the single government party under the name of PFDJ) entered victoriously into Asmara and sanctioned Eritrean independence; on the other side, the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition made up of several revolutionary fronts and lead by the TPLF) entered Addis Ababa. The political leadership in both countries was taken on by the leaders of the liberation movements and had to deal with multiple complex challenges, including that of legitimizing their statehoods and nations. However, even after the creation of two independent nation states, the practice of crossing the border, the presence of many migrant communities on both sides, and the thick familial and economic ties continued to make the distinction between “us” and “them” indefinite and uncertain, in the borderland as well as elsewhere. Moreover, this uncertainty was increased by the post-independence policies which did not resolve some crucial issues related to citizenship and sovereignty, i. e. the existence of border areas characterised by dual citizenship, an unclear delimitation of jurisdiction, and so on (Tekeste and Tronvoll 2000; Tronvoll 1999). Thus, the situation was ambiguous: the persistence of large areas of overlapping and multiple cross-border practices intertwined with the creation of a national border capable of changing the legal status and strengthening, from both sides, the practices of distinction. Therefore, the independence of Eritrea placed a state border much more divisive and reified over the flowing traditional borders which introduced the idea of exclusive belonging. The rifts between the two countries increased during the Ethio-Eritrean conflict,6 stemming from border issues in 1998 and ending in 2000, that caused thousands of victims, the closure of the border and the break in relations between the 6 | For more detailed accounts about the border war, cf. Alemseged (1997); Berdal and Plaut (eds.) (2004); Iyob (2000); Reid (2003); Tekeste and Tronvoll (2000).

46  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa two countries. The war also had devastating effects on the civilian population, both on those who lived in the border regions involved in the fighting and on Ethiopians living in Eritrea and Eritreans living in Ethiopia, as defined by kinship or affinity. The two minority groups were subjected to arrests, evictions and deportations and, with the end of the hot conflict, began to repatriate voluntarily through humanitarian channels.7 Despite the violence of the war, the closure of the border and the deportations having shattered many mixed families and having weakened social networks, ties still remained among them. In Tigray, for example, many migrants and their descendants repatriated from Eritrea, reconfiguring part of the social and economic fabric. Moreover, many of them, especially second and third generation migrants who had always lived in Eritrea, had no sense of being Ethiopian and had never questioned their Eritrean-ness. Almost no-one, however, had ever considered that living in Eritrea and being of Ethiopian nationality would constitute a contradiction (see Riggan 2011). The border war has also been a watershed in the history of Eritrea, because the erosion of political and civil rights, already begun in the previous years, reached its pinnacle. In fact, freedom of speech, and press and religious freedom have been suppressed, arrests and torture have become systematic instruments of control, and a compulsory, unlimited national service for all citizens has been imposed (Hepner and O’Kane 2009; Müller 2009; Reid 2005; Riggan 2009; Treiber 2009). Those who are enrolled in national service suffer the most stringent limitations and many of them cross the borders of their country illegally, seeking refuge in Ethiopian and Sudanese camps, in African cities and in Western countries.

E ritrean D iaspora between political project and humanitarian reason

The members of the new Eritrean generation live under the conditions of strong dictatorship and unlimited compulsory military service described above and, following the example of the previous generations, often decide to go into exile to seek refuge and a better life abroad. Eritrea, indeed, played host to a wide diasporic process during the thirty-year struggle for independence: about one million Eritreans went into exile, although they maintained strong links with EPLF guerrillas through providing them with financial and political support (Al-Ali, Black, and Koser 2001). This form of long-distance nationalism was also a factor in the last border war with Ethiopia. From then on, the country assumed the mantle of dic7 | After the closure of the border, the International Red Cross together with the Eritrean and the Ethiopian governments co-operated to repatriate people across the Ethio-Eritrean border. In 2009, this activity was interrupted and, currently, people have to pass through Sudan to return from Eritrea to Ethiopia and viceversa.

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 47

tatorship, and the young continue to leave it in droves, defying the front that was supported by the older Diaspora. The new refugees cross the border to Sudan or Ethiopia illegally, a step that is often a prelude to a longer migratory trajectory. Because of immigration restrictions, there is no way to reach Western countries legally from there: Eritreans travel along illegal immigration trajectories to reach Europe, where they can then apply for asylum. They can choose various ways to proceed from Ethiopia and Sudan, but the most common is to reach Europe by crossing the vast and dangerous stretches of the Sahara desert to finally arrive in Libya where they pay to secure a place on a boat which will eventually bring them to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island in the Mediterranean sea, or onto the Sicilian coast. The whole voyage is fraught with danger and can take months to complete and sometimes even years: the journey is carried out in stages with a lot of breaks along the way, mainly due to financial constraints or because of the conditions, either political or simply meteorological, in some areas. Moreover, the entire journey is extremely expensive and can cost up to € 5,000 and even more (some informants reported that the price can reach € 15,000 or € 20,000). When they finally arrive in Lampedusa, what we could call “their European life” begins: they have to start the complex process necessary for claiming asylum, facing numerous barriers and limitations. Those who enter Italian territory (or its waters) apply for asylum at the local police headquarters, from which their request is sent on to the Territorial Commission, which will finally decide whether or not it should be accepted. At this point, they become “asylum seekers” with a three-month residence permit which can be extended pending the commission’s decision. According to the Geneva Convention (1951), political asylum is granted to those who fear persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and, because of that fear, cannot go back to their home country. In the following decades, various acts have partially modified the nature and the content of this right. Western immigration policies since the 1990s have become more and more biased towards limiting this access (de Genova 2002), while issues pertaining to immigration have come to be grouped together with security questions, including the right to political asylum. As we outlined above, this restriction lies in the distinction between “real refugee” and “fake refugee”, the latter referring to people who try to claim asylum even though they would not normally fall within the criteria of the Geneva Convention. According to this approach, those who do not present a personal situation of “real risk” are considered as people who “abuse” the refugee right by trying to obtain it through another way; what is defined as “labour migration”(see Ambrosini 2002, 22; Pinelli 2013; Vacchiano 2005). As an outcome of this approach, the European

48  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa Union has imposed several limitations through the Dublin Conventions 8 (1990 and 2001) and has, subsequently, redefined and restructured the categories of recognition themselves,9 introducing other kinds of protection that offer fewer rights and opportunities than those pertaining to refugee status. During the second half of the 1990s and the subsequent decades, immigration policies have been included in the realm of security policies, through the (false) association between the increase in migrant population and the increase in crime rates, and this has justified, and indeed led to, the creation of new restrictions to entrance in the area, also involving asylum seekers. As widely explored in the literature, asylum seekers’ narratives have come to be regarded with increasing suspicion, with an emphasis on looking for elements of contradiction in the stories and casting doubt both on their credibility and truthfulness (D’Halluin and Fassin 2007; Eastmond 2007; Sorgoni 2011).10 We can note, moreover, a strange dynamic stemming from the separation based on the category of “real risk”, as defined by Western countries. Those who live under restriction of movement are further differentiated, because some of them have a greater possibility to move than others as they come from countries labelled as risky. For them, the chance to obtain a regular residence permit in Italy, or in other Western countries, depends on their 8 | Through what has been called the Dublin system, European countries try to limit what was defined as “asylum shopping”, meaning the practice of asking for asylum in different countries at the same time, increasing the possibility of acceptance, and “forum shopping”, meaning the practice of choosing the country for refuge according to economic and material criteria (such as the possibilities of finding employment, gaining shelter and pocket money). With this aim, the European Union has built a common database (EURODAC) in order to store all the immigrants’ finger-prints; the application for asylum must be carried out in the first country of arrival that is a signatory of the Geneva Convention, because the asylum seekers’ finger-prints are stored there. 9 | In Italy, in 2007, two new categories were created in order to protect those who are considered “under real risk” if they do not fall under the Geneva Convention’s criteria: protezione umanitaria (humanitarian protection) and protezione sussidiaria (subsidiary protection) that offer fewer rights and possibilities to obtain family reunion and moving for work than refugee status (Caritas/Migrantes 2010; EMN 2009). The situation has now changed after the so-called Dublin III, but we carried out our research under the Dublin II regime and we refer to that. Those who fail to get either political asylum or any form of protection are rejected and are obliged to leave the country. 10 | As many authors have underlined, medical or psychiatric diagnoses in support of the asylum seekers’ story are often a way to speed up the success of the request. Italy has low levels of asylum seekers and refugees in comparison with other European countries (Caritas/Migrantes 2012, 488). The number of applications between 2008 and 2011 have been less than 100,000, with few positive results: in 2008 there were 30,324 requests and only 10,000 were in some way successful (1,785 political asylum applications, 8,234 minor protections). The trend is to recognise the other forms of protection more than refugee status: in 2011, 34,117 people sought refuge in Italy and 1,805 of them obtained asylum, leaving 5,350 under the remaining categories (ibid.).

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 49

capability to demonstrate that they originate from one of those dangerous countries or to present a credible story of suffering. This kind of approach falls within what we defined in the introduction as border regime: a set of dispositive factors that not only regulate (restrict) the migrant’s access to Western countries, but also, and perhaps above all, construct a new system of differentiation of rights and citizenship (Berg and Ehin 2006; Vacchiano 2011).The vast majority of Eritreans are accepted as refugees or under other forms of protection, given the well-known Eritrean dictatorship, with arbitrary imprisonment, endless military training and the habitual use of torture.11 In this picture, two specific dynamics come into play: firstly, even though the evaluations should be made on an individual basis, they are de facto enacted by taking into account the country of provenance of the asylum seekers. Secondly, following Berg and Ehin’s argument, the differentiation of rights and citizenship takes place under the form of the strong association between sufferance and hope of acceptance. These Eritrean ways of mobility can be used by Ethiopians who desire to migrate by presenting themselves as Eritreans. It is, indeed, quite impossible to migrate from Ethiopia to Europe, both because of the border regime and because Ethiopia tries to stem the flow of its young and educated people. Additionally, obtaining a visa permit from Ethiopia to enter Italy proves difficult and is often only temporary. Thanks to the similarity between the two populations who share language, religion and most of their cultural elements, they are able to move along these trajectories. Moreover, they are linked to each other through family ties, marriage relationships and connections that those repatriated from both countries have maintained (see Massa forthcoming). Yet another way exists to obtain a permit to stay in Italy, surmounting all these barriers and, above all, avoiding the difficulties of the journey and the complex obstacles to achieve refugee status: the family reunion applications. Asylum right involves the possibility to ask for the reunification of the family divided because of the “forced migration”. In the case of refugee status, the family reunion is automatically operated through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, while those who have minor forms of protection (see footnote 9) have some income and shelter criteria to satisfy. Despite these difficulties, family reunion is one of the most common ways of overcoming the limitations on mobility, of crossing national borders and of avoiding dangerous and expensive journeys. Marriages are often arranged exclusively to give Eritreans the possibility to go to Western countries from Ethiopia or Sudan and are organised through the Eritrean transnational networks, frequently through the mediation of relatives or close friends. In these type of marriages, one person makes an agreement to marry another while being paid, according to our informants, between € 10,000 and € 15,000. After marrying, 11 | Due to the different guarantees offered by the multiple forms of protection, the kind of protection that one obtains is not irrelevant. Costantini sheds light elsewhere on the contradiction of the humanitarian system in relation to the Eritrea case in this sense (Costantini forthcoming).

50  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa thanks to the family reunion legislation, the migrant will fly to Europe, thus avoiding risking their life during a journey via the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea. Once in Italy, they wait for a couple of months and then, usually, divorce.

J ourneys from E thiopia to I taly Ruta’s journey Ruta was born in Asmara, where her father, who had been born in a village in Tigray, had moved seeking a better life. The man had found a good job in Asmara, had married a native woman and had had several children. He had moved temporarily to Tigray before the war of 1998 and, since the closure of the border, was no longer able to return to his family. The war caused a rift in Ruta’s life, as well as in the lives of many other people of Ethiopian origin who were living in Eritrea. In addition to the separation from her father, she witnessed the arrest of her brother and the discrimination and deportation suffered by friends and neighbours. One day a man attacked and insulted Ruta, calling her agame 12 . She was shocked because, until that moment, she had never thought of herself as Ethiopian and as an enemy of what she had always considered her own country. After the war, Ruta’s family members decided to gradually repatriate because of the limitations imposed by the Eritrean regime on the educational and occupational opportunities available to Ethiopian citizens. Ruta went to Ethiopia when she was eighteen years old, joining her father in Mekelle. The impact of this repatriation was not smooth: she had to deal with several small differences that emerged in attitudes and daily practices, in the dialectal variant of Tigrinya which moulded new forms of exclusion (see Appadurai 2006). Indeed, different lines of distinction coexist and intertwine in Mekelle and people act within these lines, taking on, dissolving and overlapping them. We are here referring to the symbolic boundary that can be traced between those who were born and raised in Asmara (deki Asmara, children of Asmara) and those who were born elsewhere, in this case Tigray. The deki Asmara, regardless of nationality, attribute to themselves a range of positive features (cleanliness, work skills, certainty of direction in life’s objectives, openness and sincerity) which are linked with the Italian colonial past and, therefore, claim ties with Western culture. Small differences in language exist between those who grew up in Asmara and those who had always lived in Tigray; these are used as criteria to draw the boundaries between the “us” and the “them” group and to give meaning to the major difficulties and the minor setbacks of everyday life. 12 | Agame is the name of a part of Tigray region along the border with Eritrea. The term is used as an insult to refer to migrants who were born in Tigray – or who were from Tigrayan parents – and refers to a stereotyped image of migrants thought of as poor, dirty and backward manual workers.

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 51

Ruta completed high school in Mekelle, attended university for a while and did various jobs, achieving good social integration, while always maintaining close ties with her old Eritrean friends either living in Asmara, in the wider Diaspora or in Ethiopia itself as refugees. Moreover, like a consistent part of youth, she began to nurture the dream of emigrating to Western countries in order to improve her circumstances and help her family. In a context in which the gap between concrete opportunities and aspirations – fed by the narrative of modernisation – is wide, spatial displacement emerges as one of the favoured strategies to succeed (Mains 2012). Nevertheless, obtaining a passport and an entry visa to a Western country is very difficult for young Ethiopians and, for most of them, the only option is to emigrate illegally. A choice that Ruta had never taken seriously into consideration, knowing full well the difficulties and the suffering that one of her older brothers had faced in the Libyan prisons and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. To bypass such obstacles to mobility, Ruta decided to opt for family reunification and married an Eritrean refugee in Italy, an old classmate from Asmara with whom she had always maintained internet contact. Ruta chose to take advantage of her social networks within the Eritrean diasporic community because, to quote her words, “I was Eritrean”. She moved within boundaries of belonging (those of deki Asmara) that coexist and intersect with those established on the basis of nationality. Standing on the margin of multiple identity configurations, she could reframe the movement in a context of restricted mobility. Whether or not the man had genuine feelings for her, as Ruta says, and whether or not, according to some rumours, she had paid for the marriage, Ruta could submit a request for family reunification and, in fact, is currently waiting for an interview with the Italian Embassy.

Misan’s journey Misan’s story allows us to look at the strategies of mobility from a different point of view: Ruta organised her trip to Italy while staying in Ethiopia; Misan is in Italy and has already experienced the difficulty of travel to Europe when she decided to arrange her sister’s journey. Her ways of handling the latter shows the central role played by familial and social networks, and the relevance of collective mobility strategies. Misan was born in Eritrea to a quite wealthy family of mixed origins: her father was born in Eritrean territory, while her mother is from the other side of Mareb. After the Eritrean independence was declared, her family decided to move to Ethiopia and settled in Shire, a town in the Tigray region very close to the Eritrean border. When she was six year sold, Misan faced her mother’s death and was subsequently raised between the family home and an orphanage. At the age of fifteen, she decided to escape from Shire, stealing money from her home: € 200, just enough to reach Sudan. There, she learnt Arabic working for three years with an Arabic family who lived in Sudan. She assembled the funds to reach Italy and

52  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa then decided to cross the Sahara desert. Her journey was full of difficulties and bad experiences: she narrated about her travel in the desert, where she suffered from a stomach disease. During the last step in the Sahara, her group spent the night in a place in which, when the light came, she saw many pieces of dead human bodies and she started to scream. From Libya, she took a boat to cross the sea: it was an old ship and the motor failed in the middle of the crossing. She was so afraid and thought that she would soon die and, feeling like the “last meeting with the living world,” started to say goodbye to all people around her. Her travel narrative was really a critical point in her life. When she reached Italy, according to her story, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had to wait many months to interview her because she could not remember anything about her past, especially about her journey. Nowadays, these bad episodes come back suddenly into her mind when she is waiting for the bus or is listening to music. As we showed before, Misan was able to take advantage of the uncertain status of the Ethio-Eritrean border, portraying herself as Eritrean and supporting this version during the interview with the Territorial Commission: Misan grew up in Shire where people speak Tigrinya almost as Eritreans do, because the border is so close. Her relationship with her father, who is from Asmara, allowed her to learn Eritrean Tigrinya interspersed with a lot of Italian words (her father, like many older people, is able to speak some Italian). Misan was able to play on her Eritrean-ness in front of the commission during the interview to verify her story. When she obtained political asylum in Italy, Misan started to work to finance her sister’s journey from Ethiopia and in order to minimise the risk and the suffering the latter faced, she searched for another way. Consequently, she decided to organise a marriage between herself and an Ethiopian Tigrinya through which she would gain money to arrange a marriage between her sister and an Eritrean who lived in Italy. In this way, having paid the € 13,000 for her marriage, her sister came to Italy with the aim of going to a northern European country where she would ask for asylum as an Eritrean under a false name. It was a long process, because both marriages required documents and procedures, but finally Misan’s sister arrived in Rome, avoiding that long journey that had caused so many problems for Misan.

C onclusion One of the starting points of our paper was the fact that mobility and immobility are two sides of the same coin, each of which could not exist without the other. Consequently, we focused our attention on the way in which mobility is constructed in those situations which are characterised by immobility and how this process can be linked to wider social, cultural and historical processes. Analysing the mechanisms of the symbolical, ethnic and social boundaries and of the geographical and institutional borders, we explore how people in their daily practices

“So, now I am Eritrean” | 53

can move along networks and structures which are alternatives to that logic of the nation-state that shapes their citizenships. Indeed, while moving along the networks of the Eritrean diaspora, Ruta and Misan have handled the complexities of their identities and invested their social and cultural capital to adapt their cases to humanitarian concerns. Ruta dealt with the capital she had collected during her childhood in Eritrea in order to arrange a marriage with an Eritrean man who is a refugee in Italy and to take advantage of family reunification. On the contrary, Misan submitted a refugee claim in Italy pretending to be Eritrean and, due to the long years spent by her parents in Eritrea, convinced the commission of her Eritrean-ness. Moreover, thanks to her political asylum, she could arrange a marriage with an Ethiopian man in order to bring him to Italy and, with the money earned, she could organise a marriage between an Eritrean refugee in Italy and her sister. Whereas Ruta has joined the Eritrean networks in an informal way, the institutional recognition of Eritrean-ness ensures Misan her right to regular stay in Italy. These trajectories are possible because of the non-total correspondence between the institutional border and the social boundaries, and because of the characteristics of the humanitarian system, since it assures protection on the basis of the country of origin and of the credibility of the accounts of the applicants. By inventing their possibility of movement, Ethiopians who experience immobility play in a “third space” between mobility and immobility. This approach allows us to shed light, at the same time, on structures and mechanisms that underlie immobility and on the way in which people create “mobilization strategies”, playing with multiple belonging and handling the logic of the nation-state. Far from being impassable, the aims of the European borders are to regulate mobility and to create criteria for differential inclusion and exclusion, becoming mechanisms for producing inequalities among those who live under conditions of immobility. In the current situation, due to humanitarian logic, the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a border made for separation like any border, is used by Ethiopians to “propel movement”. This use of borders and boundaries could be defined as specious or tactical if we look at it from the point of view of the logic of the nation-state, but it should be better understood as the outcome of historical, cultural and familial ties of a society that overreaches national edges. Rather than reading these dynamics as tactics framed in a power-resistant binary opposition, we would like to suggest considering them as stemming from the coexistence of several parallel logics. According to the conjunctures, Misan and Ruta preferred to use the familial and friendship ties created during their childhood, instead of those of the logic of the nation-state, and transformed them in capital to spend in order to cross borders. Speaking of the difficulties in referring to complex phenomena, such as globalization, modernity or Diaspora(s), without using intangible and reified terms, Jean Comaroff (1997) suggests we should “rediscover the ordinary, following the anthropological vocation of observing social phenomena grounded in human activity” (9–10). Starting from this advice, we looked at the tangible processes stem-

54  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa ming from the peculiarity of our fieldwork in order to stress the interplay between mobility and immobility caused by the lack of total overlapping between social networks and geopolitical borders.

R eferences Al-Ali, Nadje, Richard Black, and Khalid Koser. 2012. “The Limits to ‘Transnationalism’: Bosnian and Eritrean Refugees in Europe as Emerging Transnational Communities.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (4): 578–600. Alemseged, Abbay. 1997. “The Trans-Mareb Past in the Present.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 35 (2): 321–334. Ambrosini, Maurizio. 2005. Sociologia delle migrazioni [Sociology of Migration]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimension of Globalization. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke University Press. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. “Introduction.” In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, edited by Fredrik Barth, 1–19. Boston: Little Brown and Co. Berdal, Dominique-Jacquin, and Martin Plaut, eds. 2004. Unfinished Business: Eritrea and Ethiopia at War. Trenton: Red Sea Press. Berg, Eiki, and Piret Ehin. 2006. “What Kind of Border Regime is in the Making? Towards a Differentiated and Uneven Border Strategy.” Cooperation andConflict XLI (1): 53–71. Bernal, Victoria. 2004. “Eritrea Goes Global: Reflections on Nationalism in a Transnational Era.” Cultural Anthropology 19 (1): 3–25. Calchi Novati, Gianpaolo. 1994. Il corno d’Africa nella politica e nella storia. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale. Calchi Novati, Gianpaolo. 2009. “Colonialism as State-Maker in the History of the Horn of Africa: a Reassessment.” In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, edited by Svein Ege, Harald Aspen, Birhanu Teferra and Shiferaw Bekele, 233–244. Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Caritas-Migrantes. 2010. Immigrazione: Dossier statistico [Statistical Dossier on Immigration, Report]. Roma: Idos. Caritas-Migrantes. 2012. Immigrazione: Dossier statistico [Statistical Dossier on Immigration, Report]. Roma: Idos. Cole, John, and Eric Wolf. 1974. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley. New York: Academic Press. Comaroff, Jean. 1997. “Consuming Passion: Child Abuse, Fetishism and the New World Order.” Culture XVII (1–2): 7–25.

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Conrad, Bettina. 2006. “A Culture of War and a Culture of Exile. Young Eritreans in Germany and Their Relations to Eritrea.” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationals 22 (1): 59–85. Costantini, Osvaldo. Forthcoming. “‘Perché io ho solo i tre anni’. Matrimoni, documenti, pratiche di riconoscimento e conflitti politici nelle vicende di due rifugiati eritrei [‘Because I have only three years.’ Weddings, Documents, Recognition Practices and Political Conflicts in the Story of Two Eritrean Refugees].” D’Halluin, Elain, and Didier Fassin. 2007. “Critical Evidence: The Politics of Trauma in French Asylum Policies.” Ethos 35 (3): 300–329. De Genova, Nicholas. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–477. Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas Wilson, eds. 1998. Borders Identities: Nation and State at International Borders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eastmond, Marita. 2007. “Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research.” Journal of Refugee Studies 20 (2): 248–264. EMN (European Migration Network). 2009. Politiche migratorie Lavoratori qualificati Settore sanitario. Primo rapporto in Italia [Healthcare Workers Skilled Migration Policies. First Report in Italy]. Roma: Edizioni Idos. Fabietti, Ugo. 1997. Etnografia della frontiera. Antropologia e storia in Baluchistan [Ethnography of the Border. Anthropology and History in Baluchistan]. Roma: Meltemi. Fassin, Didier. 2010. La Raison humanitaire. Une histoire morale du temps présent [The Humanitarian Reason. A Legal History of the Present Time]. Paris: Hautes Etudes-Gallimard-Seuil. Fassin, Didier. 2011. “Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 213–226. Hepner, Tricia Redeker. 2008. “Transnational Governance and the Centralization of State Power in Eritrea and Exile.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (3): 476–502. Hepner, Tricia Redeker. 2009. Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors and Exiles. Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hepner, Tricia Redeker, and David O’Kane. 2011 [2009]. “Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development in Contemporary Eritrea.” In Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development. Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Tricia Redeker Hepner and David O’Kane, IX–XXXVII. New York: Berghahn Books. Iyob, Ruth. 2000. “The Ethiopian Conflict: Diasporic vs. Hegemonic States in the Horn of Africa, 1991–2000.” Journal of Modern African Studies 38 (4): 659–682. Kearney, Michael. 2004. “The Classifying and Value-Filtering Missions of Borders.” Anthropological Theory 4 (2): 131–156. Kopytoff, Igor, ed. 1987. The African Frontier. The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies. Bloomington – Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

56  | Osvaldo Costantini and Aurora Massa HRW (Human Rights Watch). 2009. “Service for Life. State Repression and Indefinite Conscription in Eritrea.” Accessed 3 October 2015. https://www.hrw. org/report/2009/04/16/service-life/state-repression-and-indefinite-conscrip​ tion-eritrea. Mains, Daniel. 2011. Hope is Cut. Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Malkki, Lisa. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” In Culture, Power, Place. Exploration in Critical Anthropology, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 52–74. Durham: Duke University Press. Massa, Aurora. Forthcoming. “Building the Nation, Rethinking Kinship Relationships and Crossing Boundaries between Ethiopia and Eritrea.” In Boundaries within. Migration, Nation and Identity, (forthcoming) edited by Francesca Decimo and Alessandra Gribaldo. Rotterdam: Imiscoe. Müller, Tania R. 2011 [2009]. “Human Resource Development and State: Higher Education in Post-revolutionary Eritrea.” In Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development. Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Tricia Redeker Hapner and David O’Kane, 53–71. New York: Berghahn Books. Pinelli, Barbara. 2013. “Migrare verso l’Italia. Violenza, discorsi, soggettività [Migrate to Italy. Violence, Speeches, Subjectivity].” Annuario di Antropologia ­X III, 15: 7–20. Pool, David. 2001. From Guerrilla to Government: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, Oxford: James Curry. Reid, Richard. 2003. “Old Problems in New Conflicts: Some Observations on Eritrea and Its Relations with Tigray, from Liberation Struggle to Inter-State War.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 73 (3): 369–401. Reid, Richard. 2005. “Caught in the Headlights of History: Eritrea, the EPLF and the Post-War Nation-State.” Journal of Modern African Studies 43 (3): 467–488. Richardson, Tim. 2013. “Borders and Mobilities: Introduction to theSpecial Issue.” Mobilities 8 (1): 1–6. Riggan, Jennifer. 2011 [2009]. “Avoiding Wastage by Making Soldiers: Technologies of the State and the Imagination of the Educated Nation.” In Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development. Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Tricia Redeker Hapner and David O’Kane, 72–91. New York: Bergahn Books. Riggan, Jennifer. 2011. “In Between Nations: Ethiopian-Born Eritreans, Liminality, and War.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 34 (1): 131–154. Sahlins, Peter. 1989. Boundaries: the Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smidt,Wulbert. 2010. “The Tigrinnya-Speakers across the Borders. Discourses of Unity and Separation in Ethno-Historical Context.” In Borders & Borderlands as Resources in the Horn of Africa, edited by Feyissa Dereje and Markus Virgil Hoehne, 61–84. Oxford: James Curry.

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Sorgoni, Barbara. 2011. “Storie, dati e prove. Il ruolo della credibilità nelle narrazioni di richiesta di asilo [Stories, Information and Evidence. The Role of Credibility in the Narratives of Asylum].” Parolechiave 46: 115–136. Tekeste, Negash, and Kjetil Tronvoll. 2000. Brothers at War: Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. Oxford: James Curry. Treiber, Magnus. 2009. “Trapped in Adolescence: The Postwar Urban Generation.” In Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development. Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Tricia Redeker Hapner and David O’Kane, 92–114.New York: Berghahn Books. Triulzi, Alessandro. 2011. “Memorie e voci erranti tra colonia e postcolonial [Memories and Voices Wandering between Colony and Post-colony].” In Colonia e postcolonia come spazi diasporici. Attraversamenti di memorie, identità e confini nel Corno d’Africa [Colony and Post-colony as Diasporic Spaces. Crossings of Memories, Identity and Borders in the Horn of Africa], edited by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, Silvana Palma, Alessandro Triulzi and Alessandro Volterra, 313–334. Roma: Carocci Editore. Tronvoll, Kjetil. 1999. “Borders of Violence – Boundaries of Identity: Demarcating the Eritrean Nationstate”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22 (6): 1037–1060. Vacchiano, Francesco. 2005. “Cittadini sospesi: violenza e istituzioni nell’esperienza dei richiedenti asilo in Italia [Citizens Suspended: Violence and Institutions in the Experience of Asylum Seekers in Italy].” Annuario di Antropologia 5: 85–103. Vacchiano, Francesco. 2011. “Discipline della scarsità e del sospetto: i rifugiati e l’accoglienza nel regime di frontiera [Disciplines of Scarcity and Suspicion: Refugees and Reception in the Border Regime].” Lares 77 (1): 181–198. Zewde, Bahru. 2001. A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991. Oxford: James Curry.

Stigmatised Mobility and the Everyday Politics of (In)visibility: The Intricate Pathways of Palestinians in Tel Aviv Andreas Hackl This chapter explores bounded mobilities from the perspective of Palestinians in the city of Tel Aviv, which is widely perceived to be an essentially Jewish–­Israeli place. As they commute into this urban space, walk in its streets or make use of its opportunities, these Palestinian citizens of Israel come under pressure to position themselves and their identities in a specific way at transition points or during Israeli public events. Such pressure demands ongoing adaptation and the performance of particular aspects of identity that are privileged within the Israeli political economy. This adaptation may also involve the concealing or understating of those traits that often lead to stigmatisation and immobilisation. What I call “everyday politics of in/visibility” haunt Palestinians in Israel because they are frequently stigmatised and immobilised on the basis of their identity, a recurring external pressure which they must learn to handle for their own benefit. Therefore, I also ask how members of ethno-racially stigmatised groups understand and respond to stigmatisation, exclusion and discrimination (Lamont and Mizrachi 2012) and, by extension, how they do so in specific situations of bounded mobility and during spatial transitions. People’s self-identification is always in exchange with the definitions of oneself that are “offered” (or imposed) by others (Jenkins 1996, 20), and this process is fraught with tension if the external responses to identity are paralleled by corresponding limitations on mobility. Such is the case with stigmatisation, which may provoke individuals who are “discredited” or stigmatised to manage interactions in order to prevent discomfort in others, while at the same time preserving their own sense of self-worth (Goffman 1963). This idea resonates in the difficult lives of Palestinians in Israel, who are frequently stigmatised as they enter train stations, walk through Tel Aviv or try to board an international flight at the airport. In response, Palestinian citizens of Israel may avoid or challenge such stigmatisation, and these responses include making certain things visible and others invisible.

60  | Andreas Hackl The Palestinian citizens of Israel face a matrix of walls and glass ceilings that prevent integration or equality (Pappé 2011, 245), and this matrix extends into the realm of movement. However, against all the odds, Palestinians in Tel Aviv participate in the city’s spaces of labour and education and its public space. Jewish and Palestinian urbanites have interacted through a multi-varied web of relations, whereby the two groups and their identities have also been constituted throughout this process in a series of dialectic oppositions (Rabinowitz and Monterescu 2007, 2). Unimpressed by Israeli policies that foster Jewish–Arab segregation, the Palestinian citizens of Israel have long moved into the city of Tel Aviv, engaging with the spaces dominated by the Jewish majority quite routinely. However, the rigid boundaries that continue to define Arab–Jewish relations in Israel through otherness persist despite a flow across them. They do not depend on the absence of mobility, but entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation (Barth 1998, 9). Boundaries are understood here as the line between ethnic or national groups along which similarity and difference are negotiated through ongoing exchange. As there is a continuous flow of interaction and exchange across boundaries (Eriksen 2002, 39), such increased exchange can also intensify a relation of difference and the need to negotiate such difference in the face of discriminatory practices and policies. What becomes clear for Palestinians in Israel is that people’s identities are, in part, constituted by their definitions of what they are not, as well as by the creation of boundaries around their identities (Easthope 2009, 68). The recurring stigmatisation of Palestinians in Israel draws such boundaries around them, in the process of which their mobility becomes bounded. For whatever steps the individual Palestinian takes to become socially, economically and physically more mobile in the Israeli political economy, this mobility is defined by the underlying walls and glass ceilings that exclude him or her from equality and unrestricted mobility. It is certain that Palestinians in Tel Aviv often try to blend into the city of Tel Aviv and do not seek tension or conflict, whether as employees or new urban dwellers. Nevertheless, such blending in is a difficult uphill climb against forms of exclusion that reference their categorical difference as Arab–Palestinians within a space dominated by Jewish Israel, its culture and political economy. Although Palestinians in Tel Aviv may immerse as individuals, speak Hebrew, work in Israeli companies or study at the city’s university, this inclusion also follows a logic that de-politicises them and offers little tolerance for the articulations and performance of a distinct Palestinian identity or the Arabic language. What employers and landlords in Tel Aviv are looking for is often a so-called “good Arab”, an apolitical persona that is non-existent with respect to its Palestinian identity. It is shorthand for the requirement to be a “civil” person, someone who puts aside differences deemed unacceptable by the dominant political culture for the sake of civility and inclu-

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sion; and being “civil” requires “conforming to whatever the social rules are”, it presupposes an uncritical point of view (Calhoun 2000, 252). This chapter, consequently, also looks into how such a built-in expectation of civility operates through processes of bounded mobilities.

S hifting boundaries and unequal mobility Amid the situationally changing requirements of a life in Israeli space, Palestinians in Tel Aviv become acrobats in their ongoing adaptations. These are discussed here in two main spheres: in the course of commuting and in spatial/social transitions, and for the presence in public space during certain events. We will see that the people concerned sometimes strengthen senses of categorical difference and similarity while they keep them inconspicuous in other situations. This brings me to argue that some aspects of their discernible identities are “sleeping”, because they are only awakened in particular situations. On the other hand, some aspects may be put “to sleep” if required. What Palestinians in Israel show of themselves is highly flexible precisely because they are frequently fixed and entrapped from the outside, which explains one dimension of the bounded nature of mobilities. The importance of place and mobility must be recognised to fully understand the processes of such dynamics of identity and the underlying power relations (Easthope 2009, 78). As situations change over time and through mobility in space, so do the practices that make identities visible and invisible in response to these particular situations. The processes of shifting, sleeping and awakening boundaries can make visible how certain aspects of identity and alterity remain “backstage” in some situations, but move to the front of the stage in others; for what an individual performs in the front region is an effort to give their appearance a certain quality and standard, including both moral and instrumental or practical “standards” (Goffman 1990, 109–111). This, in turn, is connected to the way in which the Israeli political economy and its spatial dimension allocates opportunity and mobility based on how “civil” and conform “Arabs” appear, as opposed to the “suspiciousness” of the politically and historical figure of the Palestinian. Moreover, Palestinian mobility in Israel is mediated by unequal power relations and their inscriptions in space. The Israeli political economy is characterised by a high degree of political and geographical power centralisation, and it distributes power unequally with the help of territorial “fracturing” of the main social and ethnic groups (Yiftachel 2002). Thus, most employment opportunities are located in Jewish towns and cities rather than in Arab towns or areas, and only 2.4 per cent of all industrial zones in Israel are located within the boundaries of Arab localities (Orpaz 2015). At the same time, the overwhelming majority of Arab towns do not have adequate public transportation and the disparity compared to

62  | Andreas Hackl Jewish localities is considered to be “enormous” (Sikkuy 2014, 74). Jewish towns had up to 14 times more buses than comparable Arab towns in terms of frequency by 2012 (Haaretz.com, 30 Nov. 2012). Movement is seen here in the context of mobilities enjoined with enclosures, because movement is structured within the context of unequal power relations (Cunningham and Heyman 2004, 293). Circulating forms of mobility exemplify the marginalised status of Palestinians in Israel, as much as people try to become mobile as a way to counter exclusion. The absence of opportunities in their home areas necessitates commuting or moving to Tel Aviv for work, but such mobility is fraught with tension and stigmatisation, while public transport remains widely unavailable. Commuting to Tel Aviv, the heartland of Israel’s globally connected political economy, has become one tactic of countering marginalisation at home for Palestinians in Israel, who may be called “citizen strangers” (Robinson 2013). Despite their willingness to make the best out of a difficult situation, tension and the feeling of estrangement constantly recur in a city such as Tel Aviv, which is characterised for Palestinians like no other place in Israel by the simultaneity of openness and closure, integration and exclusion, domination and tolerance, mobility and entrapment. As we will see, Palestinians in Tel Aviv constrict and expand the scope of boundaries and their visibility as they negotiate the exclusive requirements of inclusion.

B eing a “different ” commuter The profiling of travellers based on their appearance is common in Israel, whether at entrance points to public places, in shopping malls or at the airport security check. The spaces of public transport are filled with soldiers in uniform and the Hebrew language is the norm, while speaking Arabic attracts attention if not rejection. This becomes clear in the story of Faris, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who worked in a software start-up in central Tel Aviv and commuted daily between his workplace and the city of Haifa, where he lived. Although this trip was one of simple bus or train rides for the average citizen, it involved careful decision-making for Faris. The first decision had to be taken when he approached the security check at the entrance to the train station. Whenever he talked Arabic on the phone, the guards questioned him and proceeded with a thorough check of bags and body. Yet if he did not talk Arabic, or make his Palestinian identity immediately visible, the guards did not inquire any further. Moreover, the train-ride itself was a rather unsettling experience for Faris. On one train ride to Tel Aviv when his phone rang and he spoke Arabic, he felt that “they all stared at me and they went away from me one step”. A feeling that intensified during times of political tension or Israeli–Palestinian armed conflict,

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when Jewish–Arab relations usually become heavily polarised and the visibility of Arab–Palestinian identity in Israeli space becomes a liability (Hackl 2014). The 2014 Gaza War, for example, increased the pressures on Palestinians in Israel to manage their visibility as official incitement, violent attacks and a general climate of tension surfaced. Speaking to Faris in his Tel Aviv office during that period, he recounted another tense moment on the train. Once again he held a phone conversation in Arabic, sitting beside an Israeli soldier, as is often the case. According to Faris, the soldier then played a video of the ultra-nationalist politician Michael Ben-Ari rather loudly on his Smartphone. The unsettling feeling intensified because “he had his weapon on his legs and the gun pointed towards me the whole trip”. It is nothing unusual for a machine gun to rest on a soldier’s lap like that, but the usual is often problematic enough for the Palestinians in Israel, who feel particularly vulnerable and confined in public transport, because such confinement includes the pressure to be a “civil” individual who remains anonymous amongst the travelling crowds. Trains or buses create unusual proximity and make it more difficult for them to retain anonymity and privacy, particularly so if speaking Arabic raises attention from others and inconvenience in themselves amid soldiers in uniform and security personnel. Speaking Arabic can activate an assumed sense of extreme “otherness”, which may at other times remain salient. Spaces of public transport, featuring regulated entry and exit points and mobile spatial enclosures, express the marginalised status of the Palestinian minority in Israel. However, despite this marginalisation, the individuals affected negotiate the visibility of certain boundaries in constant adaptation to the changing demands of the environment. The Tel Aviv University student Dania, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, explained that her appearance did not usually mark her as “Arab”, and so she could be anyone really, a foreigner or a Jewish Israeli woman. But recently they began to request student cards from everyone. They always said hello and were friendly. But when they see my card and my family name, they realize I am Arab and ask me to open my bag. Before it was as if I was VIP, no one expected that I was Arab.

And not being visibly Arab is referred to as “VIP” here, which means that if one manages to be inconspicuous, VIP treatment ensures an easy passage. Although Palestinians in Israel often hold strong political opinions and do not shy away from making them visible, the repetitive nature of daily checks and confrontations makes constant objectification particularly annoying, thereby creating the occasional desire to be waved through as a “VIP”. The desire to protest may be outweighed by the need to move quickly, especially when people are on the move, on the way to catch a train or an airplane, or late for work. The ability of Palestinians to negotiate the visibility of their Arab identity fades away once their identity cards are checked. States depend on identification in de-

64  | Andreas Hackl termining legitimate and illegitimate movements, whereby the examination of individual stigmata serves as an essential form of such systems of identification and surveillance (Torpey 1998, 248). Ultimately, passports and identity documents reveal a massive illiberality, a presumption of their bearers’ guilt when called upon to identify themselves. The use of such documents by states indicates their fundamental suspicion that people will lie when asked who or what they are, and that some independent means of confirming these matters must be available if states are to sustain themselves as going concerns. In the face of potentially unstable and possibly counterfeit identities, states impose durable identities in order to achieve their administrative, economic, and political aims. (Torpey 1998, 255)

The dilemma for Palestinians in Israel lies in the fact that whatever they do, they make themselves “suspicious”, whether they lay their identity “bare” or they conceal it. Their experiences at the main international airport are considered to be particularly unsettling for this reason. “One encounter is often enough and reality hits you, like at the airport. There you are hit by reality every single time”, said Kheir, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who lived and worked in Tel Aviv.

“S uspicious ” identities and restricted mobility Identity cards are checked here as a matter of routine, which reveals the holder’s name and hometown and, by extension, whether or not they are “Arab”. However, some leeway for flexibility exists in the “buffer zone” around the airport, as became visible one day when I approached the outer entrance to the airport area by taxi with a Palestinian friend. This outer gate marked the entrance to the highway that leads to the terminals. Whilst approaching the gate, tension rose steadily because revealing her Arab hometown would lead to a detailed barrage of questioning, while employing a convenient lie – “we came from Tel Aviv” – would have eased the way, but also represented a form of submission to the regime. The crossing was always easy when we said we came from Tel Aviv, but when she and her sister once entered and said they came from Umm el-Fahm, a large Arab town in the north, it all ended in a long interrogation, a heated argument and they almost missed the flight. It is something unimaginable and largely unacceptable for Jewish citizens. Once inside the airport, the Palestinian–Arab traveller is met by a detailed hail of questioning. The day I went through with my Palestinian friend, security officers asked about her personal life, every detail about how we knew each other and who her family was. Needless to say, if we had both been Jewish Israelis, the matter would have been over in a few seconds. These routinised screenings are designed to police the mobility of those social elements that are deemed to belong to suspect social categories (Shamir 2005). In this way, Palestinians in Israel are also reminded of their limited freedom to move and their vulnerability within the state

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of which they are citizens. Although they always seem to be in transition, these transitions are especially difficult for them to bear. Aiming to respond to the stigmata that are employed to regulate their mobility, Palestinians may seek to adapt, show goodwill and co-operate in the hope of avoiding tension, particularly in places of transport or security checks where people are usually in a hurry. However, such co-operation or subjugation is generally felt to be morally problematic and cowardly. The impossibility to satisfy Israeli demands for “civility” is where the real tension lies; it is the inescapability of an identity deemed suspicious. Civility designates institutionalised symbolic differentiation governed by a signifying logic of discrimination and comparison: “civility continues to authorize certain forms of conduct designated to be ‘civil,’ and others as ‘inappropriate,’ ‘offensive’ and/or ‘illegitimate’ in contemporary society” (White 2006, 451). Thinking about this insight from the perspective of bounded mobilities is extremely revealing. Similar security screenings have become widespread measures of regulating mobility worldwide. The policy decisions following the “September  11” attack in New York in 2001 have affected the ways in which states dealt with potential threats dramatically (Hasisi and Weisburd 2011, 867). A “paradigm of suspicion” has determined people’s “license to move”, both across borders and in public spaces within borders, and such licensing considers the degree to which people are suspected of representing threats (Shamir 2005, 201–203). The case of the Palestinians in Israel is specific, because screening practices single out the indigenous former majority that was turned into a national minority by ways of displacement and expulsion. These historically grown power relations are reflected in the present day attitudes that mark the Arab minority as categorically “suspicious” not outside, but within the category of citizenship. Molavi (2014, 5–6) speaks of “stateless citizenship”, arguing that the medium through which a marginalised Palestinian existence within Israel is maintained is “citizenship itself” – the provision of Arab citizenship in a Jewish state. Israeli authorities profile Arab citizens differently from Jewish citizens, supposedly to maximize the prevention of terrorist threats; but such profiling also becomes a reminder of the discrimination they experience in other aspects of life (Hasisi and Margalioth 2012, 519). Such discriminatory profiling at Israel’s international airport has been widely covered in Israeli and international media and civil society groups repeatedly criticised the practice.1 1 | The Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition demanding the annulment of the “Arab criterion” and an end to the racial profiling of Arab passengers at Israeli airports in 2007. However, in a 2015 ruling, Israel’s High Court rejected the petition, stating that such a change was no longer relevant because of changes put in place in 2014, which automatised the luggage-checking process which was previously carried out by individual selection (Haaretz, 11 March 2015: http://www.haaretz.com/ news/national/.premium-1.646366).

66  | Andreas Hackl In sum, Palestinians in Israel face rather difficult choices during physical movement and transition: either they try to keep their Arab–Palestinian identity backstage for pragmatic reasons if this eases the passage, or they choose to confront the underlying discriminatory logic through non-compliance or overt criticism, while possibly delaying their passage or facing more questions and reasons for a heated argument. When the famous Palestinian Israeli artist Mira Awad was suddenly offered a different security sticker by an official at the airport, one with a “privileged” code on it, Awad responded in a statement online: Now the dilemma: on the one hand it’s obvious the young man has just made my life easier by putting on the sticker for Jews. On the other hand, it’s one of the things that it’s hard to say thanks for. I mean, thank you for not considering me a terrorist anymore? (…) Thanks for upgrading me to a class-A citizen? (…) the conclusion is, if you’re Israeli and your name is Awad – you better be famous!

Being privileged involved a dilemma for Awad. Making her status as a public figure visible at the airport may ease the passage, which would otherwise be restricted or delayed because of the suspiciousness of being Arab. Yet accepting the privileged treatment resembles a legitimation of the underlying logic of discrimination. Palestinians in Israel become acrobats in the face of constant adjustments to the necessities of bounded mobility.

When the siren wails Palestinians in Israel must also balance the need to be mobile with their political convictions, which often stand in opposition to the positions employed by those who regulate movement and opportunities. Under pressure to stay “under the radar” on the way towards a career as professionals, they may carefully curate what is publically visible of their political identities. The law student Hisham told me about his fears that potential employers would discover highly political posts on his Facebook profile. Moreover, as he explained during one breakfast at his apartment in Tel Aviv while putting on a Kuffiyeh to demonstrate, he would not wear this Palestinian scarf on campus because “everybody will look at me and think I am a terrorist. We avoid wearing such symbols. If you want to live normally in this society, you learn to hide politics.” What was previously discussed in the case of transitions and commuting also applies to Israeli public space more generally, as becomes evident in the lives of Palestinian citizens of Israel who lived in Tel Aviv. Widely seen as a liberal and diverse metropolis, this city is certainly no exception precisely because “liberal” refers differently to Arab–Palestinians compared with other urbanites. This is certainly the case during particular national holidays and memorial days, such as Israel’s Memorial Day for the “Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism”.

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On one of these days, I stood waiting at a train station in Tel Aviv. I was on my way to an alternative memorial event in which both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians shared narratives of loss and mourned together. On the way to this event, I realised – together with what I already knew – how difficult public space becomes for Palestinians on that particular day. I checked the time repeatedly on the way to the station to calculate whether I would be stuck in a train when, as is usual on this day, the sound of a siren marks a national minute of silence. I hoped the train ride would be either before or after this minute, but I was out of luck. A few minutes after I boarded the train, the siren roared and everyone around me stood up, as is the custom during this ritual. Highly critical of this nationalist public event, I had already decided not to stand up. At the same time, however, I did not want to protest visibly either, which may have provoked and disturbed the people around me. Luckily, I had already taken the necessary precautions. Although plenty of seats were empty on the train, I stood from the very beginning. Consequently, I could stand without standing up. The action of standing up was a statement, but remaining standing could hardly be seen as such. Similar questions and anxieties make this Memorial Day a tense one for Palestinians in a city such as Tel Aviv. The day mourns Israel’s “fallen soldiers”, but does not discuss the complicity of these soldiers in occupying the Palestinian territory, nor does it refer to the Palestinians’ losses. This is why standing up is a taboo for most Palestinians in Israel. This and similar public events further intensify the pressure on individuals to manage the visibility of their identity in public or in transit. As the Palestinian Tel Aviv resident Kheir said about the memorial days: “You feel that this is not your country. It becomes clear that you are not actually part of this whole thing.” During the “fallen soldiers and victims” memorial day, Jewish Israelis even stop their cars and step onto the motorway once the siren wails. One can imagine that this creates a difficult dilemma for Palestinians: stop the car and comply, or keep on driving as a form of visible provocation and protest. In anticipation of this Memorial Day, Palestinians in Israel often avoid being in public space altogether, which is not always possible. Others deliberately seek shelter in a toilet only seconds before, and yet others manage to negotiate the matter with their close affiliates. The Palestinian Israeli Hussein, who worked as a nurse in Tel Aviv, was one of them. He lived with an Israeli flatmate who decided to stand up and mourn in the bathroom, thus avoiding the pressure on Hussein to decide whether or not to comply. These public rituals activate a sense of extreme difference for Palestinians, as it strengthens a boundary that is otherwise articulated more subtly, particularly in an “open” city such as Tel Aviv. During movement on public transport these issues becomes particularly tricky to handle, not least because it exposes them to the ritual in a confined space that dissolves anonymity and leaves few alternatives to visibility. Being “on the move” also adds tension to this phenomenon because it

68  | Andreas Hackl interrupts all movement temporarily during the minute of silence, as drivers halt their cars and step out onto the motorway, buses stop and some passengers step out of the vehicle, while others stand up inside. According to Yazid, a Tel Aviv University student, the siren also creates this “inner pressure on you to stand up”. It is a pressure to blend into the masses and to remain anonymous as a Palestinian, and forget about it once it is over. The need to move on with daily business is similar to the need to catch a bus, a plane or enter the university campus in a rush – it creates particular pressure on pragmatic decision-making. The force that pressures Palestinians to stand up also immobilises them – it destroys the flexibility of their “acrobatic” balancing acts just like the airport security’s check of their identity card or passport does. A highly mobile and fluid urban space becomes momentarily one of immobility and closure. Even movement itself is considered an act of rebellion when everything stops at the sound of the siren. It all comes down to the metaphoric realisation that they have two choices when the siren wails: standing up and being invisible as either an Arab or Palestinian, becoming atomised instead as an anonymous “civil” supporter of the masses (but swallowing whatever internal tension one has in silence); or staying seated and thereby marking one’s difference in opposition to the forces of absolute domination (but having to deal with the troubles and evil looks that ensue). A similar dynamic takes place during Israel’s “Independence Day”, when the streets of Tel Aviv are filled with partying crowds, many of them waving Israeli flags or wearing hats and other accessories coloured in Israel’s national blue and white. It is the day when expressions of Israeli nationalism reach their yearly high as Jewish Israelis celebrate their state’s inception, while Palestinians mourn in memory of their national catastrophe, the “Nakba”. What is it like to be Palestinian in Tel Aviv during those days, and how do they negotiate the visibility of their otherness in the face of the Israelis’ exclusive unity? One morning after the Independence Day celebrations I met the Palestinian– Israeli Samira, a section head nurse in a private clinic in Tel Aviv and a resident of the city. She was also an actor and a somewhat well-known public figure in the Palestinian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We met at her local coffee-shop and, as we sat down, she lamented her lack of sleep due to her neighbours’ party. She seemed tired from the night and the general nationalist atmosphere during the national holidays when a political dimension of life intensifies and lends an additional element of pressure to tense “normality”. Simple everyday tasks, such as shopping or having a coffee, may turn into negotiations over the legitimacy of difference in the face of intensifying unity: Yesterday in the supermarket I went to buy vegetables and fruits. I decided to have a light dinner. The guy at the counter said: “Are you going out?” I looked at him and said: “No, I don’t go out. You don’t know that Arabs don’t go out and celebrate on Independence Day?” He said: “So you are not celebrating the existence of Israel?” I said, quietly, not aggressive: “I don’t feel like celebrating the day on

Stigmatised Mobility and the Everyday Politics of (In)visibility | 69 which my grandfather and my father lost a lot of land. My family became refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jenin in the West Bank.” I said it without anger, saying just that this day is painful for me. He said: “You know what, you are right.”

Aiming to avoid a direct confrontation, most Palestinians choose to stay at home or leave the city for their Arab hometowns, thus restricting themselves to the spaces that stand outside the Israeli nation. Yet for Samira and others who stayed in Tel Aviv, questions about their planned parties or the mere noise of crowds screaming Hebrew songs can become a tormenting experience. At the same time, such “confrontations” may provoke a more direct form of discussion about the problematic nature of the events, which, in some cases, may even generate understanding. However, when public space becomes unbearable and must be avoided, Palestinians in Israel are confined to the little spots in-between. Yet for those who stay, the everyday and trivial, such as shopping at a grocery store, suddenly raises central questions about one’s place and one’s identity. The inconspicuous moves frontstage when nationalist rituals harden the boundaries between those who are part of it and those who stand outside or opposed to it.

A nonymity and visibility in everyday urban mobility “I think a lot of Arabs in Tel Aviv just like being anonymous in the city”, said Kheir, a Tel Aviv resident, who worked for a non-profit organisation in the city. She was part of a group of Arab citizens who lived and/or worked in Tel Aviv and held regular meetings in restaurants, with invited guest speakers. The group was “to organise a group of [Arab–Palestinian] professionals who have arrived at a certain standing in the Israeli business arena and in Tel Aviv”, according to the lawyer Zaki, a key member of the group, which advocated change for the benefit of the community. Kheir had been living in Tel Aviv for 13 years, ever since she graduated in the field of advertising. Originally from the city of Nazareth, she studied in Haifa and later on in Tel Aviv. Until she joined the group, Kheir hardly knew any other Palestinians in the city, saying: “Here in Tel Aviv we Arabs don’t know each other. It’s not like we have horns and recognise each other on the street.” However, in some situations their difference becomes obvious, as she explained with reference to one of their group meetings in the centre of Tel Aviv: Once we met in a restaurant and invited [the MP] Ahmed Tibi as a guest. The waiters and the other guests stared at us, although we were in a separated backroom. When the men walked down with Tibi at the end of the meeting, chatting loudly in Arabic, walking between the tables, they attracted a lot of attention. People at this place saw 30 Arabs and probably thought: where did they come from?

70  | Andreas Hackl Kheir and the other Palestinians in the group, all of whom were successful in the Israeli economy in one way or another, may have enjoyed the possibility of being anonymous and inconspicuous in this city. As individual professionals, they worked and partly also lived in Tel Aviv, and they did so initially without a strong desire to foster an Arab community there. Tel Aviv offered them a space of opportunities where the “sky is the limit”, as one lawyer told me. However, aspiring Palestinian citizens must often underperform their political identities in order to succeed in Israel’s political economy. In addition, Tel Aviv symbolises, more than any other city in Israel, a liberal idea of apolitical “civility” which undermines a visible Palestinian collective in Tel Aviv. When Kheir first heard about this group of professionals and their regular meetings, she did not want to attend: I was a bit scared of suddenly meeting all these other Arabs. (…) They know others, but […] they are anonymous together. Arabs here see that there are a lot of other Arabs, but they ignore it. They don’t really want to have a community within a community in this city. It is not what they come for.

However, as the example of the public meeting above showed, such anonymity is dissolved if they meet up in a restaurant as a group or whenever they speak Arabic. On normal days, Kheir sits in Israeli cafés during breaks from work or goes out in the evenings, orders drinks in Hebrew and is immersed in the city’s social surface. This makes her no less Palestinian, but less a Palestinian in terms of the visibility of political and cultural difference. Sometimes such anonymity is upheld for good reasons: to avoid prejudice or being stared at for speaking Arabic. In Tel Aviv, Arabic is received as if it was a foreign language. Another reason for anonymity may be to avoid recognition by other Palestinians. Precisely because Tel Aviv is a space that is imagined to stand outside of the Arab–Palestinian community and space, individual behaviour in its public spaces may well go beyond the boundaries of communal responsibilities or norms. One evening I sat down at a restaurant with a female Palestinian Israeli friend. We ordered two bottles of beer when she recognised that one of the waiters grew up in the same Arab town in Israel as she did. This yielded stress and she quickly asked me to change her order from beer to water. She did not want to create any bad gossip back home. Eventually, they both talked to each other and it became clear that he too had recognised her from the beginning; he knew exactly which family she belonged to and where she went to school. Moving through the city of Tel Aviv and enjoying its spaces of leisure can contradict other senses of responsibility or solidarity via the Palestinian community or family. As this waiter and my friend recognised each other, their communal sense of similarity encompassed them and marked them off against the social space of the city. What was backstage in one moment, moved frontstage in another. Urban mobility always involves a certain unpredictability, which is implied in the idea of individual anonymity in the midst of the masses; an anonymity, however, that is dissolved by being recognised.

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This is also a gender-specific concern. Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, and unmarried students in particular, must balance the possibilities of urban life with the expectations of their families. As they make use of this new city, many are supposed to “preserve themselves” in line with Arab tradition, a pressure from which Arab men are quite exempt (Rabinowitz and Abu Baker 2005, 119). Israeli– Palestinian women often need to maintain a delicate balance between power and weakness, individual determination and subordination to familial commitments; they seek to balance ideas of egalitarian individualism with their loyalty to the family (Sa’ar 2001, 734). There is a tension between values of gender equality and individual freedom, on the one hand, and deeply embedded cultural norms, on the other (Rabinowitz and Abu Baker 2005, 123). We can say that some forms of urban visibility and mobility in Tel Aviv are always more “risky” for Palestinian women than for men. Another example of the careful balancing of anonymity and visibility are Palestinian–Israeli women, coming to the city mainly from the north of the country, who choose to live in the southern suburb of Jaffa while studying or working in Tel Aviv. Jaffa has a lively Palestinian community and less “anonymity” than Tel Aviv. I understood from three Palestinian sisters who lived together in Jaffa that the “nosiness” of the local Palestinian community was the downside of living in Jaffa. “They get underneath your skin”, one of them complained. Buying beer or cigarette-papers in their neighbourhood grocery store was problematic, because they, as three sisters living together, easily inspired bad gossip. In Tel Aviv, they may face political debates for being “Palestinian”, as Samira did on Independence Day. Yet in Jaffa, they must manage their visibility too, because of the cultural norms of the rather conservative local Palestinians they may violate. Another Tel Aviv University student who lived in Jaffa told me that she sometimes hid her Arab identity by speaking Hebrew in grocery stores run by local Palestinians because she was tired of their questions, which she experienced as violating her privacy. She could rely on her “Ashkenazi appearance”, meaning a white European phenotype. Such ability to remain anonymous and unrecognised also eased tension during times of war, when Jewish–Arab relations became polarised and daily interactions quickly turn into conflict. Individual Palestinians have the capacity to manage the visibility of their difference to a certain extent, thus negotiating the external and visible boundaries of their identity as they move through the city, shop at grocery stores or talk to strangers. This also happens at the workplace: the medical doctor Firas found that interactions between him and other Arab staff were sometimes “strange”. He was the only Arab doctor among 30 in his section, but there was an Arab nurse and two Arab nursing interns. Once he stood surrounded by Jewish doctors on a ward round when he first met a new Arab nursing student. He did not speak in Arabic to her but Hebrew, and he felt strange afterwards, saying: “I should have talked Arabic

72  | Andreas Hackl to her from the beginning, not Hebrew. I didn’t because I thought that maybe she didn’t want to speak Arabic in this context surrounded by Jewish staff.” The dynamics discussed pertain to forms of everyday urban mobility, such as walking through a city, shopping at a grocery store or proceeding from room to room in a hospital’s ward round. Combined with similar micropolitics of in/visibility during transitions, commuting and nationalist public events, these dynamics suggest that the bounded nature of mobilities must be managed on different levels simultaneously, and that one of these levels is home to recurring questions of identification and about the visibility of similarity/difference.

C onclusion We have seen that Palestinians in Israel are faced with difficult decisions over the visibility of their identity in Israeli public space, particularly during certain events and transitions. The extent to which their identity becomes a “problem” in the course of mobility often depends on their ability to remain visibly “civil”, which frequently involves an understatement of their political and cultural difference for the sake of anonymity, opportunity or privacy. When recognition by other Palestinians should be avoided, the opposite is true. Here, difference is performed to avoid being recognised as a Palestinian, for example, from the same town. Moving around a city or being in transition often has a price because it asks for concessions. Palestinians in Israel deal with the bounded nature of transitions and mobility through a variety of tactics. Decisions about how to perform a visible identity and what to conceal become central in a context where mobility is regulated with the help of classifications that discriminate against some aspects of their identity. They must be highly flexible in the face of recurring stigmatisation and immobilisation, and the management of visibility is one response to situational confinement. The pressure to visibly perform either similarity or difference in Israeli space reaches a tipping point during national holidays and memorial days, some of which are accompanied by a siren that marks a minute of silence. Here we have seen that everyday urban mobility becomes a highly difficult route to navigate as collective rituals undermine the Palestinians’ ability to exist without tension or conflict in Israeli space. During these rituals, and also on ordinary days, Palestinians in Israel experience public transportation as highly problematic, tense and entrapping. This is particularly so when the siren wails and all movement is momentarily suspended, while not complying becomes a form of protest. Palestinians do not only identify against Tel Aviv but also with it, whether because of its “open” lifestyle or because of its employment opportunities. In making use of this city and its spaces of social and economic opportunity, they are able to move through urban space more or less anonymously, being able to choose when and how they make their Palestinian–Arab identity visible. Meeting other Arab

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citizens in Tel Aviv is not always the primary concern, as one Palestinian professional’s reluctance to join community meetings indicated. Moreover, unexpectedly encountering another Palestinian from the same village of origin in Tel Aviv may be experienced as stressful by young women who are under pressure to balance their doings in the city with the expectations of their family. Bringing the different forms of bounded mobilities that were discussed together, some wider conclusions can be drawn. The first is that immobilisation rarely occurs without people’s own responses to such attempts at selective confinement. Faced with stigmatisation, restricted freedom to move and difficult transitions, Palestinians in Israel adapt and carve out alternative spaces and opportunities despite the limitations. Secondly, social and spatial mobility, and inclusion into a political economy more generally, often depends on people’s ability to qualify as “civil” and acceptable. Inclusion into workspaces or cities and the movement necessary to get there have a price, and this price includes putting some aspects of identity “back stage” and others consciously frontstage. The third, more general insight is that any analysis of bounded mobilities must be highly contextual and sensitive to the interplay between individual agency and external forces that regulate movement and opportunities with the help of discriminatory differentiation.

R eferences Barth, Frederik. 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Calhoun, Cheshire. 2000. “The Virtue of Civility.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (3): 251–275. Cunningham, Hilary, and Josiah Heyman. 2004. “Introduction: Mobilities and Enclosures at Borders.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11 (3): 289–302. doi: 10.1080/10702890490493509. Easthope, Hazel. 2009. “Fixed Identities in a Mobile World? The Relationship between Mobility, Place, and Identity.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 16 (1): 61–82. Eriksen, Thomas H. 2002. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. Goffman, Erving. 1990. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin. Hackl, Andreas. 2014. “After the War: Jewish–Arab Relations in Israel.” OpenSecurity: Conflict and Peacebuilding. Accessed 16 October 2015. https://www. opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/andreas-hackl/after-war-jewisharab-relations-in-israel. Hasisi, Badi, and David Weisburd. 2011. “Going beyond Ascribed Identities: The Importance of Procedural Justice in Airport Security Screening in Israel.” Law & Society Review 45 (4): 867–892.

74  | Andreas Hackl Hasisi, Badi, and Yoram Margalioth. 2012. “Ethnic Profiling in Airport Screening: Lessons From Israel, 1968–2010.” American Law and Economics Review Volume 14 (2): 517–560. Jenkins, Richard. 1996. Social Identity. London: Routledge. Lamont, Michèle, and Nissim Mizrachi. 2012. “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things: Responses to Stigmatization in Comparative Perspective.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (3): 365–381. Molavi, Shourideh C. 2014. Stateless Citizenship: the Palestinian–Arab Citizens of Israel. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Orpaz, Inbal. 2015. “Arabs Taking Their Place in Startup Nation.” Haaretz, 24 January. Accessed 5  July 2015. http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premi​um-1.57​ 02​80. Pappé, Ilan. 2011. The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rabinowitz, Dan, and Daniel Monterescu. 2007. Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics, Gender Relations and Cultural Encounters in Palestinian–Israeli Towns. Farnham: Ashgate. Rabinowitz, Dan, and Khawla Abu Baker. 2005. Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press. Robinson, Shira. 2013. Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sa’ar, Amalia. 2001. “Lonely in Your Firm Grip: Women in Israeli–Palestinian Families.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7 (4): 723–739. Shamir, Ronen. 2005. “Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime.” Sociological theory 23 (2): 197–217. Sikkuy. 2014. Equality Zones: Promoting Partnership between Jewish and Arab Municipal Authorities. Jerusalem and Haifa: Sikkuy, the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality. Torpey, John. 1998. “Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ‘Means of Movement’.” Sociological theory 16 (3): 239–259. White, Melanie. 2006. “An Ambivalent Civility.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 31 (4): 445–460. Yiftachel, Oren. 2002. “The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel.” Middle East Report 223: 38–45.

From One Side of the Wall to the Other: The Deconstruction of a Physical and Symbolic Barrier between Israel and the West Bank Sabina Leoncini “Territories’ frontiers are not rigid or fixed, on the contrary, they are flexible and constantly changing”. (Weizman 2009, 11)

One of the most immediate results of movements and global interconnections seems to consist of a proliferation of borders, which are in fact all around us. They are conventional and geographic borders, abstract and real, obvious and questioned (Galli, Greblo, and Mezzadra 2005). In the following case, I will analyse such multiple dimensions of a “border” by drawing on the example of the barrier between Israel and the West Bank. However, before analysing the separation barrier, a brief outline of the preceding events is necessary. In the first four months of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, Codovini (2004) refers to 500 Palestinian and 50 Israeli victims. In fifteen months (January 2002), the number of victims was 1,132: 872 Palestinians and 238 Israelis, caused by suicide bombings and the eruption of violence from both sides. The second Intifada 1 (28 September 2000) had left behind hundreds of civilian victims. This event originated mainly from the failure of the peace process started in Oslo2 in 1993. 1 | The second Palestinian uprising against Israel was a period of intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence. It started in September 2000 when Ariel Sharon made a visit to the Temple Mount, seen by Palestinians as highly provocative; events of violence from both sides escalated to a high level during those years. The conclusion is considered to be in 2005. 2 | The Oslo Agreement (officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, or in brief: Declaration of Principles) was an attempt in 1993 to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Negotiations concerning the agreement were conducted secretly in Oslo, Norway, and were signed at a public ceremony in Washington, DC, in 1993 in the presence of PLO leader Arafat, the then Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and US President Clinton. The Accords provided for the creation of a Palestinian interim self-government, the Palestinian National Authority, which would have responsibility for the administration of the territory under

76  | Sabina Leoncini This agreement did not realise its main objective: an independent Palestinian state and the end of the occupation by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, not only did the occupation not end, but, with the Netanyahu government, the construction of new settlements increased from 1996. At the same time, a gradual creation of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state did not occur (Hass 2000). Some issues were also left open during the Oslo agreements: among these, the thorniest was that of the management of Jerusalem as a disputed city between the two sides and the problem of refugees from previous wars, in particular those of 1948, but also of 1967, who did not give up the right to return to their homes. Over the years, in fact, no joint decisions on these very sensitive subjects were made, and this led to a general exasperation within the Palestinian population which culminated in the events of the Second Intifada. In this case, unlike the First Intifada (1987), the various Palestinian factions were more organised and equipped with weapons, united and equipped with weapons and used the strategy of terror, with frequent suicide bombings; this revolt, which became a resistance movement, was also supported by the Palestinians living in the territory of Israel (Codovini 2004). From the other side, Israel, the response to terror was also awful. In the spring of 2002, the Sharon government responded to terrorism by blocking the peace deals through the “Defensive Shield” operation (the elimination of the Palestinian infrastructure through retaliation). The fight became so ferocious in the Jenin refugee camp (West Bank) that it attracted media attention from all over the world, especially regarding the debate about the exact number of Palestinian victims caused by the Israeli Army. The Basilica of Bethlehem was the scene of a battle between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters, despite the sacredness of the place. In Ramallah, two Israeli soldiers entered the city by mistake and were lynched and mutilated by the crowd of Palestinians gathered together for the funeral of a Palestinian boy killed a few days earlier by the Israeli army. In response, Israel launched several strikes against the city which destroyed many houses. At the same time, the Sharon government was in the process of falling due to the instability of the Labour party. The 2003 elections represented a continuation of the prevailing right-wing momentum. The events leading up to the separation barrier originated from the Second Intifada, but the idea of the separation came up several years before during the Labour government of Ehud Barak, and, according to researchers, 3 had come to be regarded as the only possibility for Israel to exist and survive the demographic war. At the same time, in Israel, Ariel Sharon, who became Prime Minister after the defeat of Barak in February 2001, had approved the proposal of the Israeli Defense Ministry, a proposal that consisted of building the first section of the barrier in the its control. The Accords also called for the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It was anticipated that this arrangement would last for a five-year interim period during which a permanent agreement would be negotiated. 3 | See Della Pergola (2007).

From One Side of the Wall to the Other | 77

northern West Bank. Permit policies and restrictions on freedom of movement for the people living in the West Bank were established. In order to obtain a work permit, they have to follow some very rigid and complex bureaucratic procedures that prevent most Palestinians from taking the initiative and lead to extreme decisions, such as leaving the West Bank, creating the situation of a confined life in a confined place. By December 2007, 409 km of the fence had been built, 66 km were under construction and 248 km were planned, for a total length of 723 km. The data in 2011 were: 708 km total planned, 408 km constructed, 58 km under construction and 212 km planned.4 The most significant among the international measures proposed in reaction to the barrier issue is certainly the one by the International Court of Justice. The Court was asked to express an “Advisory Opinion” on the legal issues of the barrier. The first country to question the legality of the barrier was the Syrian Arab Republic on behalf of the League of Arab States in October 2003. Three weeks later, the General Assembly passed the decree A/RES/ES10/135, in which the Israeli government was asked to halt the construction of the barrier. In December of that year, following the continuation of the construction work, the General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to give another Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences arising from the construction of the barrier in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), including East Jerusalem, a request made according to rules provided by international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention and induced by the resolutions previously adopted by the Security Council and the General Assembly. The aim of the resolution was to clarify the barrier’s legal status, as 8 per cent of its track was constructed within the oPt. On 9 July 2004, the Court responded concerning the following subjects: legal status of the oPt, applicability of the principles of international law and legal justification for the construction of the barrier. When answering, the Court pointed out the fact that the construction of the barrier would affect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and stressed that up to 80 per cent of Israeli settlers lived in the “Closed Zone” between the Green Line and the barrier. The settlement policy is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention6 and Security Council Resolution 446/1979. Among the anthropological studies on Israel–Palestine are some that also focused marginally on the barrier from the security perspective related to the facts of the Second Intifada (Ochs 2011). Other scholars studied the barrier from the perspective of the implication of the space dimension (Halper 2000; Weizman 2009) or from a political-historical perspective (Bernardelli 2005; Kamel 2011). My ethnographic approach tries to analyse the implications of the barrier on the di4 | For further information, please check the interactive map on and the fact sheet (OCHA 2013). 5 | See http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/579/17/PDF/N0357917.pdf?OpenElement. 6 | See https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf and http://daccess​-dds​ -ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/370/60/IMG/NR037060.pdf?OpenElement Accessed 27  No­vem­ ber 2015.

78  | Sabina Leoncini mensions of the everyday lives of Palestinians. I suggest that the barrier alone is only one element in a wider infrastructure of occupation which excludes and immobilises Palestinians, while, simultaneously, providing selective opportunities to move for those with permits or privileged status. The Israeli separation barrier is highly visible and physical; it separates two “inhomogeneous” territories from one another, the one being Israel, the other the oPt. Indeed, mobilisation and immobilisation are part of the very same relations of oppression and control for which the constant redrawing and tightening of boundaries and borders play an important role. I define the barrier in this article as the idea that defending the security of Israelis means limiting the freedom of Palestinians. Among my interviewees, Itai, one of the inhabitants of the kibbutz in Israel where I was a volunteer, captured my approach perfectly: A barrier for me is something that delimits a mental territory, not necessarily a physical one. Something that makes you feel safe. But is it worth spending time controlling the border day and night? And to have a weapon on you at all times in order to protect it? It is the same with money: if you have a lot then you have to keep it safe from others … but what is the point in having loads of money then …? (Interview, 15 September 2007)

The barrier makes one group vulnerable and strengthens the other. Its foundations are of an economic and political nature. The structural violence here consists of both humiliation and lack of freedom, on the one hand, and fear and insecurity, on the other. Realities get distorted. The border, just like any other violent system used by modern states, is often part of an exploitation process, but clarifications on the issues of class struggles and groups’ own interests are not always exhaustive. Anthropology is, from this point of view, the study of the collective and individual differences produced by people through cultural means. It focuses on the “how” and “why” regarding people creating those boundaries (Salvatici 2005).

M ethodology and research questions 7 As Scheper-Hughes (1992) reveals: It’s really hard to carry out our job (as an anthropologist) in a detached and objective way, especially in situations of conflict, being an “activist anthropologist”. I participated in demonstrations against the 7 | This article is part of a larger project for my MA thesis that started in 2007 and is continuing through the project on “Bounded Mobilities” financed by the DAAD. At that time, I lived for about four months with a Palestinian Christian family and volunteered in a kibbutz in Israel for about two months. From that time I went back to Italy, Israel and Palestine until now, also creating important personal relations in the field that affected not only my professional carrier, but also my private life. Many thanks to Aissa Handal for translations in the field.

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construction of the barrier, living with Palestinians and Israelis, and finally, by the end of my extensive observation, I succeeded in making a connection within the two families (one Palestinian, one Israeli) with whom I was living. I kept trying to go beyond the walls of dissension, developing the right methods to make different cultures communicate with one another. In my case, I felt as if I became a point of contact, deconstructing the narrations of my informants through the ethnographic experience. In other words, I struggled in a battle of deconstruction of a symbolic barrier in the narratives I was collecting through my ethnographic experience. This perspective and methodology involves some risks, of course, but it is difficult to resist the charm of ethnographic storytelling, as Dei refers: “[…] To give in to temptation is normal, especially when it is not mere factual knowledge we are interested in but the significance of violence in people’s memories and lives” (2005, 60). I then asked myself, as Bernardelli (2005, 26) suggests: “Is it really possible to draw a line on a map and not set limits to people?” No, I do not think that is possible. Drawing a line affects people living on both sides of that line, in a negative or positive way. Let us just think about the colonial experience in Africa, where most of the borders were drawn in this way, separating members of the same tribe from one state to the other. The construction of a border, even if temporary, often “[…] becomes a device to build the distance […]” and “in the majority of cases, the idea of border implies an acknowledgment of symmetry: the existence of other people and cultures is recognized by both parties” (Herzfeld 2006, 171). If we do not have this mutual knowledge, we have an oppressor and an oppressed. The separation barrier is perceived as a border zone between the Israeli state and everything that is beyond it. The main goal of the research was, therefore, to find out to what extent the marking of a boundary line may have influenced the inhabitants’ everyday lives in a situation of displacement in the place where they were born.

K ids ’ voices One of the teachers of Bethlehem’s high school, Susy, reports: “The wall encompasses three sides of one of my student’s house, right in the spot where Rachel’s tomb is, and this is affecting her psychologically and emotionally. In her youth, when the wall was being constructed, she awoke one morning to discover a thick concrete wall obscuring the view from her window. She became despondent. Her parents thought that she had become lazy, without realising the negative impact the wall had had on her. Her concentration and her sleep suffered. She became depressed and frustrated. Recently, her mother and sister have been trying to help her to get prepared as she now struggles to study alone. Home should be a place to relax with your family. For her this is no longer the case. (Interview, 6 July 2007)

80  | Sabina Leoncini Susy’s student is an example of how the barrier can affect not only the physical mobility, but also the feelings and lack of concentration of somebody who is coming back home, the place where one’s fears should disappear, to find a concrete wall in front of her room; thus, instead of being a relaxing place, it becomes a tense environment. In these examples, I analyse how the barrier changed the ordinary life of the people living around it completely. The building of the wall created a situation of immobility, as the inhabitants of Bethlehem and those I interviewed cannot make any decision on any single day of their lives without reminding themselves that their movements are controlled; they do not have the freedom to build a relation beyond the wall, an individual and professional carrier, to realise a trip or to reach an educational target unless they get permits and pass through checkpoints, often waiting for hours there. One of the few occasions they have to relate to the “otherness” is, in fact, at the checkpoints, where they encounter Israeli soldiers, unless they live close to a settlement. The guiding questions behind this research are: What do Palestinians think of the barrier and how do they live and cope with it? In the case of Ayda refugee camp, one can see that the barrier has a severe impact on people’s lives: The wall has changed my life. Before the construction of the wall, we used to play in a garden with my friends, near the camp, and now we can no longer play there. Before, when I went to school and sat in my class, I could see a piece of land full of olive trees from the window, but now I only see a piece of concrete. […] When the Israelis were building the wall, there was a piece of land where we played where one of the boys got shot and then taken to hospital.  […] Since we lived in a refugee camp, we did not have anywhere to play. Since they built the wall, we play in our homes and in the streets. (Interview, 25 June 2007)

While this story is a particular narration about the barrier’s effect on children, there are many more narrations by which Palestinians make sense of its impact on their lives. The article presents an overview of some of these aspects of everyday life as it becomes influenced by the barrier, creating a situation of immobility. In fact, the perspective of the narratives is intertwined with the misrepresentative image of “the other”, seen only as the oppressor. This is an artificial representation based on imagination and narratives from people crossing the border. This is why we cannot say that the barrier is only a physical barrier, but also a symbolic one, where, from different sides of the wall, different representations are built and everyone fights in their own way against a different kind of immobility, not least by trying to make sense of and interpret the barrier. The article also focuses on the ways in which the separation barrier is imagined, evaluated, contested, discussed and constructed in a situation where the meanings of time and space are continuously changing and are influenced by the everyday schedule of the occupation. In the middle section of this chapter, starting my analysis from the categories of time and space, I give

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an insight into the ethnographic findings, giving some specific examples of what happens in some villages that are nowadays economical and relational enclaves (e. g. Al Walaja). In addition to the direct impact of the “barrier”  – which is, in fact, only the visible face of a whole assemblage of different, yet related “barriers” – Palestinians continuously negotiate the limited opportunities available to them, thereby ascribing meaning to the new environment the barrier has created. As this is a case in which people did not move far away, but the boundaries around them moved forcefully and created permanent damage (as in the case of Beit Fajar), this essay also contributes a critical perspective to the understanding of displacement, which usually implies that people are displaced across borders, not in their homeland (as in the case of the Abu Aissa family). Displacement, from the perspective of this research, is the imposition of an ever changing array of limitations on mobility and freedom, for which the separation barrier has become a symbol; a symbol, however, that needs to be deconstructed and critically examined against the backdrop of a wider context of interconnected boundaries and barriers, as I will do in the conclusion.

P laced or displaced? I s the wall “placed ” in order to displace? The anthropological categories of time and space are linked to the concepts of border and violence, being the social relations in question determined by those who live on one side of the wall or the other. These relations are limited by the presence of the barrier, often considered as a border. In this case, talking about husband and wife Youssef and Mariam Abu Aissa and their four children, I will try to explain how the barrier is even dividing people living under the same roof. Before 2001, their house was part of the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, but after the construction of the barrier, which in this spot takes the shape of a nine-metre-high concrete wall, they ended up in an area between the barrier and Jerusalem, near the intersection called “Tantur”. Youssef’s brothers and sisters all moved out of the West Bank and Israel, with the exception of two sisters, living in Ramallah and Hebron, respectively. Mariam’s brothers and sisters instead, live in the Gilo area in the Jerusalem municipality. Luckily, she can visit them because her ID allows her entry. While Mariam has a blue ID card for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, her children have no documents as they were born in Bethlehem. For this reason, they cannot avail themselves of the same privilege as their mother. Her husband, instead, has a green ID card for Palestinians residing in the West Bank that allows him to register the children under his name. When Youssef asked an Israeli lawyer how much the procedure would cost though, the estimate was US$ 2,000. A considerable amount of money when we think that Youssef’s monthly salary as a receptionist in a Hotel in Bethlehem is about 1,500 NIS ($ 350). Youssef, as a West Bank resident, is not allowed to own a house in Israel. For this reason, the house is

82  | Sabina Leoncini registered in Mariam’s name. Consequently, Youssef does not receive any kind of government allowance for his children. Mariam and Youssef used to buy food in Bethlehem prior to the construction of the barrier, as it is much cheaper over there than in Jerusalem. Youssef would still be able to do that as he works in Bethlehem, but it is strictly forbidden to cross the checkpoint with food. They are basically forced to lead an “Israeli lifestyle” with a meagre “Palestinian salary”. Youssef and Mariam continue to receive water from Bethlehem. However, they had serious problems during the construction works: the water supply control box remained on the other side of the wall and the Palestinian workers who were in charge of closing the taps once they started the work, forgot to open them again when the work was done. The Abu Aissa family had no water supply for 40 days. Nowadays, they are still experiencing problems, because the area where the water metres are is an Israeli military zone. Thus, gaining access to that place is not always possible. Whenever the Abu Aissa family has water problems, it is up to the Red Cross located nearby to give them a hand. Youssef’s niece, whose father died of a heart attack a few years ago, is now 18 years old. She tells us about her typical daily routine; here is her schedule: alarm set for 5:30 in the morning, leave for school between 6:00 and 6:30. She arrives at school around 7:15 to 7:30. Lessons begin at 7:45. Before the construction of the barrier and the checkpoint, she was able to sleep one extra hour. At 1:00 pm, after she finishes school, she goes to pick up her cousins, Mariam and Youssef’s children, to take them home. She then goes back to school from 3:00 to 5:00. This means that she has to cross the checkpoint again. Every day, travelling back and forth, takes her four hours. This steals precious time from the most important aspects of her life, such as family, friends, study, hobbies or a little rest. The land around the house is still owned by the Abu Aissa family and it is right there that the last of their four children was born. When Mariam was in labour, Youssef tried to drive her to the Bethlehem Hospital, but they could not go through the checkpoint. As a result, the child was born in their car. She explains: The problem with this area is that they still have not decided how to manage it. We live in the Jerusalem area but we receive water from Bethlehem. Youssef needs a permit to go to Jerusalem. I am allowed to go to Bethlehem, but I cannot buy any food there. I really hope that they will not separate us. Unfortunately, there are many other families in the same situation. (Interview, 11 August 2007)

This case shows how the barrier has changed the residents’ relations to the specific conditions of a place. As boundaries are drawn around people and places, separating one side from another, those who stay put suddenly find themselves in a new legal and administrative area, albeit still living under the same conditions. Therefore, when we are in a place, we are part of it, too. We are part of the memories that the place evokes, part of the relationships it creates and part of the images that spring out of it. A wall that divides and separates places also divides

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and separates their perception, together with the sense of belonging to a place, the knowledge of the place itself and its perception. The continuum between perception, knowledge and presence in a place is, therefore, interrupted. Other interviews reveal that the barrier is seen as a “cage” and an “open prison”. Palestinians living close to the barrier feel humiliated by the lack of a national identity, with borders dictated to them by foreign soldiers. They are reminded of that every time they go through a checkpoint, feeling uncomfortable in the place where they grew up. As for the students coming from the villages with little freedom of movement, teachers complain about the difficulty in assessing their learning, as students are unable to attend classes on a regular basis. This last point is well explained in an interview with Mohammad, a teacher of humanities at the Higher Technical Institute in Bethlehem, talking about some of his students from Al Walaja village: “Turning a blind eye toward pupils’ lateness or incomplete homework assignments systematically deprives the school of its role and makes it difficult for my work; but I had to deal with checkpoints myself when I lived in Beit Jala, so I understand completely” (Interview, 13 July 2007). Palestinians living in the West Bank and working outside spend part of their day undergoing security checks at checkpoints and changing transport modes, something that did not happen prior to the building of the barrier. Malkki (1995), in her research on the Hutu refugees in Tanzania, argues that the issue of space and time control emerges from the entry and exit systems of a refugee camp and from the mechanism through which the permits are issued, a denied or “disciplinary controlled” freedom of movement, and this is what the Palestinian case has in common: time and space are perceived as being controlled by a superior entity holding the power to control it. We find numerous references to the model of Foucault’s Panopticon8 (Foucault 1975) in Malkki’s work. When we reflect on im/mobility in this context, it is necessary to reflect on the limited freedom of movement Palestinians have under the impact of the barrier.

The “lesser evil” Israeli justifications have claimed that they were interested in balancing freedom of movement with their security needs, but the mere idea that it is their responsibility and in their power to determine the extent to which Palestinians are free or not free to move points to a near absolute system of control. The Israeli army’s opinion is expressed in a video entitled “The Right to Live”, by saying that: 8 | The Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power designed by Bentham. It creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where bars, chains and heavy locks are no longer necessary for domination. Foucault proposes that not only prisons, but all hierarchical structures have evolved through history to resemble Bentham’s Panopticon.

84  | Sabina Leoncini We have to balance the right to freedom of movement together with the right to life. Israel is doing everything possible on its part to limit the damages caused by the fence. It is striving to make the situation easier for the civilians who feel that the fence violates their rights. Yes, it is a security fence, but it was built with consideration for the Palestinians. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=​ hJ_1s1_25E4, accessed 27 November 2015)

Moreover, Danny Tirzah, the Israeli architect who designed the barrier, also shared the idea of inflicting a kind of “lesser evil” on Palestinians. He states (Weizman 2007) that the High Court of Justice said that the Israelis should have more consideration for the daily lives of Palestinians, so the designers changed the path in some places. There are some intellectuals who believe in the thesis of H. Arendt and refer to the concept of a “lesser evil” (Arendt 1963) to explain the function of punitive restrictions on freedom of movement. This concept was elaborated by the Jewish philosopher in the sixties when reflecting on the fault that the Jewish communities had made collaborating with the Nazi perpetrators during World War II. She compared this collaboration to the choice of characters, such as Eichmann, to obey their orders, choosing thus the “lesser evil”. Eyal Weizman (2009) says that, in this way, the “lesser evil” inflicted on the villagers can cause greater strife for the Palestinian community. It is a system of control within which small and regulated opportunities to move are upheld, while the occupation power seeks to have absolute control over the determination of who is allowed and disallowed to move. Part of this is the permit system, which came into force after the Oslo Agreement and became more structured with the construction of the barrier. As I said previously, immobility is a matter of time, waiting in line to access the checkpoints, wasting the time of your life, instead of passing it with your relatives and friends, but it is also a matter of space, of a Palestinian being immobile and displaced in a place where the Palestinian was born and grew up.

The barrier ’s multiple impacts : A l Walaja surrounded and the  M anger R oad case “To study place or, more exactly, some people or others’ sense of place, it is necessary to hang around with them to attend to them as experiencing subjects” (Feld and Basso 1996). This is what I tried to do in some villages, such as Al Walaja, and in Bethlehem, looking at the impacts of the barrier on Palestinian’s life and mobility. The village of Al Walaja, approximately 3,000  inhabitants, 9  km south west of Jerusalem, is considered by the Israeli authorities to be in a strategic area, as it borders Jerusalem. Despite ongoing home demolitions by Israel, activists continue their peaceful protests against the barrier. Israeli authorities justify the demolitions saying that those houses were built without any planning permission, while

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Palestinians state that the planning permissions for all houses were regularly issued by the Palestinian National Authority prior to the construction of the wall. Some non-governmental organisations such as the Holy Land Trust and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions contributed to the reconstruction of some of the houses that were destroyed several times after being rebuilt. But there is no guarantee that these houses, nowadays part of an enclave, will not be destroyed again, as they are now in between the barrier on the eastern side (that was built to protect the new illegal settlement of Har Gillo) and the Green line and, thus, the municipality of Jerusalem on the western side. Again, we face here a case of displacement where people living in the same place for generations see their houses destroyed, their village become an enclave and an immobilised situation. In the summer of 2007, I participated in one of the Holy Land Trust working camps to rebuild the house of a Palestinian family that had been destroyed three times. The family is actually living in a cave close to the house. As in the case of Susi’s student from Bethlehem, the importance of having a safe place as somebody’s home is in danger. Another case of the multiple impacts that the barrier has had on Palestinians’ ordinary lives is connected with tourism and the economic situation on Bethlehem’s main road. The barrier, in fact, also strongly affects the economy and tourism, changing the kind of tourism that now exists in Bethlehem and the spatial dimension of the main entrance to the city. Most of the people living in Manger Road had a souvenir shop and a small B&B which have now been shut down. The perception of the space has also changed for them as their street is no longer the “glorious” entrance to the city where tourists used to stop, passing from one place to another, but a new organisation of the urban space has taken place there. Let us keep in mind that Bethlehem is one of the most important historical places in the West Bank, the destination for Christian pilgrims from all around the world and tourism and the local production of olive wood handicrafts were the main resources of its economy. Nowadays, there is a market selling sweets, coffee and fruit at the entrance for workers entering or exiting Bethlehem through the 300 checkpoint. At this point, it is not only a matter of the movement of people, who start to wait in the queue for the checkpoint in front of people’s houses early in the morning, but also all that there is around them, thus, a question of social and economic mobility. After the barrier construction began, the first part of Manger Road (100 metres) became a military area and the overall economy of the city of Bethlehem started falling apart. Lack of tourism contributes greatly to this situation: people visiting Bethlehem never stay overnight, but come on guided tours organised mainly by Israeli travel agencies for one day only. The head of the tourist police reports that tourism in Bethlehem over the five years from 2002 to 2007 fell by about 70 per cent. According to one of my informants, a tourist guide named Adel, the causes of the economic decline arose during the Second Intifada, but it was the construction of the barrier together with its urban and social consequences that started it. A representative of the Ministry of Tourism told me in 2014 that they had 2.6 mil-

86  | Sabina Leoncini lion tourists in the West Bank in 2013, and the Ministry is trying to improve its relations with Islamic countries and with Asian countries, such as Japan, through annual development projects. Of course, the last war in Gaza did not help, but the Ministry’s representative is really positive as the Holy Land, he believes, has a lot of cultural resources to show. Tourism was one of the main resources for the professional and social mobility of the Palestinian people, many of whom now have to find other professions to obtain a form of social mobility if they decide to continue to live there.

A temporary solution causes “permanent ” immobility Can we consider the security fence as a permanent and definitive border or only as a temporary and contested one? Bornstein says that, particularly after 1993, many Palestinians perceive the border as an oppressive element in their lives, a place and a process interfering with their existence, an obstacle to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians (Bornstein 2002). If we look at Bornstein’s research on the Tulkarem district together with my interviews in Bethlehem, we find that the border is not looked at in a “spatial way”, but is considered a pretext for one ethnic group to subdue the other. This “temporary” solution for most of the Palestinians became a reason for dealing with controls and checkpoints which had become part of the “normality” of ordinary life, even in the eyes of a child from Al Numan village: “When I am about to get in [through the checkpoint], I feel really scared. When I am inside, I can feel that they hate me. They point a gun at my body and I feel like I might die of a broken heart [heart attack]. Once I leave, I feel relieved and I start jumping and playing” (Interview, 27 June 2007). The barrier is a symbol of both inclusion and exclusion; it is perceived as a type of cage “all around us”. Is this cage temporary, and, if so, what does this temporariness mean regarding our understanding of how the barrier impacts on everyday life? According to the official declarations of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the separation barrier is only a temporary measure: “The fence is not a border; final borders will be determined only through negotiations. […] It’s not a border and not a substitute for a border; it’s a temporary step that Israel has built until the Palestinian Authority finally puts an end to the terror […]” (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=hJ_1s1_25E4, accessed 27 November 2015). From the other side, new boundaries were defined and the fence could not be considered as a temporary solution according to Weizman (2007). In some areas, about 10 per cent, according to Haggai Matar (2012), is made of a huge concrete wall nine metres high, the so-called “Geder afrada” (“separation fence” in Hebrew) or “Al Jidar” (“the wall” in Arabic). Della Pergola claims that this solution was also adopted in order to prevent a “demographic war”; in fact, should the whole territo-

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ry remain politically undivided, the Jewish community, consisting of 53 per cent of the total population in 2015, could disappear in the next decade and be reduced to a minority of 37 per cent by 2050 (Della Pergola 2015, 50). This is one of the reasons that may have driven the Israeli government to delineate a temporary boundary and construct the barrier (Della Pergola 2007). In this intricate situation, there is also the need for many workers to have a logistic organisation, as they can use only certain checkpoints to get out of the city and these are often crowded at peak times. This is also confirmed in a recent ethnographic contribution from the Austrian anthropologist Eva Kössner (2015). She reports that: This unpredictability is part of a larger system of movement control, which includes different forms of violence: as they regulate the access to resources on the basis of ethnic discrimination, checkpoints become instruments of structural violence. They are spaces for the threat and exercise of physical violence, allow violations of individual privacy and violently interfere in societal norms, especially when body searches are involved. Cultural and religious practices add another level of vulnerability, as becomes evident when soldiers let people wait exceptionally long in the sunset hours during the fasting month of Ramadan, when Muslims are usually heading home for the Iftar, the first meal till sunrise. These and other movement restrictions and the policies that facilitate them also constrain social relationships by separating families and friends. (Kössner 2015)

Some of the elements Kössner talks about can also be observed in ordinary scenes in flying (random/temporary) checkpoints, as a baker says: Once, on the road to Hebron, soldiers ordered me to get out of the car and to put all my things on the pavement. I had many sacks of bread and I put them all on the ground as requested. It was a very bad day for me: the people who saw that happening did not want to buy anything that day. I remember another time, at the same checkpoint, when they took my bread and threw it out of the car into the fields. Obviously nobody bought it. There were more than 200 loaves. (Interview, 26 June 2007)

The time and resources that the baker needed to make new loaves of bread and try to sell it will not be given back to him by anyone, so even if the barrier is officially a temporary solution, it creates permanent damages. The baker is a tiny example of that. The stone quarries in Beit Fajar and the tensions in the surrounding area are large-scale evidence of how much the construction of the barrier is causing steady changes. The village of Beit Fajjar is on the way from Bethlehem to Hebron, passing through Gush Etzion, the place where three Israeli Orthodox teenagers were kidnapped and then found dead a few kilometres away in June 2014. Beit Fajjar is comparable with “Carrara” in Italy, the famous city with the white marble used by Michelangelo. As soon as one enters the village one sees at once that, in fact, there are many points of extraction and processing of the famous white stone, locally called “meleke”, which is used for the construction of typical houses in the capital.

88  | Sabina Leoncini The material in question has taken on the more well-known name of “Jerusalem stone”, a symbol of Jerusalem architecture. Once a large source of income for local families, the extraction of white stone is now almost totally prohibited since the area used for that was defined by the IDF as a military zone. It is no longer permitted to go there or to pull out anything in that area; so much so, that those who attempted to do so in 2014 were fined heavily and had their vehicles seized. According to the plans of the IDF, the main entrance to the village will be closed, prohibiting access on road 60 which links Hebron to Bethlehem and lengthening the journey by 40–45 minutes. The financial worries are added to those related to the safety of local residents. After the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent attack by Israel on alleged “terrorist cells” in the West Bank and Gaza, it was also local inhabitants who suffered the consequences of the tensions; it is assumed that the young Amal Takatka, from Beit Fajjar, a Palestinian girl of 22 years, stabbed a soldier in this same place, and was then shot in December 2014; she was severely wounded. Only 90 out of 150 companies employed in the sector remain at the present time, the others closed, while workers’ wages have not increased since 1996, as some residents of the village tell me, including the mayor of Beit Fajjar. The village has 17,000 inhabitants today, of which 3,000 are employed in work related to the precious stone. The major even refers to a planned division into areas A, B and C, according to the Oslo Agreements, in which the forward-looking Israeli authorities planned to take possession of the mineral resources of the area at that time. Only the Israeli Supreme Court, to which the inhabitants of Beit Fajjar turned, will comment on the confiscation of land and the possibility that the village could become isolated from the main roads, as has unfortunately happened to other villages in the area which have become enclaves, to which one has access only through checkpoints restricted to locals.

C onclusions What is explained in this essay is that, all of a sudden, the mobility of Palestinians was compromised and regulated by Israeli rules, time, space and power. What makes Palestinians immobilised is the conflict and the occupation that built not only a physical, but also a symbolic barrier; what is important is not only the way in which the barrier prevents mobility, but also how it is imagined and narrated, and how these narrations relate to the physical dimensions of the occupation. The sense of displacement “without moving” I talked about in the beginning prevails in the narrations’ existence. Although all those forces are strong, there is something that prevails: the perception of the place where they live and being in a place means to be able to perceive it. The knowledge of a place does not consist of the perception of it, but it is an ingredient of perception itself. As Feld and Basso say “[…] as place is sensed, senses are placed; as places make sense, senses make place”

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(Feld and Basso 1996, 102). This is why, although many reasons could persuade Palestinians to move to a place to which they actually can move, their perception of the place is still too strong and makes them remain, trying to move in an immobilised context. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this is how they cope with the fact that there is a physical barrier, and actually the barrier itself is, therefore, an emblem of conflict and embodies many meanings and implications. This is confirmed by Weizman, who says that the fight between the Israelis and Palestinians is a game of tug-of-war (2009, 165). The barrier only matters because of all the other “barriers” which are less visible, but equally tremendous. The conflict and the occupation created an atmosphere of tension, breathable in the day-to-day ordinary life, such as at a bus stop, in the streets and in the local companies, and this is the answer to my first question about what people think about the barrier. In the Palestinian case, the barrier produces a form of violence perpetuated on the inhabitants’ lives. Violence manifests itself and becomes legitimated in the mechanisms of structural violence reproduction. Structural violence works in exactly the same way as male dominance: it is a legitimation of the relation of state control, which holds the monopoly on violence, naturalising the social constructions that are foundations of the policies discriminating against minorities. It becomes a way of life, a “life dimension” (Nordstrom and Robben 1996) that you can only get by studying everyday life. For some intellectuals, the security measures are only a stratagem to keep the Israeli public opinion quiet and make people think that the government is doing its best to prevent terrorist attacks. The truth is that there are chances of crossing the barrier. If we consider the fence as a simple measure that was taken in order to put an end to the Israelis’ fear, we think of the walls’ symbolic, cultural and psychological aspects and we ask ourselves if we can really call it a border or not. Barriers are built for various reasons, being of a historical, political or territorial nature, and there are meanings behind them. However, we must not forget the serious affects that barriers have on people’s ordinary lives. The study of the barrier shows us how a physical border can create a symbolic one, interfacing with the concept of time and space in the context of conflict. The conflict, as Fabietti (1991) says, transforms the territory’s identity and distorts people’s perception of social, religious and symbolic meanings. In fact, from when we are born, coming into the world within a “non-place” (Augè 2000), the hospital, we start to move from one place to another: from school to universities, from house to work, from one job to another, and keep moving throughout our entire life. It is this movement that lets us feel alive. The worst thing a person could think about is being immobilised in the same place for the whole life if this is not their decision. Defining what meanings space and time have in our lives is important in order to focus on how the human experience is based on them and begins with them, so that it is possible to proceed through the different places of existence (Feld and Basso 1996). None of us is ready to stop moving, unless for a harsh reason; in the latter case, we are immobilised.

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R eferences Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin. Augè, Marc. 2000. Il senso degli altri. Attualità dell’antropologia. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Bernardelli, Giorgio. 2005. Oltre il muro, storie, incontri e dialoghi tra israeliani e palestinesi. Napoli: Ancora del mediterraneo editore. Bohannan, Paul James. 1967. “Introduction.” In Beyond the Frontier: Social Process and Cultural Change, edited by P. Bohannan, and F. Plog. New York: The Natural History Press. Bornstein, Avram. 2002. Borders and the Utility of Violence, State Effects on the Super Exploitation of West Bank Palestinians. New York: Jon Jay College, City University of New York. Codovini, Giovanni. 2004. Storia del conflitto arabo israeliano palestinese: tra dialoghi di pace e monologhi di guerra. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. Dei, Fabio. 2005. Antropologia della Violenza. Roma: Meltemi. Della Pergola, Sergio. 2007. Israele e Palestina: la forza dei numeri. Bologna: Il Mulino. Della Pergola, Sergio. 2015. “World Jewish Population 2015.” In American Jewish Year Book, edited by A. Dashefsky, and I. Sheskin, Chapter 7, 1–91. Dordrecht: Springer. Fabietti, Ugo. 1991. Storia dell’antropologia. Bologna: Zanichelli. Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard. Feld, Stephen, and Keith Bass. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe: SAR. Galli, Carlo, Edoardo Greblo, and Sandro Mezzadra. 2005. Il pensiero politico del ’900. Bologna: Il Mulino. Halper, Jeff. 2000. “The 94 Percent Solution. A Matrix of Control.” Middle East Report 216. Accessed 5 November 2015. http://www. merip.org/mer/mer216/94-percent-solution, DOI: 10.2307/1520209. Hass, Amira. 2000. “La nuova Intifada.” Internazionale 355: 8. Herzfeld, Michael. 2006. Antropologia, pratica della teoria nella cultura e nella società. Firenze: Seid Editori. Kamel, Lorenzo. 2011. L’alternativa. Oltre i muri mentali e fisici della Terra Santa. Roma: Editori Riuniti. Kössner, Eva. 2015. “Keep on Going: How Palestinians Make Their Way through the Maze of the Occupation.” Transformations. Accessed 4  November 2015. http://transformations-blog.com/keep-on-going-how-palestinians-make​-their​ -way​-through-the-maze-of-the-occupation/. Malkki, Lisa. 1995. Purity and Exile. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matar, Haggai. 2012. “The Wall, 10 Years on: The Great Israeli Project.” +972. Accessed 4  November 2015. http://972mag.com/the-wall-10-years-on-the-great​ -israeli-project/40683/.

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Nordstrom, Caroline, and Antonius Robben. 1996 Fieldwork under Fire, Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkley: University of California Press. OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). 2013. “The Humanitarian Impact of the Barrier.” Accessed 4 November 2015. http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_barrier_factsheet_july_2013_ english.pdf. OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). 2014. “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Barrier Portal.” Accessed 4 November 2015. http://www.ochaopt.org/content.aspx?id=1010271. Ochs, Juliana. 2011. Security and Suspicion: An Ethnography of Everyday Life in Israel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Resolution 194 of ONU, A/RES/194 (III) 11 December 1948. Accessed 27 November 2015. http://www.unrwa.org/content/resolution-194. Salvatici, Silvia. 2005. Confini: costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappresentazioni. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino Editore. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weizman, Eyal. 2007. Hollow Land. Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. Brooklyn: Verso. Weizman, Eyal. 2009. Il male minore. Roma: Nottetempo.

III. Imagination and Time

(Im)mobility, Urbanism and Belonging: Being Immobile and Dreaming Mobility in Greece1 Eleni Sideri Volos is a city of almost 150,000 inhabitants in central Greece, in the foothills of Pelion next to the Aegean Sea. Its natural beauty and an almost touristic description of the city is the first thing underlined in the accounts of San and Ahmed. 2 When San, a 40‑year-old Korean woman, saw Volos for the first time almost ten years ago, she described it as “a white city”, referring to the white colour which is predominant in the urban landscape. Her impression must have been reinforced by her emotional state, because San was arriving in Volos as a new bride, married to a young Greek. By contrast, Ahmed, a 17‑year-old Pakistani boy, who lives in the Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children Centre in Makrinitsa, a village in Pelion a 20‑minute ride from Volos, could not sleep for several nights due to his anxiety of having to face yet another new situation after a long and perilous journey. Both San’s and Ahmed’s decisions to immigrate to Volos are embedded in different storylines. Nevertheless, they share one aspect: physical movement. The latter is not indifferent to the “mobility turn” (Cresswell 2006; Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006) of the twentieth century. These two buzz words tried to capture mobility as a dominant paradigm both in academic thinking and lifestyle,3 turning the attention from bounded territories, communities and cultures to mobile ones, due to rapid technological innovation in transportation and communications, along with the economic and political 1 | This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Programme “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) – Research Funding Programme: Thales. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. 2 | The real names of my two narrators have been anonymised. 3 | Lifestyle has been shaped through the economic shift from Fordism (a production-oriented economy) to post-Fordism (an economy oriented towards services and consumption), which increased the connection of identities more with consumption than class (Duncan, Cohen, and Thulemark 2013, 1–3).

96  | Eleni Sideri transformations (such as liberal economics, a flexible labour market, cross-border collaboration and mass tourism) of the last decades. However, these shifts did not erase boundaries. Instead, they often increased the reasons why people wanted to leave home, for example, intensified social inequality, wars and conflicts. In addition to that, global media and new technologies made the circulation of images and ideas easier, which promote a more mobile lifestyle. The latter very often acts as an incentive for movement, as I will argue. As Mimi Sheller (2011, 1–11) states, the interest in mobility often coincides with research on various aspects of globalization (new technologies, transportation, communication, transnational networks of different sorts). The interdisciplinarity that mobility studies present is something new, since the term mobility in social sciences was connected in the past with social mobility (1–2). This more sociological aspect cannot and should not be overlooked today, as the social and cultural capital of mobile people often contributes not only to their physical mobility, but also to their desire to become mobile through connections to transnational networks or access to resources. In other words, networks and legal regulations (for example, bilateral agreements for high skill migration) often facilitate individuals with higher social and cultural capital to become mobile. Nevertheless, this does not mean that only people with this sort of capital move. On the contrary, the diversity of the categories involved in mobility (immigrants, Diasporas refugees, asylum seekers) postulate that “forces, mechanisms and institutional arrangements” (Warde and Martens 1998, 129) regulate who can move, when, towards where and how. As a result, mobility cannot become a normative category of analysis without examining the parameters above, which are connected to different push factors: border controls, politics of migration, policies of integration and personal experiences. Furthermore, different categories of mobility entail different scales, in other words, different horizons of comparison from international mobility to small-scale and everyday life mobility. Their relation should also be studied: for example, does international mobility interconnect with a local and quotidian one, and in what ways and contexts? A more nuanced examination of the category leads us to the other side of the coin, immobility, which has often been overlooked. Mobility and immobility should be studied in the framework of “unequal relationalities [which] are shaped by the social, political, cultural and economic relations of capital production as they play out within specific local contexts”, as Nina Glick Schiller and Noel Salazar (2013, 195–196) underline. As a result, the study of mobility cannot ignore immobility, territorial disputes and bounded identities, borders and fences, power geometries involved in movement and its absence; it also cannot neglect the cultural representations of mobility and immobility. The normalisation of mobility as a dominant paradigm and the policies and practices involved are directly connected to immobility, for example, by technologies of monitoring and surveillance (Shamir 2005). As Glick Schiller and Salazar (2013,  1) argued, although mobility started as an “all-inclusive cat-

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egory”, it soon produced an “integrated system”, where the focus was shifted to different scales of geography, economy, social and cultural life, and power. This chapter will study the ways in which mobilities and immobilities, not only in the form of international migration, but also on a local and small-scale level, unravelled in the cases of Ahmed and San, define their experience of the city. In this way, I will try to examine the international and the everyday, the global and the local, in an interwoven way. I will explore how different forms of immobility, one due to the lack of official documents and the other due to social constraints, generate physical and imagined mobility. Mobility plans do not exist in a vacuum, but are emplaced and have a specific time framework. Ahmed’s and San’s imaginaries are here taken as expressions of social qualities. In other words, the ways in which these two individuals imagine their lives and their efforts to make their imaginaries real are “acts which are themselves socially and historically determinate” (Smith 2006, 54). As a result, lives are imagined through specific social conditions, access to resources and networks producing bounded mobilities. The chapter is based on original research within the framework of a research programme, D ­ EMUCIV – Designing the Museum of the City of Volos, which tried to collect different oral histories producing the experience of the city of Volos in various periods and among different narrators. Firstly, I will discuss the relation between cities and im/mobilities. Then, I will explore how the latter emerge in San’s and Ahmed’s lives. The chapter is ethnographically driven and stresses that the ethnographic analysis of mobility could help us to overcome the methods of social sciences often bounded to territory regarding “the realities of global complexity” (Law and Urry 2004, 403).

C ity and urban studies in G reece Urban anthropology, which began to emerge slowly from the interwar period and especially after World War  II, focused on the phenomenon of urbanisation (rural-urban migration, development of ethnic neighbourhoods, integration) and perpetuated the stereotypes attached to the dichotomy between cities and rural communities for years (Glick Schiller 2012). The latter was linked to the division between industrial and rural economies and influenced our perceptions of the “modern” and “traditional”. However, these stereotypes have not become obsolete. On the contrary, the two case studies will show that mobility to urban centres is still connected to these perceptions. Cities, especially in the 1990s, have become hubs of economic, cultural and human capital (Sassen 2011). The transformation was interwoven with the neo-liberal restructuring of the public space through a “privatization of formerly public resources, spaces and, forms of governance” (27). These shifts affected, to different degrees, urban centres worldwide, making them more or less attractive for immigration. The choice of the destination city for mo-

98  | Eleni Sideri bile people is not abstract. It is not only connected with colonial histories, but also with a hierarchy of destination countries and cities, in turn, connected with the economic, cultural and political characteristics of the latter (Salazar 2011), and to bureaucratic constraints, such as visas. As a result, due to a multiplicity of reasons, countries or cities originally planned to be transit spaces, like Volos, end up becoming cities of settlement (Datta 2013). The transformation of Greece into a country of immigration, originally from the Balkans and the former Soviet Union and later from the wider Middle East and North Africa, began to form a landscape of multiculturalism that was quickly introduced to public discourse by questioning older myths of national purity. However, it also brought racism and xenophobia to the surface. Within this framework, there has been an increase of academic interest in a revision of national and local histories (Papataxiarchis 2006). The focus of my research was life stories from new immigrants who had arrived in Volos since the 1990s 4 and how urban space emerges in these stories. I used the snowball technique and I started to map a network of potential narrators that included labour immigrants, asylum seekers and expatriates.5 I conducted a total of 19 interviews with immigrants from Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union, Korea, the USA, the UK and Finland. The Pakistani migrants I interviewed in Volos,6 such as Ahmed, come from different backgrounds and arrived in Greece after 2000 following in the footsteps of other relatives. In contrast to the male-dominated labour immigrant and asylum seeker groups from Asia, the group of foreign spouses is predominantly female, arriving in Volos between the 1960s and recently. San belongs to the last group. In the following section, I will examine the case of Ahmed, stressing how his formal immobility due to the lack of official documents gave birth to various forms of mobilities.

4 | The research focused on immigrants from Asia and Africa as there had been other programmes which focused on immigrants from the Balkans, especially Albania and Bulgaria and the former Soviet Union. Volos had received an important number of ethnic Greek refugees from Asia Minor in 1922, and also in the 1950s, when internal immigrants from neighbouring rural areas were resettled in the city due to the Greek Civil War (1945–1949). 5 | The category of “expatriates” includes various groups of mobile people (highly skilled professionals and the dependent members of their families). 6 | The presence of Pakistani labour immigrants in Greece, in particular Athens, has been documented since the 1960s (see Salavanou and Kambouri 2009).

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I magination and immobility Although Ahmed has been living in the Refugee Centre of Makrinitsa for more than four years,7 he remains mobile and, moreover, he dreams and makes plans of mobility. In this part, I will argue that the conditions of immobility, in the case of Ahmed, the impossibility of international mobility, often give rise to other forms of real and imagined mobility. He originates from the city of Mandi Bahauddin, in the area of the Punjab (north-eastern Pakistan). He grew up in a middle-class family; his father is a dentist. He has another younger brother. Ahmed confessed that he had already had plans to leave Pakistan some time before his actual departure, but his family did not allow him to do it until he was 14‑years-old. The reason was a serious fight at school with a group of older bullies, as he told me. The fight resulted in him being hospitalised. However, many points in the story remained unclear, especially why a fight at school had that detrimental impact on his life. The story about the fight at school should, I think, be read as part of what Luin Goldring and Patricia Landolt (2012, 48–49) call “inhabiting in the refugee category” and how much the latter is connected with forms of violence and the urgency they produce for somebody to flee a country. As a result, Ahmed’s story of violence advocates for his eligibility to apply for asylum. The story would and has been repeated on different occasions during Ahmed’s stay in Volos (interviews with the police, non-government organisation [NGO] workers, social welfare, social scientists). It has become part of Ahmed’s repertoire of narratives that could contribute to his future mobility provided that he attains the refugee status, as the same story is repeated in front of the authorities conducting the interviews he has to go through in the process of asylum. But does Ahmed, during this waiting period, actually remain immobile? Ahmed arrived in Greece without papers. He crossed Iran, Turkey and then the north-eastern borders of Greece. He went to Marathona, a town a few kilometres outside Athens, in order to join his paternal uncle, who had already migrated to Greece. This must have been an incentive for young Ahmed. Sanghera Gurchathen and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert (2012) argue that imagination, enhanced by transnationalism and its networks, can be a tool to support people in critical moments of their life, to provide motivation and instigate action. One member of Ahmed’s family had already migrated before him. The existence of a social network, and

7 | Most of the regulations regarding asylum before 1999 followed the Treaty of Geneva (Presidential Decree 3989/1959). Gradually EU legislation, such as the Treaty of Dublin (laws 1975/1991, 2452/1996), were incorporated into Greek national law. Despite the gradual transformation of the legal framework, the infrastructure connected to the reception and examination of the asylum petitions and the hosting of refugees did not work effectively, prolonging the refugees’ turmoil and the long waiting periods in the asylum centres.

100  | Eleni Sideri also the circulation of news and stories among family members, contributed to Ahmed’s desire to leave Pakistan. Ahmed describes his days in Athens through mobility: daily exploration of the city on foot or by bus, mostly on his own, visits to archaeological sites, such as the Parthenon. In these short moments of quotidian mobility, connections between touristic imaginaries and transnational migration as “ongoing processes”, which include physical and imagined movement as well as cultural and social encounters, are emerging (Salazar 2011, 586). Urban exploration in the case of Ahmed, depicts the underlying connections between these two categories of mobility which could feed on each other with images and desires. However, tourism and migration often also turn out to be communicating vessels through which the mobility of people is realised (Burman 2010; Nagatomo 2014). Labour migration, for example, is often achieved through a tourist visa as a first step to mobility. However, Ahmed’s lack of legal papers forced his uncle’s family to take the decision for Ahmed to apply for asylum. This family decision shows how much the categories of mobility are interwoven in the context of a vulnerable population (undocumented migration, refugeeism) and often signify interconnected paths to succeed the migrants’ goals to extend their residence in the country or, if it is possible, to move to a more desirable destination in northern Europe. Being a holder of a Greek, Pakistani or Korean passport, one opts for different forms of mobility as well as rights and possibilities of travel, forming, as Shamir underlines (2005), different “regimes of mobility”. In practice, the procedures for asylum seekers who are minors, such as Ahmed, are not that different from those applied in the case of adult refugees, although, according to various NGO testimonies, the processing of the petitions of minors is prioritised (Dimitropoulou and Papageorgiou 2008, 40–50). What differs is that the authorities involved (Ministry of Health, Social Solidarity and the Greek police) are obliged to send minors to a Reception Centre8, such as that in Makrinitsa9 in Pelion. Ahmed takes the bus to Volos every day where he takes Greek language classes10. He often looks for occasional jobs in the city. He offers his labour to a merchant who sells therapeutic plants in the village of Makrinitsa, but lately, he also worked in a construction site in Volos, one of the few left due to recession. Thanks 8 | There were centres in Thessaloniki in 2007 which hosted vulnerable members of the population (women, families with children, unaccompanied minors and single parent families), another in Agria Volou and one in Anogia in Crete which hosted unaccompanied minor asylum seekers (Dimitropoulou and Papageorgiou 2008, 58–75). They are all co-funded by the Greek Ministry of Health and the European Refugee Fund. 9 | The Centre in Makrinitsa functions with the support of the NGO Arsis and its capacity reaches 30 individuals. When I visited the Centre, most of the children (boys) were from Pakistan and Afghanistan. 10 | Children such as Ahmed take evening classes at schools, according to their age, and then they gradually integrate into the local school curriculum.

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to his fluency in Greek, he sometimes works for the Red Cross and other NGOs as an interpreter in cases of interviews with asylum seekers from Pakistan. In a discussion about this work, he expresses hopes that it could help him with his asylum application. These hopes keep the dreams of mobility alive despite Ahmed’s disappointment, which he summarises in the phrase “nobody gets asylum in Greece”.11 So, Ahmed is stuck in Volos, but what about everyday mobilities within the city? Trying to unpack mobility as a category for analysis, Timothy Shortell and Evrick Brown (2014, 5) stress the importance of “walking” as a social category which they connect to race, class and gender. I would also add political recognition to these differentiating categories. The differences generated by these social and political factors distinguish the ways in which public space is accessed and experienced by urban citizens. These factors make specific places “walkable” for people during different times and with different purposes. Nevertheless, walking is not only tied to social aspects of space, but also to what John Short defines (2013, 12) as a “globalising process” in urban centres. In other words, while walking emerged in the nineteenth century as a new form of experiencing the city, for the bourgeoisie today, it turns into a signifying practice that illustrates the transformation of the cities from national or regional centres to global ones. What often characterises the latter is a cosmopolitan and multicultural quality stemming from, among other things, the presence of different transnational communities. Ahmed’s walking becomes a signifier of human flows connected to the mobility turn. However, examining these globalising processes from below could offer a more nuanced view regarding who is in/visible through walking, where or in which part of the city and what this in/visibility and im/mobility mean. Ahmed’s international mobility brought him to Volos. Walking in the city, though, brings Ahmed into contact with images, sounds, lifestyles and goods which strengthen his imagination and desire for mobility as a quest for a better life. However, Ahmed is not alone in this quotidian mobility. He is with his peers on a real and on a virtual level as he constantly plays with this Smartphone in order to check for messages, upload photographs and selfies or download music, especially, as he shows me, music from Pakistan. As we walk together in Makrinitsa, Ahmed murmurs a song. I ask him about it. It is a love song. Soon after, he starts saying how this song reminds him of his own love for a young girl in Pakistan. In his interviews, Ahmed had told me that he has had no intimate relationship with a girl so far, which rather frustrated him. But walking in the idyllic scenery of Makrinitsa and with the help of new technologies it seems to become more likely for Ahmed to idealise and romanticise real or imagined relations. He caresses his mobile as we walk back to the Centre. The mobile sensor replaces the body of an existent or imagined loved one. Virtual 11 | According to the Eurostat (2014), only 1,880 from a total of 7,665 cases for asylum submitted in 2014 had a positive resolution.

102  | Eleni Sideri presence substitutes the physical absence and its imagination. According to Steve Graham (2004, 113), modern urban life “involves the intimate recombination of urban places, the corporeal presence of people’s bodies, physical mobilities, and complex, multi-scaled mediations by all sorts of ICT and mobility systems”. This corporeal and sensorial experience between the moving bodies of Ahmed and me and his mobile phone points to a new interpretation of the urban that combines affect, motion and the emerging digital environment connecting different places, people and cultures (Jensen, 2009). New technologies play a dual role in Ahmed’s life. On the one hand, they contribute to the continuity of the relation with his homeland, but on the other hand, they also trigger the dreams of new mobilities, either for Ahmed himself or for his peers in Pakistan. There are photographs of him on Facebook, for example, in various places in Volos, especially at the seaside or on the waterfront, which might give comfort to his worrying parents, but they also act as incentives for mobility among Ahmed’s friends in Pakistan (Salazar, 2011). The majority of the photographs show Ahmed on his own or with friends, posing happily in front of monuments in Volos or participating in activities, such as swimming, not allowing the unsuspected viewer to guess the much more troublesome reality. In one photograph, Ahmed stood with his backpack in front of an old church smiling. The reason why Ahmed was in the capital was to find a way to leave the country and not a city break.12 However, he will be living in a Refugee Centre until he reaches adulthood. During the period of my fieldwork, the Centre hosted a smaller number of children in comparison to the capacity of the Centre: this fact allowed the Pakistani boys not to share their rooms with boys from other countries. Ahmed says that the boys from Pakistan want to speak in their language, listen to their songs and watch films they like on the web. There are posters of Pakistani singers and actors in the room and they often download music and films, as he confesses. This translocality not only ties them to the homeland, but also increases the ties between them, producing a community of affect. Furthermore, the extension of this community outside the Centre, in the streets of Volos where Ahmed walks around with his friends (mostly Pakistani, but not only, as on other occasions he meets up with other boys from the Centre), creates a niche where Ahmed feels more relaxed. He told me, for example, how he only just escaped from a fight with some boys from the former Soviet Union who were playing a football game in an off-centre square in Volos. A similar memory of a football game in Makrinitsa postulates a difference regarding how quotidian mobility could be related to different degrees of inclusion and exclusion.

12 | I had a last communication with Ahmed in early September 2015 when he uploaded photographs onto Facebook from northern Europe. Despite my questions, he limited his answers to his wellbeing and not his whereabouts, let alone how he managed to travel abroad or if he plans to return to Greece.

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Ahmed remembers how the boys from the Centre teamed up against Greek and Albanian13 boys from the village to play football. It happened, as he narrates, on a winter morning when snow was falling and they were playing dazzled by the snowflakes which he saw for the first time in his life. In contrast to the first case of football, this memory exemplifies the formation of a space of intimacy among the boys of the Refugee Centre. Going to the city multiplies the places of social activities and the opportunities or the imaginaries of a new lifestyle, but also the places of insecurity. In this way, a camaraderie, an ethnic and a place-based one (boys from the Centre), is strengthened, allowing not only small-scale mobility, but also a building up of the boundaries against otherness. At the same time, new technologies keep him connected to other networks that might help his further mobility away from Greece. Space is further transnationalised through these technologies, producing new connections between people and spaces. A virtual mobility of images, sounds and emotions advances Ahmed’s imagination to overcome hard times, to do better and move, in order, as he says, “to make his family proud of him”. This transnational moral economy motivates Ahmed to action and movement, transforming his immobility not to an impasse, but to a challenge. In this context, translocality induced by technological innovations plays a critical role as it helps these transnational families (symbolic and real) to be retained emotionally and socially and often economically through networks. Ahmed himself sends on occasions gifts and money to his family, especially to his younger brother. In our last meeting, Ahmed announced that he was planning to leave Greece in order to find a friend in Germany because, as he stated, “Germany provides 3,000 Euros to asylum seekers, like me for our education.” A friend of his told him this during a Skype conversation. Communication amplifies Ahmed’s realm of possibilities, even if it is based on rumours. Ahmed did not mind. He believed in his friend. Trust becomes a legitimate way to access and validate information and challenges what Eftihia Voutira and Barbara Harrell-Bond (1995, 219) describe as a humanitarian system connected to refugees where “there is no locus for nurturing ‘trust’”. In this context, more traditional networks and understanding of trust, for example, ethnicity and friendship, which are facilitated and expanded by new technologies, strengthen Ahmed’s future plans for mobility. According to Sanghera Gurchathen and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert (2012, 147), imagination “becomes a driver for change in the context of disadvantage and discrimination, [thus] highlighting the potentially transformative capacities of transnational imaginaries”. The latter are reinforced by the technoscapes which transform the urban experience into a translocal one lived in corporeal and sensorial 13 | The teaming up of Greek and Albanian boys helps us to trace how integration and intimacy is formed in the local space. The Albanian immigration contributed to the gradual acceptance of this group by the local society in the decades that preceded.

104  | Eleni Sideri technological mediation. Ahmed’s immobility intensifies his desire to leave, his creativity in order to find ways out of his impediment and also his vulnerability to networks of human trafficking. In a celebrated post-national era, there is a struggle between national sovereignty and territoriality, and the loosening of borders and a need for new forms of membership. There is also, according to Yacemin Soysal (1994, 4), an “on-theground necessity to develop a variety of new ‘patterns of incorporation’ that transcend and bypass formal citizenship rights” as more and more categories of people without the latter, such as Ahmed, manage to develop “local and cross-cultural” networks that help them to integrate, not fully to the local, but to the transnational and global, shaped by Reception Centres and NGOs, Pakistani and family networks in Volos or abroad, imagined girlfriends and Pakistani stars. But is it only Ahmed’s “wrong passport” that impedes mobility? What happens to people who are carriers of more privileged – at least in theory – passports?

Family networks and mobility San’s biography would fit into this privileged category. Born in Seoul, San studied in London and New York, and now lived in Greece. San could have been an example of a mobile person in the sense of the mobility paradigm. This section, however, will argue differently, postulating that international mobility in San’s case is interwoven with social immobility. San’s initial mobility was made possible due to education. International education, according to Francis Collins (2008, 398) is a “transnational project” because it involves physical movement, but it also challenges the grand narrative of nation through international mobility and different national and engendered roles embedded in it. San met her Greek husband in Manchester, where he was also a student at the same university. San’s in-laws considered a degree abroad as a status enhancer and the UK was chosen due to its language predominance. The similarities in the families’ agendas sketch the internationalisation of the expectations of the middle-classes under capitalism and the role given to education. The socialisation in a multicultural and cosmopolitan environment, such as the UK, increased the chances for “ethnic exogamy” (Kalmijn and van Tubergen 2006, 376), in my case, marriages with non-ethnic Greeks. The decision for the couple to return to Greece was practical. San’s husband already had a job there. On her arrival in Volos, San and her husband lived with the latter’s family in the centre until they found their own apartment in one area of the city at first, and then a detached house in another area. San first started to learn Greek by having private lessons at home and then at a private school. When I met her, she was still attending classes at a Greek NGO and was determined to find a job, which was not an easy task. Her quotidian mobility included walking on her own in the streets of

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Volos, going to the bazaars or the central market for shopping and entertainment, which is another example of the globalising processes taking place in modern cities. In other words, her presence strengthens the impression that many inhabitants of Volos have that their city has changed into a space of global encounters. Mixed marriages were not something new in the Greek context. The majority of the foreign spouses came from Europe, but also from other continents. Many cases concerned Greek sailors or the Greek Diasporans, but also marriages with female tourists, especially from northern Europe. The gradual integration into the EU increased the number of the mixed families. Sofka Zinovieff (1991), who studied inter-ethnic courtship and marriage in a touristic Greek area in the 1980s, reported that these marriages were marginal and constituted a place of liminality, since traditional Greek family rules about family behaviour engendered domestic roles, where children’s upbringing formed part of the core of Greek culture and identity. In these marriages, a daily negotiation between the spouses and their social context took place, something that burdened the daily routine and the relations to the Greek relatives. These families challenged the long-standing belief, shoes from your own place, even if they are patched, which tried to underline the benefits of an autochthonous marriage as a guarantee of success due to cultural and social embedded knowledge. The social background of these non-Greek spouses changed considerably in relation to Zinovieff’s research, as the integration into the EU not only proliferated the opportunities of the Greek citizens to study and work abroad, but also increased the number of tourists and immigrants to Greece. As a result, the likelihood of exogamy (beyond nation) supersedes the traditional local pool of partners. San and I met outside her Greek language class and we went to her favourite cafe for the interview: one of the most popular “alternative”14 coffee shops in the city. Her Greek was elementary and we had our discussion in English. Throughout our conversations, the language issue was predominant, as San considers it as a significant factor for feeling excluded and immobile. As she admits: When my husband and I go out with his friends, in the beginning they have their conversation in English and after five minutes always turn to Greek. Then, I have nothing else, I have nothing to do, I have to drink krasi [wine in Greek], a lot of krasi. [laughter] I can do that. So it is not a very comfortable moment (…) And also, Volos is a very small, it’s a small city, and I go out for walk, every five minutes I have to say, “Hello, how are you?” I feel like I am isolated and, at the same time, I am confined in some kind of a small cage.

Although San goes out and socialises, she feels as if she is “trapped in a cage” due to a lack of language skills, and also because of the size of the city. The former 14 | San used the term to describe a coffee shop to which people belonging to the leftist circles of the city and students go.

106  | Eleni Sideri prevents her from understanding social conventions and the latter increases the feeling of being monitored. In another example which combines both of these factors, she describes how her encounter with one of her husband’s relatives in the market – where she went with her mother visiting from Korea – became indicative of the social monitoring that exists in the city. After their encounter, her phone rang, it was her husband asking her to buy something for him since he had been informed that she was out in the market with her mother. As a result, San felt scrutinised, although she tried to understand this behaviour in terms of the small size of Volos and its kinship-based social life relations. As Jutta Bacas underlines (2002) in her study of German-Greek marriages, marriages among Greeks and immigrants from the Balkans or former Soviet Union, these inter-ethnic unions signify a sort of passage in a double sense. Firstly, an institutional passage takes place. The non-EU partner attains an EU residence permit attached to the period she/he is married to the Greek citizen, something that is significant for San. But more importantly, they generate a social transition as well. As Bacas (2002, 5) puts it: “Socially, intermarriage works as a status passage as well: It functions as a strong and effective mechanism for turning a stranger into ‘one of us’ in the eyes of a specific in-group.” San has a quite ambiguous position in terms of status as a bride in a Greek family. On the one hand, she is a high-status professional (a lawyer), educated abroad, originating from a middle-class, white family and an economically developed nation-state. As a result, her economic status and her social capital makes her a rather good bride for the Greek kin. Something that, according to Bacas, would help her make the transition from outsider to insider. However, this is not the case for San. Cultural intimacy, expressed in categories such as historical ties, religion, language and social conventions, which contribute to the institutional and social integration of the non-ethnic Greek population are rather missing in the case of San, producing a feeling of isolation and entrapment, despite the quotidian mobility. In this informal hierarchy of sameness and difference which draws on the logic of segmentation (Papataxiarchis 2006), San’s Korean background does not contribute to the in-family relations and understanding. Bacas (2002, 11) argues that they try to form a “transcultural social space” where marriage partners “interact not just in the homogeneous home society” or in the “bubble of the ethnic diaspora of immigrants”. Instead, they try to bridge the gaps by sharing common activities with other transnational networks or families or becoming involved in binational organisations. In San’s case, this transcultural social space emerges mostly from her own efforts to become more involved in her husband’s social life. In these efforts, language skills are important for quotidian mobility, communication and sociality. As San often feels that she lacks these linguistic skills, she prefers to go out with her husband as a couple or to stay at home. During our encounters she described with enthusiasm their short trips to the countryside or the islands.

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The other way through which transcultural space emerges is through the circle of the Expats Girls Living in Volos, an online (Facebook group) and offline circle of foreign women married to Greeks. San’s involvement with the expatriate circle of Volos is significant both in real and virtual life. On many occasions, she takes the initiative to organise meetings or events outside with the girls. The fact that she continues her Greek lessons at the place I met her is linked to the presence of other women from this circle. Women married to Greek husbands (the opposite case of male expatriates is very limited in numbers in the case of Volos) has formed a Facebook group where they exchange information and arrange meetings, which constitutes another example of the emerging digital urban life. They try to meet on a regular basis throughout the year. This group originates from a formal expat association which was organised in Greece by the YMCA in the 1980s in the framework of a programme that tried to empower vulnerable populations, such as the non-Greek speaking women living in Greece. The programme included language classes and a space of sociality. Many of the friendships of the older expat women living in Volos originate from that initiative. In all the interviews I carried out with the foreign wives, this circle emerged as a space of friendship into which they also try to draw their husbands. Every summer before they scatter for their holidays, they organise a party where their husbands accompany them. The older couples seem to have social relationships that move beyond the specific event. San’s social life is very connected to a circle of peers, not in age and ethnicity, such as in Ahmed’s case, but in experience (migration as dependent members of a family, previous migrations for many of them before their marriage connected to their professional life, difficulties of integration in the Greek society due to language problems and limited knowledge of the social conventions). However, the sphere of San’s life which was more influenced by her choice to move to Volos was her professional life, which she could no longer continue. The narrow and predominantly introvert Greek market, also stricken by the financial crisis, does not provide any opportunity for a non-Greek speaker from Korea. San tried many different pathways. She travelled to Athens and contacted the Korean embassy there, but the limited commercial relations between the two countries, in other words, the lack of any economic flows, limited San’s chances. In the meantime, she also travelled to the US in order to take the barrister’s exams there as a way to strengthen her professional skills, as she admits. In this way, she seems to retreat to familiar patterns of mobility due to education in order to get professional satisfaction and the sense of personal enhancement, which, however, could have no or limited impact on a professional career in Volos. In other words, physical movement is easy for San, but social mobility is rather restricted, if not forbidden due to the small Greek market size and her lack of Greek language competence. To my question, whether she plans to move, at least, out of Volos in order to get a job, she answers positively without any hesitation, because she confesses that

108  | Eleni Sideri she feels “stagnant” and she believes she is missing her chances for professional achievement. Every day she does online research and she refreshes her contacts abroad. However, she admits that leaving Greece would be impossible for her husband and his business, especially after the buying of a new house. Knowing that, she makes other business plans. She thinks of becoming an entrepreneur, to open a business of her own or to found her own NGO in Volos which could help expat women like her living in Volos. The idea does not yet have a concrete shape in her mind, but she seems to be willing to work on that. Although San’s position is socially better than that of Ahmed, they seem to face similar discontent regarding the opportunities available to them in Volos, although in her case, this discontent is mostly interpreted in social terms, due to the structural organisation of Greek society which is still closely attached to family and kinship. What differs, though, is San’s ability to travel internationally. But her career plans and the desire to move from the, in San’s standards, small city of Volos cannot yet be realised due to the limited embeddedness of the Greek economy in the global market. As Salazar emphasises, “all forms and types of (im)mobility and their imaginaries are deeply embedded in wider socioeconomic structures” (2011, 21).

N ew urban im /mobilities The two cases analysed here show that the formation of the local and the everyday can follow different paths and generate different connections to other scales, such as the global. This multi-scale analysis postulates that these various scales are imagined in less homogeneous modes than social scientists often depict. International mobility, for example, is allowed for San15 since she has the necessary documents. Nevertheless, San feels that her social and quotidian mobility are restricted due to the Greek market’s limitations, social norms and communication problems in Greek. At the same time, although Ahmed is not allowed to cross national borders due to his political status as an asylum seeker, this does not prevent his quotidian mobility. Instead, this immobility of being stuck in Volos seems to strengthen real and online inter-ethnic ties. Furthermore, his experience of Volos is connected with the protected environment of the Refugee Centre and other NGOs, as well as to the other Pakistani boys. His mobility in Volos is linked to these circles, for example, walking or playing football with his peers, going to the Steki 16 in order 15 | Nevertheless, San still lives in Volos, whereas Ahmed seems to have left the city for a better life abroad. This fact underlines that family bonds and emotions can be a more serious impediment for her desired mobility than market opportunities. 16 | A space organised by different NGOs which offer classes, legal support, entertainment and social activities for migrants. There are local branches in many Greek cities.

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to hang out with other migrants. For San, the local is divided between the family, her husband and her own circle of expat women. Physically, movement within the local space in both cases takes place, but it is often connected to more global networks and deterritorialised communities, such as Diasporas or refugees. New technologies are an important part of these two individuals’ lives, both as a way to maintain relations with home, but also to keep intact their dreams of mobility. As a result, both Ahmed and San feed their hopes for improving their lives by turning to the international sphere. These two cases illustrate what Soysal (1994) underlined about different paths of incorporation shaped by the interconnection of different scales. Economic, technological and political transformations (internationalisation of education, technological literacy, market interconnection, transportation facilities, similarities in the lifestyle of the middle-classes) have produced niches of integration within the global context which are represented in the local through different networks and spaces of interactions (lived or virtual), such as the NGO world, the expat groups or social media. However, what this chapter argues is that the integration of a locality, such as Volos, in these processes of globalisation cannot be considered automatically and is conditioned, firstly, by a national and regional scale, in other words, by the participation of Greece within the EU and the Schengen zone, and secondly, its embeddedness in global markets. Furthermore, what the two cases stressed is that this integration is produced in relation to the particulars of each case (gender, class, education, family connections, personality). Insistence on older ethno-symbolist traditions and politics of difference that continue to reiterate the narrow perceptions of national membership in Greece and limit the impact of mobilities in the city to a superficial multiculturalism, rather increase the feeling of stillness and entrapment that Ahmed and San often experience in Volos, giving birth to new plans connected to mobilities. The ethnographic study of im/mobility which tries to explore the new urban geographies generated by the interwoven relations of the local with the global could contribute to the exploration of different forms of social inequalities and power structures embedded in these relations and scales. It is necessary to consider how this new focus in the social sciences could also contribute to a new understanding of citizenship which can be compatible to these new geographies, in other words, to these spaces of inclusion that move beyond the formal and institutional understandings of the term (Deforges, Jones and Woods 2005).

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Jensen, Ole. 2009. “Flows of Meaning, Cultures of Movements – Urban Mobility as Meaningful Everyday Life Practice.” Mobilities 4 (1): 139–158. Kalmijn, Matthijs, and Frank van Tubergen. 2006. “Ethnic Intermarriage in the Netherlands: Confirmations and Refutations of Accepted Insights  / Les mariages mixtes inter-ethniques aux Pays-Bas: Confirmations et Infirmations des idées reçues.” European Journal of Population  / Revue Européenne de Démographie 22 (4): 371–397. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2 Fs10680-006-9105-3. Law, John, and John Urry. 2004. “Enacting the social.” Economy and Society. 33 (3): 390–410. Nagatomo, Jun. 2015. Migration as Transnational Leisure: The Japanese Lifestyle Migrants in Australia. Leiden: Brill. Papataxiarchis, Efthymios. 2006. “The Burden of Otherness: Dimensions of Cultural Differentiation in Modern Greece in the Early 21st Century.” In The Adventures of Otherness: The Production of Cultural Difference in Modern Greece, edited by Efthymios Papataxiarchis, 1–87. Athens: Alexandria. Salazar, Noel. 2011. “The Power of Imagination in Transnational Mobilities, Identities.” Global Studies in Culture and Power 18 (6): 576–598. Salvanou, Aimilia, and Helen Kambouri. 2009. Culture, Identity and Movement. A Study in the Anthropology of the Every Day Life and Popular Representations of Migrants from Pakistan in Nea Ioania. Athens: Latsis Foundation. Accessed 8 August 2015. http://www.latsis-foundation.org/files/Programmes2008-2009/ Dermentzopoulos%20FINAL%20REPORT.pdf. Sassen, Saskia. 2011. Cities in a World Economy. Newcastle upon Tyne: Sage Publications. Shamir, Ronen. 2005. “Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility.” Sociological Theory 23 (2): 197–217. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148882. Sheller, Mimi. 2011. “Mobility.” Sociopedia.isa. International Sociological Association. Accessed 8  August 2015. http://www.sagepub.net/isa/resources/pdf/ Mobility.pdf. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A. 38: 207–226. Short, John. 2013. Globalization, Modernity and the City. London and New York: Routledge. Shortell, Timothy, and Evrick Brown. 2014. “Introduction: Walking in the European city.” In Walking in the European City: Quotidian Mobility and Urban Ethnography, edited by Timothy Shortell and Evrick Brown, 1–21. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Smith, Andrew. 2006. “‘If I Have No Money for Travel, I Have No Need.’ Migration and Imagination.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (1): 47–62. Soysal, Yacemin. 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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On Being Stuck in the Wrong Life: Home-Longing, Movement and the Pain of Existential Immobility Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher In her small apartment in Vienna, Gerti 1 was showing us a pile of old photographs laid out on her kitchen table. The photos depicted a young and beautiful woman posing in front of the camera: Gerti in a swimsuit, Gerti in flashy 1980s fashion, Gerti in fitness gear, a neon-coloured sweatband tied around her forehead. A professional photographer in Los Angeles had taken the images soon after she had migrated there in the late-1980s to pursue her dream of making it as a model in Hollywood. For many weeks, Gerti had told us about the existence of this portfolio, urging us to make it part of our film project. Sitting around the table, browsing through the images, we discussed which ones to film and which ones to leave out. After a while we turned on the camera, taking snapshots of the snapshots. Gerti, lighting a cigarette, adjusted some of the images, showing us the ones she liked the most. Seizing the right moment, we directed the camera at her. We asked her to say a little bit about the images, about the life she was leading at the time they were taken. Within a split-second, the hitherto positive mood changed. “Come on, are you for real?” Gerti called out impatiently, “Do you really want me to tell you the entire bloody story again?” “Well, even though we have heard some of the stories before, don’t you think it would be really interesting for the film’s viewers to hear them too?” we tried. Gerti jumped up, pushing away the chair, putting out her half-smoked cigarette, as if she were ready to leave instantaneously. “I can’t do this!” she exclaimed. “This is stupid. Why should I waste my time repeating things I have already told you a million times before?” Gerti had no time to waste. She was pursuing an all-encompassing project: to free herself from being stuck in Vienna and return to LA, the place she had been deported from several years before. Being in Austria, it had become clear over the two years we had spent working with her, was just a temporary situation. Although she had grown up in Vienna, it had become a place emptied of meaning, nothing but a waiting zone from where she worked towards the one move that would put 1 | Gerti’s name and details that could reveal her identity have been anonymised.

114  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher her back in charge of her own life: her return to the United States. With such a large project in tow, Gerti’s life in Austria was accompanied by a constant sense of restlessness, a never-ending anticipation of things to come. This sense of restlessness, of wasting time by the simple fact of being here, in Vienna, rather than back in California, accompanied us throughout the months we spent with Gerti working on a collaborative film project. It surfaced during the restless walks through Vienna that formed her daily routine; it spoke through her fast-paced ways of telling stories and in her impatience with us for not understanding everything promptly enough; and it revealed itself in moments such as the one with the photographs, when everything in the here and now felt like a complete waste of time. Indeed, this deep sense of being locked into a stalemate came to frame the entire project; it came to demarcate the film’s pace, narrative style, visual framing – and, finally, its limitations. When we began the collaboration with Gerti in 2009, we were driven by a fascination for the sense of movement that marked her everyday life and for the fierce resistance she put up against those who attempted to curtail her freedom to move. Gerti’s story includes multiple instances of evasion and capture by immigration officials in several countries and over many years. We thought that a film on and with her would have much to say about the human urge to be mobile, as well as about people’s creative ways of sneaking past authorities and border regimes. However, we ended up with more questions than answers about this supposed mobility. As we went along with Gerti on her daily rounds, we came to see the paradoxical dynamics whereby her continuous urge to physically move about intensified the feeling of being stuck existentially. Indeed, as time went by, the damaging force of being immobile became so strong that it confronted us with the very limits of storytelling and collaborative filmmaking. While we had entered the project as filmmakers with an interest in anthropological approaches to mobility, we left it as anthropologists with a somewhat disillusioned view on the supposed movement and boundlessness of our times. In what follows, we will cast our ethnographic eyes on the friendship and collaboration with Gerti in order to shed light onto the complex and often contradictory forces that mark immobility. After spelling out some of the core questions that frame the debates around immobility and its links to mobility, we turn to Gerti’s experiences. By giving glimpses into the life-world of one single individual, we touch on different appearances of being immobile, such as imaginary escapes, waiting, boredom or feeling stuck. We suggest that while immobility can appear in different forms and is often intimately linked to questions of mobility, it is important to disentangle it from its (not-so-identical) counterpart and regard it as a phenomenon in its own right. By looking at the existential dynamics of being immobile, we argue that the experience of immobility is marked by an intense sense of being thrown back upon oneself. In focusing on the particularities of Gerti’s life-world, we want to suggest a less romantic reading of the often supposed links

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between immobility and mobility. We suggest a reading that allows for a more nuanced understanding of the damaging forces of immobility that have the potential to alienate us from the world in which we live.

M obility and moorings Mobilities studies have moved beyond the initially celebratory view of movement over the last decade. Rather than describing the free-floating, nomadic and borderless as the defining characteristics of our age, authors have moved towards a more nuanced view of movement and its shifting meanings. Proponents of the new mobilities paradigm have shifted the emphasis towards understanding the symbiotic relationship between mobility and immobility by putting a stronger emphasis on the social, political and economic processes that allow some people to move and force others to stay put (e. g. Easthope 2009; Salazar and Smart 2012; Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2007). Hannam, Sheller and Urry (2006, 11) argue that while social life seems to increasingly spread its nets transnationally, mobilities studies need to develop a perspective that problematises both sedentarist views on place and belonging, and deterritorialised perspectives that suggest a grand narrative of mobility and fluidity as metaphors for the postmodern condition. They, therefore, suggest that a contemporary analysis of mobilities should involve an understanding of the diverging consequences of mobility on different people and places in what they call the “slow and fast lanes of social life”. Urry (2000) famously described this relationship as a continuous balancing act between mobility and moorings. Rather than assuming a universal flow of people, objects and ideas, researchers now stress that the analysis of mobility should involve a deeper understanding of the different experiences of movements. While authors now largely accept that mobility cannot be thought of without immobility, the latter remains largely under-researched. The immobile has been forced into a kind of shadow existence, perhaps as a result of the initially celebratory view of movement as the key trope of postmodern social life. Non-movement is commonly portrayed as a feature of mobility, as a state that has to be overcome. Bissell (2007) suggests that this could have something to do with the implicit idea that mobility is the more desirable relation in the world. He notes that it appears in many contemporary social science texts as “somehow ‘better’, culturally, economically or politically, to be mobile than immobile” (Bissell 2007, 279). He relates this to neo-liberal rationales of productivity and time. Much of the recent mobilities literature has taken over this emphasis by laying the focus on bodies in movement and action (Bissell 2007, 281). However, while the body is engaged in a wide range of activities, it is as important to acknowledge that these mobilities “always already have within them the potentiality of being other than this” (Bissell 2007, 281).

116  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher It is exactly this other than mobile we want to focus on in this chapter. While we agree that from a physical and material perspective, immobility never entails an absolute standstill, we suggest extending the current focus by developing a deeper understanding of the existential dynamics of being immobile. In doing so, we argue that while mobility and immobility are closely intertwined, this should not lead us to believe that they are just two ends of the same means or, as Adey (2006, 83) puts it, that immobilities are just “mistaken” forms of mobility. In his illuminating critique of the mobilities paradigm, he argues that while everything is mobile, there are different forms of mobility which relate to and interact with each other. He speaks of “illusions of mobility and immobility” that are created through these relations. For Adey, there are no “real” immobilities: it is only through our subjective position that we are kept from feeling the continuous eventness and motion of the world (Adey 2006, 84–85). While things are always on the move, he notes, “they can appear in a fixed and stable manner because mobilities are all different, and we relate to them in different ways” (Adey 2006, 90). In this chapter we shed light onto some of these dynamics. While we agree with Adey that there is no such thing as absolute immobility, we question whether labelling immobility as a mistaken form of mobility is not pushing it too far. Giving glimpses into the way immobility can be experienced as a sense of complete existential standstill, we give insight into the lived reality of such analytical categories. Looking into imaginaries of mobility, we will show how the desire for forward movement in one’s life sometimes further entrenches the underlying feeling of entrapment rather than overcoming it. By laying the emphasis on the particularities of being immobile as a lived experience, we treat immobility as a phenomenon in its own right. Our aim is to move away from readings of mobilities and moorings, whereby mobility is represented as that which propels us forward, and moorings as the stable anchor that allows us to regather and prepare for future forward movements. Gerti’s experiences of deportation, homelessness and extended periods of waiting suggest that immobility is not necessarily always a transformative experience that leads into future movements. Her story rather sheds light on the damaging forces of existential immobility that have the potential to alienate us from the very times and places through which we are moving.

C alifornian dreams We had known Gerti for many years before we approached her with the idea of making her the subject of an experimental ethnographic documentary. As undergraduate students we had worked weekend shifts in the cloakroom of a Viennese nightclub where Gerti was employed as a cleaner. We had befriended her, and during seemingly never-ending night shifts she had told us stories about her life. She told us about living the dream in LA, about getting married to the love of her life,

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Rob, but also about being deported from the United States after having lived there for over fifteen years. In her version of the story, she had been accused of having a fake marriage, and from one day to the next she was imprisoned and subsequently sent back to Austria. As we got to know Gerti better, however, it became apparent that the accusation by US immigration authorities had not appeared out of the blue. Her deportation had been preceded by a period of severe social, emotional and economic instability. At the time Gerti was arrested, she was living in a trailer park in LA, while her husband had moved to another state in search of work. In the course of her detention, Gerti was asked to show proof of the lawfulness of her marriage, but as they had been living separately and Rob never made his way to LA to be questioned, she had no chance of convincing the US immigration authorities that her marriage was genuine.2 As a result, she lost her right to remain in the United States and was sent back to Austria. What followed were two adventurous attempts to re-establish her life in LA, entering the United States as an illegal immigrant through Mexico. After these attempts failed, and led to two more deportations, we got to know Gerti in Vienna. There she had just managed to get back on her feet again after an initial period of homelessness. She was working day and night: during the daytime she was putting up posters on billboards all over Vienna and at night she worked as a cleaner in the nightclub. However, although she had a job and a roof above her head now, Gerti often expressed a sense of Heimweh. The German word Heimweh is hard to translate. While many dictionaries refer to it as “homesickness”, this interpretation loses much of its emotional depth. Heimweh does not simply refer to a feeling of homesickness, but to a deep feeling of estrangement that leads to an existential longing for home (see Lems forthcoming). “Look, it’s very easy”, Gerti told us. “If you have a job, and you’re working six, eight or twelve hours, or whatever, you’re really happy to come home, right? – You see, and if you’re never coming home again, that’s very, very exhausting.” In Gerti’s case, an initial phase of physical homelessness was replaced by an existential feeling of estrangement from what others regarded to be her home country. And so we spent many night shifts listening to Gerti’s hopeful yearnings to return to California. On the next possible occasion, she often told us, she would be off to LA, no matter if the US authorities allowed her in or not. Intrigued by Gerti’s life story that seemed to personify everything but the stereotypical deportation 2 | The official wedding certificates following a wedding ceremony are not proof enough for a marriage to be valid according to US immigration law. The couple must provide evidence that they are leading a real marital life. If a marriage is considered suspicious, US immigration authorities expect couples to prove that they share a life together. One example of such proof could be pictures of holidays or family celebrations. The authorities also interview each person separately and may question common friends, family members or neighbours, as well as demanding proof of any shared finances. If the couple is found not to be living together, the marriage is considered a sham.

118  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher story, the idea of working with her on a film project about the lived meaning of place, home and movement began to evolve. Inspired by Irving’s work (2011) on visual collaboration, movement and narration, and Ingold and Vergunst’s (2008) reflections on walking, we aimed for a mode of representation in which Gerti was invited to think with us of creative ways of telling her story through the medium of film. Incorporating her daily routine of distributing posters all over the city, we retraced Gerti’s pathways through her involuntary home, giving her the opportunity to open up issues relevant to her lived experience rather than being required to answer a set of standardised research questions. During these walks, we noticed that the presence of the video camera provoked Gerti into performative acts of storytelling. While walking through Vienna together, Gerti acted out her life for us and for herself. Gerti was eager to participate and tell her story from early on in the filming process. The story she wanted to tell, however, did not include the sad and tough times in California that had ultimately led to her deportations. Rather than letting these painful facets of her migration story enter the picture, the image of California she narrated throughout the first phase of the project was one of long and hot summer days, lightness, happiness and deep fulfilment. In her stories, her past appeared like a dreamlike life in a mythical place that resembled the plot of a Hollywood movie. This is perhaps best exemplified in the story of her arrival, a story she enjoyed recounting to us again and again. I arrived in LA on my twenty-fifth birthday. You know, my younger brother was already there [in LA] before me. So when I arrived he took me to one of these 1950s style places and I had an ice cream there. In the evening we went to Hollywood, and I don’t exactly remember where we were, but I saw these old cars that still had wings on their backs, like in the movies. So my first evening, my first impression was “Oh my god. No matter what, you have to stay here!” And suddenly everything felt like at home. Better even. Comfortable like in my own living room.

The initial stories Gerti told us were dominated by popular imaginaries of the US as the country of endless opportunities, as the place that allowed her to move forward in her life. In many ways, these stories linked into narratives of the American Dream that were widespread amongst Austrians at the time when Gerti was growing up, particularly amongst the younger generations who were fantasising about escaping the narrow-mindedness of the small towns and villages in which they had grown up (Vahsen 2006). The stories of famous people, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Claudia Schiffer, who had made it, and the freedom and possibilities depicted in popular movies turned Hollywood into a symbol that propelled the migration dreams of many young people. In Gerti’s arrival story, the mere sight of cars resembling the ones she had seen in movies created such an excitement in her that she felt like she had arrived where she belonged. In her story, the cars stand for more than mere novelty. They stand for an entire life concept, for a specific im-

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agination of being-in-the-world that had urged Gerti to migrate. Ultimately, they stand for a place that would allow her to move forward in her life and become the free, happy and well-respected person Austria had denied to her. Salazar (2010) sheds light on the intimate connection between imaginaries of mobility and physical non-mobility. Building on long-term ethnographic data from his fieldwork in Tanzania, he points out the importance of imagined otherness in shaping different types of mobility. Salazar (2010, 57) shows that while Tanzania is one of the African countries with the lowest per cent of transnational migration, mobility imaginaries of the West are shared by large sections of the population. Similar to Gerti’s Californian dreams, the West in these imaginaries does not appear as a specific location, but as a widespread dream linked to aspirations for a better education, money, fame, respect and admiration. These narratives circulate widely and take place in an imaginary Western world, which reinforces a dichotomy between here and there – whereby things are bad here, while they are better there. Importantly for Gerti’s story, Salazar (2010, 64) argues that cultural imaginaries of mobilities are so widespread “because they give people at least some feeling of control in a world where they increasingly feel controlled”. While observed in an entirely different context – the post-WW II influence of the American Dream in Europe is well-known – the dynamics Salazar describes carry close resemblances to the prevalence of the mythical narratives about life in LA which marked the beginning of our collaboration with Gerti. Moreover, they help to shed light onto Gerti’s reasons for withholding the fact that much of what she had dreamed California to embody before she migrated there in the 1980s had actually turned into the exact opposite: a troublesome marriage with Rob, whom she continued to describe as “the love of her life”, but who never attempted to help her to re-enter the United States, her shattered dream of becoming a model, a deepening rift between her and her family in Austria, three deportations and periods of living as an illegal person back in LA or rough on the streets of Vienna. Gerti’s performances of a dream life in a dream world formed an escape from the daily struggles and disappointments that marked her life in Vienna. Within the harshness of her present reality, the imagination played an important role in allowing her to reconstitute herself in new and powerful ways. In telling her story through the lens of an imaginary dreamland, she was able to position herself as an actor in a world that had thwarted and diminished so many of her hopes and dreams. The camera became a tool for Gerti to tell and share her story, and, in doing so, it gave her the opportunity to regain a sense of empowerment. In his path-breaking work on storytelling, violence and intersubjectivity, Jackson (2002, 15) emphasises the existential importance of telling stories, particularly in the face of hardship and displacement. He describes storytelling as a crucial human strategy for sustaining a sense of agency in the context of disempowering circumstances. For what matters, he writes,

120  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher is how stories enable us to regain some purchase over the events that confound us, humble us, and leave us helpless, salvaging a sense that we have some say in the way our lives unfold. In telling a story we renew our faith that the world is within our grasp. (Jackson 2002, 17)

While walking, talking and filming during the hot Viennese summer days that characterised the early period of our project, the presence of the camera provoked Gerti into revelatory performances, into what Irving (2010, 26) describes as “dramatisation of being”. Similarly, Møhl describes the performativity provoked by the camera as “semantic densification”, referring to the special effect it has on people being filmed and on what they are doing: “They may go on living their lives, but they do so in a slightly different manner” (Møhl 2011, 232). In one remarkable scene, for example, Gerti interrupted our walk to renew her makeup. Making sure we would capture her in a favourable way, she planted herself in front of the camera and began to spin around whilst dramatically looking into the sun. Embracing the rays of sunlight, she talked about the hot Californian summers, the blue skies, the easy-going lifestyle, the feeling of being at home. “Next winter I won’t be in Vienna anymore,” she ended her performance. “I swear to God, I wouldn’t survive another winter here.” Even though the reality of having to struggle through another cold Austrian winter was getting all too close, in the moment of the telling, Gerti was able to act out her story with a different, more comforting ending. It allowed her to slip into the role of the beautiful, sun-tanned, stylish supermodel she had dreamed of becoming in LA. It allowed her to use the setting of a typical Viennese midsummer day, under a typical Viennese blue sky, as an arena for acting out her Californian dreams. In the end, these performative acts of storytelling allowed Gerti to create a feeling of mobility, of moving forward and of being in charge of her life again. If only briefly, they allowed her to escape the constant waiting for things to move that marked her everyday life in Vienna, and overcome the passivity that accompanied this being on hold.

When the waiting does not end For however briefly, the performance of her Californian dreams enabled Gerti to alleviate the pain of being stuck in Vienna; the reality of immobility became clear very soon. At the beginning of our collaboration she used the camera as a tool to tell her story in ways she wished for it to have ended. Initially, this worked as a means of overcoming the debilitating feeling of being stuck in a place in which she did not want to be. As time went by, however, cracks began to appear in Gerti’s Californian dreams. Already apparent in the ending of the scene described above, her stories would often finish by holding up the imaginary life in LA against the reality of living in Vienna. While in California, life was easy-going and characterised by

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the happiness of never-ending summers, life in Vienna was tough and people were hardened by the long and cold winters. As it became impossible for Gerti to hide the gap between reality and imagination, her storytelling became torn. On the one hand, she often defended her Californian imaginings viciously. Annika: Now that you have found a place to stay here, are you starting to like Vienna? Gerti: No! Annika: What is it about Vienna that is so stifling? Gerti: Why are you asking all this? As if you are trying to persuade me that Vienna isn’t that bad, that I might as well stay here.

The minute Gerti had defended her plans to return to LA, however, her thoughts would suddenly change direction and a sense of hopelessness sank in, leading her to question the feasibility of these plans. “Going back there [to LA] wouldn’t be so easy anymore now. From where would I get the money? Then my job would be gone. And I wouldn’t want to start all over again in Austria. In that case I would rather hope for a plane crash on the way back. Just imagine: having to start all over again …”

Parallel to working on the film, the problems in Gerti’s personal life intensified as she struggled to cope with the tribulations of enforced immobility. “I have spent too much time in jail for the fact that I haven’t done anything wrong but getting married”, she told us, adding that she would have to continue going through hell. “It’s true, being here feels like hell to me.” Her experiences of deportation, homelessness and the impossibility of simply taking the next plane back to LA created an ambiguous back and forth between a sense of being stuck, on the one hand, and a recurring feeling of restlessness, on the other. She experienced living in Vienna as a continuous process of waiting: waiting for her financial situation to improve to be able to afford a flight back to the Mexican–US border to attempt another illegal crossing, waiting for immigration lawyers to respond, waiting for her relationship with Rob to continue, waiting for the end of the cold Austrian winter months. As a consequence of the constant waiting, it appeared as if Gerti was not really living in the here and now, but in a world and time she was not in charge of, in an “alienated time” (Auyero 2012, 4). This feeling of alienation went so far that she even referred to her friends in Vienna like strangers who did not grasp what really mattered to her. Her friends, she explained, were just a social necessity, but upon returning to LA she would not miss them, because her real life was there and not here. So Gerti spent her days running around in circles, constantly thinking about the things she could say or the documents she could add in order to convince the American authorities of the legality of her marriage. Jansen (2014) found in his work amongst the inhabitants of an apartment complex in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina who experienced prolonged periods of

122  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher waiting that they often filled their days by chasing things: people chased documents, visas, medical test results, stipends, loans, permissions, etc. This constant chasing implied a certain degree of hope that through these activities they might achieve some of their objectives. The chasing was driven by an urge to keep moving forward. In Gerti’s case, the sense of restlessness that marked her daily life in Vienna, the constant impulse to walk around in circles, to think through possible new scenarios of getting to the US, to chase after the immigration lawyers who never responded to her e‑mails (because her case was hopeless without Rob’s support), resembled many of the characteristics of the people in Jansen’s account. Initially, it gave her a sense of agency, of working against the forces that kept her at a standstill. As time went by, however, this restless chasing took on a hopeless character. Rather than creating an escape, it confronted Gerti with the inescapability of the here and now, creating what Jansen so poignantly describes as “enforced presentism” (2014, 75). Shutting the door on further imaginary movements, the dynamics of prolonged waiting radically threw her back upon herself and the inescapability of being here. Describing the experience of sitting in a waiting room, Vannini (2002, 195) writes that through the act of waiting, the world feels intensely present. Rather than seeing this enforced presentism as a burden that must be overcome, he sees waiting as a creative process that contains the possibility for change. Vannini (2002, 196) argues that through an “engagement-with-the room” and the “awareness of myself in time”, it becomes possible to experience waiting deeply and creatively. Similarly, Heidegger (1995, 81–82), commenting on the existential dynamics of boredom, argues that when life comes to a standstill, we are thrown back upon ourselves and confronted with the ambiguities of Being. In enduring this condition, he notes, in not fighting against the deep sense of uncanniness that accompanies the experience of not moving forward, but in making room for it, in letting it “approach us and tell us what it wants”, we open ourselves up to future movements (Heidegger 1995, 81, 155). In Gerti’s case, the enforced presentism caused by prolonged immobility and waiting did not allow her to confront her situation or to overcome the pain of not moving forward. Instead, it threw her back into the hopelessness of having to be here, now, in a life that was a struggle. It kept her locked in the nothingness of the here and now, gradually closing her off from future horizons. This hopelessness became so overpowering in some of our conversations that Gerti even spoke about a sense of being stuck in the wrong life, of having been born to the wrong parents in the wrong part of the world: I always wanted to migrate to the US, even when I was five or six years old. That’s how long I have been dreaming about living in Hollywood. I just landed on the wrong continent, in the wrong life. Unfortunately. Very unfortunately. As this conversation snippet demonstrates, the sense of being unable to move did not just grow from being stuck in the wrong place. It grew from a much deeper, existential feeling of being stuck in the wrong life. As the problems Gerti was deal-

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ing with in her everyday life intensified, her stories became so fragmented that it was impossible for us to make sense of them, to order them into a coherent whole.

E xistential immobility and the limits of experience Whereas Gerti had first used the camera as a tool to perform her imaginaries of an American Dream life, a future life that would allow her to move forward, at some point these dynamics shifted and her stories lost this transformative potential. Narrated in restless interludes, Gerti’s storytelling jumped between different people, places and events. Unable to prevent the cracks in the walls of her Californian dreams from breaking through, dark and unspeakable moments of sadness, violence and deep pain began to seep through and take over the story. While it was impossible to make a coherent narrative of the rushed, half-finished snippets of events Gerti told us, it became clear that her life in LA had been anything but a dream. Gerti: You know, Rob didn’t want to live in Los Angeles anymore, because we had lost the house, and what he’s doing right now, I don’t know. Not much, probably. He always said that if I manage to get everything back the way it had been once, he would come back. Annika: Does that mean you would have had to do it all by yourself? Gerti: Yes, but how am I supposed to do that when I am there illegally? Christine: So he would have returned to LA? Gerti: Yes, but not to survive from bottling and canning 3, as I did.

By listening to Gerti’s increasingly distressed and fragmented attempts to tell her story, a vague picture about her life in LA appeared. It was a life full of hardships, disappointments and struggles: living in a trailer park surrounded by people with alcohol and drug problems, having to survive by collecting and selling bottles and cans, and Rob’s absence and indifference. Following their own rules and rhythms, these traumatic story fragments did not empower Gerti or allow her to feel in charge of her own life again. Instead, they created a deep sense of anger in her, leaving all three of us helpless. In Gerti’s case immobility was not simply a mistaken form of mobility, as Adey (2006) would have it. Her reality was more complex: while movement played an essential role in Gerti’s everyday life and stories (her dreams, memories and stories of migration, her restless movements through Vienna, her constant chasing after things), this mobility did not necessarily alleviate the existential feeling of being at a complete standstill. Her imaginaries of mobility did not lead to a sense of 3 | Bottling and canning is slang used to describe the job of collecting used bottles and cans, which are then sold for recycling. It is a job that is often taken up by homeless people.

124  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher forward movement either. Her strong longing for another place and another time intensified the sense that the waiting would never come to an end – and with it, the fear of being destroyed by the forces of being stuck in the wrong place and life. The dynamics of our collaboration with Gerti highlighted the importance of not just approaching immobility as a social and cultural construction, but as a lived reality that has far-reaching existential consequences. This has been spelled out previously by Hage (2009, 98) and Jackson (2013, 62) who urge taking the links between agency and a sense of mobility more seriously. This link is even embedded in everyday statements/questions, such as “How are you going?”  – a saying that can be found in many different languages. Rather than discarding such sayings as metaphorical, they convey the sense that when a person feels well, they are actually feeling like they are moving forward. As Hage (2005) has shown in his previous work, migrants often engage in physical movement because they are after an existential sense of mobility. He coined the term “existential mobility” to capture this sense of imaginary mobility, the feeling that one is “going somewhere”. Hage describes it as a human urge to avoid its opposite, a sense of existential immobility or what he describes as “stuckedness”. In a similar way, the stuckedness Gerti experienced was not just that of being in the wrong place, a stuckedness that could have been alleviated by physical movement. As her lament of having been born in the wrong life shows, the immobility she was experiencing was about much more than the impossibility of movement. The immobility Gerti experienced was so damaging because it was driven by a sense of not moving well existentially. The impossibility of moving forward in her life, of freeing herself from the damaging forces that kept on dragging her down, made her life in the here and now appear like a complete standstill. As the following conversation snippet demonstrates, it even made her life appear dead: “Usually the only reason they [the US authorities] will deny you to ever enter again is when you have killed someone. Actually, I have killed someone – myself, as you can see.” Working with Gerti confronted us with the limits of collaborative filmmaking in the context of existential crisis and immobility. It made us understand that the performative staging of her imaginary Californian life should not be romanticised as a transformative act too easily. By bringing flashes of traumatic experiences back to life, the storytelling lost its ability to overcome the deep sense of existential stuckedness that marked Gerti’s everyday life in the here and now. As such, our collaboration did not only confront us with the limits of storytelling, but also of the concept of experience itself. As Gerti became stuck in a vicious circle of alcohol and poverty, it became clear to us that the experiences she was narrating to us in more and more disjointed ways were not intricate or transformative. Instead, they pushed her to the edge, forcing her to live in a world where nothing was stable. Paradoxically, while Gerti lived in a world in which there were no moorings left at all, she constantly expressed her distress over the fact that nothing was moving. Her experiences had lost touch with the world in which she was living.

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Husserl (1970, 31) and Merleau-Ponty (1968, 3–4) agree that ordinary experience presupposes the stability of the world, a faith that the experience always has the same appearance (see Dastur 2000, 185–186). However, the supposed coherence of experience can be utterly destroyed through existential crises. In Gerti’s case, the endless waiting and chasing after another place, another life, another time, had shattered the supposed stability of the world’s inner workings. It created a situation of chronic insecurity and crisis, raising questions about the supposed intricateness and normality of experiences. Desjarlais (1996, 71) came to similar conclusions in his intimate ethnography of a shelter for mentally ill people in Boston. In becoming closely involved in the life-worlds of the shelter inhabitants, he found that most features that are commonly used to define experience, such as reflexive interiority, hermeneutical depth and narrative flow, were absent. Instead of being transformative in character, Desjarlais found that the way the shelter inhabitants lived their daily lives could better be described as a continuous “struggling along”. Close to the struggling along observed by Desjarlais, we were confronted in our collaboration with Gerti with the limitations of using experience as a valid means of capturing the constant state of exception she was living. When she lost her job putting up posters, her daily routines and, with it, our routine of walking and filming disappeared. When we met her in the smoke-filled bars that became her anchor in Vienna, we realised that the distressed story snippets she told us were directed at us, as her friends, rather than at the camera. It became harder and harder to meet or contact Gerti, as she disappeared for weeks on end. This time coincided with a phase of great physical and existential mobility for the two of us as we had just moved to different countries to pursue our academic careers. This changed the dynamics of our collaboration dramatically, for when we caught up in Vienna we were there as visitors, while she was still stuck in the same place and in the same struggles. Seeing Gerti tumble into a deep crisis, we began to question whether it was possible, if justified at all, to capture ways of being that are characterised by a deep estrangement from the world. We found ourselves at the outer limits of the intersubjective dynamics that mark fruitful anthropological collaborations. An essential aspect of such a collaboration is the willingness to enter into a true dialogue, one that is based on a mutual agreement and on an attempt to understand the issues of concern to both the researcher and their participants (Watson 1976, 98–99). This dialogical process is never smooth and without friction. As Gerti’s impatience over having to repeat the stories behind the photographs showed, entering into a dialogue always also involved tensions. As Gerti’s daily life became dominated by alcohol and pain, however, the shared basis for a dialogue disappeared completely. We had spent a considerable amount of time working on the film and Gerti had been excited to watch a rough-cut of what we thought could be the basis of the documentary. She had been looking forward to continuing filming, but only a few months later she hardly seemed to remember the project. Finally, it completely slipped out of our conversations and we decided to break off the project.

126  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher Given the critical state Gerti was in and the emphasis she had put on having her story depicted in positive ways, we felt that we needed to protect her from further curtailing her sense of agency by telling her story to its bitter end.4 The limits of experience confronted us simultaneously with the limits of anthropological and visual storytelling.

C onclusion The story of our collaboration with Gerti has demonstrated the existential dynamics of being immobile. Her example shows that while from a material perspective immobility always contains an element of movement, from an existential point of view this is not necessarily the case. Her story confronts us with the very limits of experience and raises questions about romanticised pictures of immobility as something that already carries within it the seeds of future mobilities. While in ordinary life cycles, this might be the case, for people whose life is marked by crisis and insecurity, immobility can also lead to the exact opposite. It can lead to an extreme sense of not moving at all, of “pattering in place” (Jansen 2014), thereby losing grip on one’s own life. While Gerti’s experience of enforced immobility was so damaging, this did not mean that she was not working against the situation that was imposed upon her. The opposite was the case: all her thoughts and dreams were channelled towards a somewhere else, a future horizon where she would be able to start anew. As her attempts of returning to the US as an illegal immigrant show, at some stages in her life Gerti was even prepared to take huge risks to actively work towards this future. In the end, however, the impossibility of finding ways of dealing with the immobility that was enforced upon her began to show its damaging potential. Rather than describing immobility as a feature of mobility, as something that can be summarised in the one word (im)mobility, Gerti’s story demonstrates the importance of distinguishing mobility and immobility and treating them as two closely intertwined, yet distinct phenomena. While non-mobile ways of being-inthe-world should not be misunderstood as absolute non-movement, there is an urgent need to move away from the idea that immobility is necessarily a transformative experience that leads to forward movement. The perception often reproduced that imaginaries of movement contain such cathartic capacity should be scrutinised with the same attention to lived detail. Gerti’s experiences have shown that unfulfillable dreams of future movements have the potential to intensify the sense of stuckness. We do not deny that periods of stasis have the capability of opening some people up for forward movements in their lives. However, Gerti’s story reminds us that such a transformative experience is not necessarily the case. Our 4 | For the same reasons we also decided to anonymise Gerti in this text.

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reading of Gerti’s story from an existential, “experience-near” (Wikan 1991) angle has demonstrated the deep pain and hopelessness that can accompany periods of prolonged immobility, leading to an alienation from world, time and self. The last time we met Gerti, we caught up in what had become her favourite hangout in Vienna. It was an old Viennese Beisl: an unornamented small bar, where locals gathered for cheap alcohol. It was eleven in the morning and one of Gerti’s friends invited all of us to a round of schnapps. As we politely declined and asked for a cup of tea instead, the man told us that he needed the booze to forget about the fact he was living in his car. Upon mentioning his car, he left the bar to come back a few minutes later holding a small briefcase containing family photographs and children’s drawings. This was all he had been able to save from his former life, he told us. His wife had divorced him, he had lost his job as a postman, and he did not know how to organise seeing his ten-year-old daughter again given the hopeless state he was in. He could not move in any direction, he told us. He, too, was stuck. Gerti, visibly impatient with her friend’s laments, told him to stop whinging. “One day you will join me in Los Angeles and you will be fine,” she laughed. “There are no such worries in California.”

R eferences Adey, Peter. 2006. “If Mobility is Everything Then it is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (Im)mobilities.” Mobilities 1 (1): 75–94. Auyero, Javier. 2012. Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham: Duke University Press. Bissell, David. 2007. “Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities.” Mobilities 2 (2): 277–298. Dastur, Francoise. 2000. “Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise.” Hypatia 15 (4): 178–189. Desjarlais, Robert. 1996. “Struggling Along.” In Things as They Are. New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology, edited by Michael Jackson, 70–93. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Easthope, Hazel. 2009. “Fixed Identities in a Mobile World? The Relationship between Mobility, Place and Identity.” Identities, 16 (1): 61–82. Hage, Ghassan. 2005. “A Not So Multi-sited Ethnography of a Not So Imagined Community.” Anthropological Theory 5 (4): 463–475. Hage, Ghassan. 2009. “Waiting Out the Crisis: On Stuckedness and Governmentality.” In Waiting, edited by Ghassan Hage, 97–106. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller, and John Urry. 2006. “Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings.” Mobilities 1 (1): 1–22.

128  | Annika Lems and Christine Moderbacher Heidegger, Martin. 1995. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ingold, Tim, and Jo Vergunst, eds. 2008. Ways of Walking. Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. Hampshire: Ashgate. Irving, Andrew. 2010. “Dangerous Substances and Visible Evidence: Tears, Blood, Alcohol, Pills.” Visual Studies 25 (1): 24–35. Irving, Andrew. 2011. “Strange Distance. Towards an Anthropology of Interior Dialogue.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25 (1), 22–44. Jackson, Michael. 2002. The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Jackson, Michael. 2013. The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Well-Being. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jansen, Stef. 2014. “On Not Moving Well Enough: Temporal Reasoning in Sarajevo Yearnings for ‘Normal Lives’.” Current Anthropology 55 (S9): S74–S84. Lems, Annika (forthcoming). “Ambiguous Longings. Nostalgia as the Interplay of Self, Time and World.” Critique in Anthropology. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1964) 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Møhl, Perle. 2011. “Mise en Scène, Knowledge and Participation: Considerations of a Filming Anthropologist.” Visual Anthropology 24 (3): 227–245 Salazar, Noel. 2010. “Towards an Anthropology of Cultural Mobilities.” Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 1 (1): 53–68. Salazar, Noel, and Alan Smart. 2012. “Anthropological Takes on (Im)Mobility.” Identities 18 (6): i–ix. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207–226. Urry, John. 2000. Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge. Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity. Vahsen, Friedhelm, ed. 2006. Auf der Suche nach dem amerikanischen Traum: Lebensgeschichten und Zukunftsträume deutscher und österreichischer Auswanderer. Münster: LIT Verlag. Vannini, Phillip. 2002. “Waiting Dynamics: Bergson, Virilio, Deleuze, and the Experience of Global Times.” Journal of Mundane Behavior 3 (2): 193–208. Watson, Lawrence. 1976. “Understanding a Life History as a Subjective Document.” Ethos 4 (1): 95–131. Wikan, Unni. 1991. “Toward an Experience-Near Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 6: 285–305.

Mobility in a Congealed Room? Asylum Seekers (in Munich) between Institutionalised Immobility and Self-Mobilisation Julia Sophia Schwarz A poster at the university caught my attention during the research for this book: it was titled “Go where you want to” and was put up by the organization AIESEC, which offers visits to foreign countries worldwide to students. The names of different countries were listed on paper strips people could tear off like phone numbers from ads on the bill-board. Thus, people who were interested in a stay abroad could take their favourite destination with them and gather more information about the organisation. This poster made me think instantly of the people I got to know and talked to during my activity in a student learning project in 2012.1 For those people, who were in the middle of the German asylum procedure and confronted with “residential obligation”, the invitation to “Go where you want to” must be turned into a sentence that ends with a big question mark; mobility may be a normal thing to German students, however, it is rather difficult for people who seek refuge in the same country. Three years lie between the discussions and the publishing of the essay based on them. In the meantime, the “German social welfare law for asylum seekers” has been reformed, which resulted in an increase of the funding range. This did not refer to my conversational partners back then. “Residential obligation” regulations became less strict at the beginning of 2015; however, these regulations are still mandatory for all asylum seekers during the first three months of their stay in Germany. Therefore, my discussion partners’ experiences and impressions can be read as a contemporary document and a status depiction. Legal changes can be included until spring 2015. What legal conclusions will be drawn at a national and international level from the recent events in summer 2015 (the temporarily exposure of the Dublin Regulation, fleeing people from Syria crossing Hungary via the motorway by foot and nearly simultaneously the temporary reintroduction of European border controls and the adjusting of some inner-European train connec1 | Student learning Project “mobility and work” headed by Professor Dr. Irene Götz and Sarah Braun, M.A. from the Institute for European Ethnology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.

130  | Julia Sophia Schwarz tions) was not foreseeable at this time during the preparation of this publication. What can be said is that the situation of people confronted with the German or/ and European asylum/refugee policy had become visibly medially and socially intensified and, thus, prompted new debates about (im-)mobilities.

C ommunal accommodation and reception centres  – room of a “congealed 2 movement ”? In 2013, 109,580 people claimed asylum for the first time in Germany (BMF 2014a, 20). The majority were lodged in communal accommodations. The asylum procedure took between six months (45 per cent) and up to more than four years (1.1 per cent), according to the Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees (BMF 2014a, 52). This period of time became a slow wait for an undetermined “afterwards” for many people.3 The mobility of the people who came to Germany comes to a first standstill in the communal accommodations and reception centres. The accommodations are allocated by some computer software called EASY (Erstverteilung von Asylbegehrenden  = initial allocation of asylum seekers). The decentralised locations and the few freely accessible economic funds are the two pillars which support the temporary mobility freeze-up. Based on Holert’s and Terkessidis’ (2005, 101 f.) demand for critical mobility research, which should have its focus on casualisation, marginalisation and criminalisation of the subjects within the hierarchy of mobility, the interactions of the actors 4 in and with the specific rooms inside this area of conflict are found in the centre of epistemological interest as a result of the correlation between mobilisation and immobilisation. The communal accommodations and the reception centres can be seen as such rooms which have a share in the regulation of the actors’ mobility. How is the daily routine arranged in these rooms and in which way can the actors regain their mo2 | Tom Holert and Mark Terkessidis (2005) coined the term “erstarrte Bewegung” (“congealed movement”) in their essay “Was bedeutet Mobilität?”. 3 | The term Asylbewerber (“asylum applicants”) used by German officials already points out the period of waiting which lies ahead of the applicants for asylum. People have to go through a lengthy procedure to find refuge and the right to arrive in Germany and apply for it. In order to distinguish, I use the term Asylsuchende (“asylum seekers”), knowing that this inevitably leads to being stuck in a categorisation of human mobility, which cannot be avoided within the subject of research hereto; otherwise, it will not be possible to point out the consequences of this specific categorisation for the people concerned. 4 | The people I have talked to are solely males. This offers an approach to an intersectional perspective on (im)mobility of asylum seekers with regard to gender as a category of analysis. In 2013, more than 63.4 per cent, a majority, of asylum applications were filed by males (BMF 2014, 22).

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bility from here on? “Mobility is a condition in which individuals are present and absent at the same time in one location, or they are as well in another location at the same time” (Holert and Terkessidis 2005, 102; translated by the author). Institutions, such as reception centres and communal accommodations, become rooms of “congealed movement” (ibid.) – from here, the actors wait for further arrangement of their lives. In a similar context, Holert and Terkessidis (2005, 103) speak of “waiting rooms”. Based on this perspective, we must ask for a still possible mobility, radius and forms of movement, resistively acquired by the actors, within a congealed room of waiting. Mobility in this context is not to be seen as exclusively physical, more importantly, different implementations must be faced. A central question regards the variety of forms of mobility, the discussion of the factors leading to mobility and non-mobility of the actors, and the arrangement and methods of their daily routine. Special focus lies on the agency of the interviewees and their authorisation to move in their own interest. The impact of special regulations that affect the actors “from above” are investigated as well as “wayward” methods. How do the actors create rooms, develop strategies of resistance or assimilation, and where are the limits? How do people experience their daily routine, being confronted with a net of rules, prohibitions and limits all the time during their asylum procedure? How is the correlation between institutionalised limits and self-mobilisation arranged? The focus lies on the insider’s view of the actors and how institutional structures are related to specific everyday realities. The cultural science-oriented approach of qualitative research makes it possible to comprehend the effect of laws on the daily routine experienced. A total of four guideline-oriented discussions took place. Here, the term “discussion” is preferred to the term “interview”, because the latter is also the name of the discussion situation concerning the decision about an asylum application. I avoided the term so no association to that communication method is assumed. Anyway, the contents and the setting of the discussions did not allow an exclusively classic “interview situation” to be maintained. The discussions started mostly in informal situations, for example, after handing out public transport timetables and while talking about central locations in the city. Thus, the methods of mobility and individual creation of room could be investigated in two different phases of the asylum procedure. I was able to talk to actors who had been in Germany for less than two months (“temporary residence permission”) and lived in a reception centre, as well as actors who had been in Germany for more than six months and lived in communal accommodation (“temporary residence permission”). A document analysis was added to the interviews. The arrangement of the different places that became a living space for all the actors, the communal accommodations and reception centres, were also subject to reflection: an architecture of immobility.

132  | Julia Sophia Schwarz

R eception centres as rooms of experienced immobility? Nick has been in Munich for four weeks. A period during which he has seen nothing of the city where he lives save for his accommodation, the Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees, the Sozialbürgerhaus (“citizens’ social house”), and the supermarket two streets away from the reception centre.5 Before the contrast of high and modern business buildings, from which busy people in suits stream out, there is a ramshackle old building with narrow rooms in which people wait for their future. The minimum space “per person” in Bavaria is 7 m2 (cf. ­BSASFF 2010). With its iron bars on the doors, the entrance resembles a prison. This impression is intensified by the fences and surveillance cameras. A glance through the door brings the picture of the architecture and ambience of a basement car park: cold, sharp neon lights meet massive fire doors. The pram in front of the door seems like an intruder. This is where Nick lives when I meet him. He is not used to the MVV (“Munich public transport”) timetable and has no money for a ticket.6 Until summer 2012, each adult refugee was entitled to no more than 40.90 Euro per month for “private needs”, next to food and sanitary products, as settled under the Benefits Act for Asylum Seekers (AsylbLG old version).7 On 18 July 2012, the benefits under the Benefits Act for Asylum Seekers were deemed unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court because the standard rates had not been changed since 1993; therefore, they did not meet the amount of the present living costs. On 1 March 2015, the Benefits Act for Asylum Seekers as revisited by the Federal Government came into effect (AsylbLG).8 According to this, the necessary needs (food, clothes, accommodation) of people living in a reception centre for asylum seekers is covered through benefits in kind. Payments for the covering of personal needs are estimated at 143.00 Euro for an single adult. During the stay in a reception centre, this amount should be covered through benefits in kind if it is administratively possible. During the asylum seekers’ stay in shared accommodation, it is possible to hand over the amount of money in the form of vouchers, benefits in kind or cash (­AsylbLG § 3). Nick would love to see more of the city where he currently lives. Due to his lack of knowledge of the location, about his rights and possibilities to become familiar 5 | The reception centre in Munich was located in Baierbrunnerstrasse until spring 2014 and at the time of this research project. 6 | The Asylum Seekers Benefits Act of 1993 was still effective at the time of this research project. The people interviewed had virtually only 40.90 Euro per month at their free disposal. 7 | Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz (AsylbLG) from 30 June 1993, as amended by the notice of 5 August 1997 (BGBl. I, p. 2022), last amended by Article 2 of the law of 20 October 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 1722). 8 | Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz (AsylbLG) from 30 June 1993, as amended by the notice of 5 August 1997 (BGBl. I, p. 2022), last amended by Article 2 of the law of 20 October 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 1722).

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with the city, and especially due to the lack of money, it is difficult for him to go beyond the adjacent streets. Nick has only received cash money once since he has been here, but he does not know if and when he will get cash again. Due to this uncertainty, he is not yet willing to spend some of his “little money” for a ticket, especially because he has spent most of it “for food, phone card, potato crisps” so far. The food he receives in the form of food packages suffices only to a limited extent: “Sometimes I want more. […] I’m a human being. It’s boring. I don’t go anywhere.” In connection with food supply and the restrictions of his everyday radius of movement, he becomes aware (again) of his own humanity. Nick climbs stairs over and over again to put a pattern into this daily routine, which is reduced to satisfying natural needs, and to at least move around. Asked for his daily routine, he answers: “Wake up, making breakfast, having breakfast, going up and down the stairs.” Climbing stairs becomes a strategy to pass the time, to give his body space and maybe to sense himself.

“F or a favourite place , you need money to go in ” Sam, who has been in the city for six weeks and who lives in a reception centre, has, unlike Nick, the necessary knowledge to be able to roam freely outside his accommodation. Sam has an MVV timetable that helps him to find his way around. He invests almost all of his “pocket money” in day saver tickets to travel downtown. He might be relocated to any communal accommodation within Bavaria, so he does not want to buy a monthly pass. What would happen if he bought a monthly pass only to learn that he has to move to another city the next day? All his money would be lost. Sam suffers from not being able to plan for the near future. However, what bothers him more is that he feels watched by people in the streets and in stores. Sam has enough money for day savers that take him to central places in the city, but they do not help him to get into these places. “For a favourite place you need money to go in” – Sam cannot go into restaurants or museums. Instead, he spends his time watching others use these rooms and participate in social life. Sam tells about this nightmarish feeling of being watched by the supermarket employees behind his back. He goes to the supermarket almost every day – yet has never bought anything. “You just look, watch, stand. Must go, look, to finish time.” Killing time is also a challenge for Sam. “I would like to do something” – but he has only enough money for the tickets that temporarily take him to different places. He would like to do everything. I ask him what he usually does: “Nothing. Sleep.” Sam would like to work. “You give something to the country.” The non-working status has a crucial meaning to Sam: “Work is not only for money. No money. No work. No food. No house. No nothing. What can I do.” Without a job, Sam just waits for the days to pass by. Asylum seekers in Germany are banned for the first three months, instead twelve months as formerly,

134  | Julia Sophia Schwarz due to a revision of the Employment Act (BeschV § 32).9 Asylum seekers have only restricted access to the job market up to the sixteenth month of their stay. A work permit is granted only after a so-called “priority check” in order to make sure that a job is not being considered by a “priority holder”, a German citizen or a member of a EU country. After four years in Germany, “employment no longer requires the approval of the Federal Employment Agency” (BeschV §  32  = Employment Act § 32) and full access to the job market should then be granted. Where, on the one hand, there is a work ban, there is an obligation to do charitable work (AsylbLG §  5),10 for which a compensation of 1.05  Euro per hour is granted. Lack of co-operation results in a cutback of benefits.

“A re you talking about the old life or the new life?” Tarek also remembers his time in the reception centre well. Tarek divides his stay in Germany into two lives. The old life includes his time in the reception centre, the new life includes his stay in a communal accommodation and with his girlfriend. Tarek connects especially “lost time” with his old life, because all he did was “sit, eat and sleep” due to a lack of orientation and money. He was not able to read the German city maps nor to learn German. However, it soon becomes clear that, in fact, he did more. He helped newcomers and accompanied them as an English interpreter when they had to be examined in hospital. Nevertheless, Tarek still considers his first six months as “lost”. To Tarek, this period is an interruption of his life; he was “sad for the whole of last year”, because he could not attend German lessons, had no idea of anything, could not work and was afraid. Tarek points out how much more time he has in Germany. In his country of origin, his friends had to visit him at work when they wanted to see him. He commuted between job and university without a break. Now he spends his time on “Internet, Facebook, gather information, news, and sleep” or he learns German with his girlfriend. During his time in the reception centre, Tarek did not know the city he lived in. He draws the places he visited on a sheet of paper. Tarek’s living space was limited to the reception centre and places in the immediate vicinity. Tarek laughs and says: “Where is Lidl?” For Tarek, this supermarket was the main place to go during his time as a newcomer in Munich. Tarek’s current lifestyle is in contrast to his time in the reception centre. He commutes between the communal accommodation and his girlfriend’s apartment. A non-profit organisation pays for his ticket that takes him to his language lessons downtown. Being an asylum seeker with only 9 | Beschäftigungsverordnung (Employment Regulation) of 6 June 2013 (BGBl. I, p. 1499), as amended by Article 2 Sentence 2 of the regulation of 6 November 2014 (BGBl. I, p. 1683). 10 | Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz (AsylbLG) from 30 June 1993, as amended by the notice of 5 August 1997 (BGBl. I, p. 2022), last amended by Article 2 of the law of 20 October 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 1722).

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an “Aufenthaltsgestattung” (“temporary residence permit”), it does not matter if he attends language lessons.

“P ermitted ”, “ tolerated ”, “allowed ” … Laws provide that only ID card holders with an Aufenthaltserlaubnis (“residence permit”) are entitled to attend a so-called integration course (cf. AufenthG § 44).11 The residence statuses in Germany are separated into Aufenthaltsgestattung (“temporary residence permit”), Aufenthaltserlaubnis (“residence permit”) and the socalled Duldung (“suspension of deportation”). Those who only have a temporary residence permit or whose deportation is suspended have only limited access to the job market and are not obliged to live in communal accommodation. The title of “temporary residence permit” is connected to a legal set of rules. The non-existing claim to choose where to live is settled in the so-called Residenz­ pflicht (“residential obligation”). Asylum seekers in Munich were allowed to stay within the administrative district of Munich and the administrative region of Upper Bavaria only until the decree of the Legal Status Act at the end of 2014. These exceptions are included without a leave permit, which is usually required, depending on the respective authorities in charge. These regulations are stated on each ID card. During my research, I was able to see some ID Cards that were issued to asylum seekers during the processing of their asylum applications in 2012. The residence status and the areas allocated to the ID card holders are settled in this way, thus, pre-structuring their living space. The semantics of the document alone reveals the authority over the individual living space: “Any violation against sanctions and areal limitations (emphasis added by the author) is an offence and may be subject to prosecution.” Areal limitation is listed in detail under this term, and administrative districts and regions set up the official radius of movement of the ID card holders. Even their place of residence is allocated via this document: “The document holder is obligated to live in the following facility.” In his book about biopolitics the sociologists Thomas Lemke explains the theory of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2002), who lists the brain-dead, the stateless and refugees as “bare life”, as subjects reduced to bare physical existence, which “although they are human beings, they are excluded from protection by law” (Lemke 2007, 73; translated by the author). In view of the residential obligation in Germany, this exclusion from protection by law applies to people who seek asylum: The right of free movement, which is the right to determine one’s own place of residence, does not apply to them. By the end of 2014, a law was passed which improved 11 | Aufenthaltsgesetz (AufenthG: Residence Act), as amended by the notice of 25  February 2008 (BGBl. I, p. 162), by Article 5 of the Law of 22 December 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 2557).

136  | Julia Sophia Schwarz the legal status of asylum seekers and people from abroad (cf. BGBl 2014), stating as of 2015, that the restrictions are only limited to the first three months of their stay in Germany. Within this period, certain districts of residence are determined and “leave passes” need to be applied for. This change in residential obligation includes some requirements and restrictions which are strongly criticised by organisations such as the Refugee Council Brandenburg. The repeal of the areal limitations, for example, after the first three months of a refugee’s stay is withdrawn if an offence (not concerning the aliens law), a drug offence, or “imminent specific actions terminating a sojourn against the foreigner” occurs (BGBl 2014). The last paragraph might lead to sanctions on behalf of the foreigners’ registration office: The regulation in the Asylum Procedure Act actually does not make any sense, because people to whom this law applies do not have a legal residence status. The intention is revealed by the first actions of the foreigners’ offices: for refugees from countries with a low rate of acknowledgement, the residential obligation is mandatory because a letter of rejection and, therefore, a termination of sojourn might be imminent. (Wendel 2014, 1; translated by the author)

It is also to be expected that the full freedom of movement will be withdrawn in the case of a “minor offence” (ibid.). As an example, a case of withdrawal of a permanent leave permission due to the theft of a bag of chicken hearts and a can of Red Bull is explained (cf. ibid.). Asylum seekers’ daily routine has always been characterised by sometimes more, sometimes fewer requirements and (areal) limitations. How movement was created in spite of residential obligation can be seen in Tarek’s mobilisation actions.

C rossing borders via virtual mobility Tarek is lucky having relatives in Germany who sponsor his language lessons. He is lucky twice because he also obtains a public transport ticket. Tarek makes use of his newly gained capabilities every day. He visits the city library and goes shopping in his girlfriend’s borough. Meanwhile, he is quite familiar with Munich. Tarek is not only physically mobile but he can also contact his family via Internet communication platforms such as Facebook. Once again, Tarek is lucky. The residents in his communal accommodation may use Internet for one Euro per month. His laptop was a donation. Tarek shows me his Facebook profile. He has two of them. One to stay in touch with his family, the other to report about the political situation in his home country. Tarek shows me pictures of his communal accommodation, of an extremely dirty kitchen – he would never show these pictures to his family. He does not want to make them feel sad.

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Tarek’s “creating space”12 gets onto another level through virtual networking, although his physical mobility is limited by laws such as the residential obligation. Tarek gets mobile in another way and crosses national and international borders. By networking and sharing pictures, Tarek makes the invisible visible and, thus, makes the situation in a German communal accommodation become a subject for discussion.

O f borders and mobility management Tarek may have relatives in Germany – which does not mean that he can visit them. Next to the address that determines in which accommodation Tarek has to live, the ID card also states the geographical area within which he is allowed to stay. The city, where his relatives live, is not included. If he wants to visit them, Tarek needs to request “permission” from the authorities in charge. Tarek says that he gets this “leave permission” only for three days in a row. In addition to the long trip, the money would be wasted for a “one day hello” and then going back home again. In Tarek’s reception centre, he was allowed to travel for twenty days in a row – now the leave is reduced to only three days; so he turns down the opportunity. This example shows how widely the regulations vary from institution to institution and how they affect the life of the actors. Tarek knows from friends that a huge fine will be charged if one is caught without “the paper”. These restrictions concerning freedom of movement link to a related higher context. The opening of international borders, such as in the EU, create an opportunity for a mobility of the population of the member countries which exceeds the national scope. Student exchange programmes offer an environment for international encounters. While, on the one hand, mobility is created willingly in order to, for example, help qualified specialists from abroad to find a way into the German job market more easily, mechanisms occur, on the other hand, which are supposed to regulate or avoid the mobility of certain groups. Paolo Cuttitta (2010, 37 ff.) covers the subject of the EU’s migration policy in his essay about the European border regime and the involvement of non-European countries in a transcontinental border regime which is accompanied by hierarchical inclusion processes that determine exactly who is granted which access at what time: “In the present European migration regime, life in illegality and a lack of rights seems to be an inevitable stage

12 | The term Raummachen (“creating space”) is used referring to Vicki Täubig (2009), who used the categories of creating space, creating time and creating relationships in her research study “Totale Institution Asyl. Empirische Befunde zu alltäglichen Lebensführungen in der organisierten Desintegration” in order to describe the actors’ organisation of their daily routine.

138  | Julia Sophia Schwarz on the way to a possible future integration” (Cuttitta 2010, 29; translated by the author).

A gency and waywardness between controls and borders Controls are an inherent part of the asylum seekers’ daily routine in Germany. Arif has been living in Munich for a few months. He is checked by the police in a certain location at certain times on a regular basis. The officers ask for his ID card, he shows it to them and may go on his way again. They should actually already know Arif, considering how often they check him. Arif laughs, he respects the police officers’ job. Identity checks do not stop him from going downtown. His life happens outside the communal accommodation he does not even want to talk about. Arif spends so much time outside the communal accommodation, that he “has no longer time” for it, “only in, out, sleep”. Thus, the communal accommodation becomes a sleeping-place and the city becomes the living space. The contribution of Doreen Massey (1994, 151) about the “sense of place” underlines the ambiguity of a location to different individuals. Locations, like people, have multiple identities. Thus, room is created and filled with certain meanings by the actors themselves. Arif creates his own room; this way his daily routine happens at huge distance from the communal accommodation. Let us take a look here at the House Rules of Communal Accommodations in Upper Bavaria (RVO 2006) in order to glance at the living situation in those institutions. The Free State of Bavaria is the provider and domiciliary rights are given to the administration management, which allows the administration manager to control ID cards, enter rooms and ban people from the house. The house rules regulate visiting hours, which do not include overnight stays. Visitors who want to stay after 10 p.m. need to request written permission from the administration. Basically, permission from the press department of the government of Upper Bavaria is necessary prior to taking pictures in the rooms of the accommodation. In case of a “longer absence”, which is determined as a period of more than one day (!), the administration must be informed about the departure, return and location. Even additional furniture must be reported and requires permission. The residents are not allowed to get their own telephone connections installed. This document makes interventions concerning the mobility methods of the residents more than obvious. Arif acts upon the “rules” and tries to experience as much room and time as possible outside his “actual, scheduled” place of residence within these rules. He is also lucky having relatives who support him financially and make his temporary “escapes” possible. His ticket is co-funded by an organisation, just like Tarek’s, because he attends a language course (which is paid for by his relatives). The other half of the ticket price is paid for from his “pocket money”. Being mobile and leav-

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ing the communal accommodation are his top priorities. Arif has other relatives outside Bavaria but he cannot visit them; he says “then police” and forms a symbol for “getting arrested” with his hands. Arif has not yet filed a request to leave the administrative region of Upper Bavaria and see his family. He knows from friends that it takes a long time to process the request. Moreover, he does not know exactly how to file such a request. Knowledge about borders and possible consequences of crossing them is shared. Arif has not yet been outside Munich but he would like to see Bavaria’s lakes when the weather is nice.

(M issing) social and economic capital as central factors of  (im) mobility ? Does this mean that “being lucky”, that the coincidence of finding support in family structures, is the only foundation of self-mobilisation? Nick and Sam are not so lucky; there is nobody they know in the city. Nick’s mobility is limited by his lack of knowledge and economic capital. Consequently, Nick develops strategies within walking distance of his environment to give his daily routine some structure, while Sam spends every cent on tickets in order to get a distance between the reception centre and himself. Filling the time span of one day is a challenge for both and makes their daily routine become even more a time of waiting. Arif and Tarek are lucky – they have relatives in Germany who are able to support them financially and provide the necessary knowledge. Thus, the simple formula that also applies to asylum seekers is: “mobility through money”. Arif is able to create space outside the communal accommodation with his ticket and, thus, escape the situation of living there at least temporarily. However, after the first barriers are overcome, asylum seekers soon encounter more limitations: regional limitations of their freedom of movement settled in written form on their ID cards. Crossing legal borders and letting others participate in one’s life at the same time is made possible by virtual networking. Those who have an Internet connection in their homes are able to compensate significantly for missing physical mobility by a form of virtual mobility, similar to Tarek, who keeps posting photos of the communal accommodation onto Facebook. Arif has also used Internet for learning German online, while he lived in the reception centre. Another central factor is the location of the homes. “Creating room” can be very different in communal accommodations which are located in the middle of a busy city district compared to an accommodation that is located five kilometres away from the next village with 1,000 inhabitants. However, mobility can also be limited by a remote location in the city without good connection to public transport. If there is no money for tickets, people are limited to resort to their close proximity. If there is nothing else but supermarkets and car wash places or mead-

140  | Julia Sophia Schwarz ows and fields, the possibility of creating (free) room and organising free time is limited.

A bout lost time The term “lost time”, especially concerning reception centres, has a specific, noticeable meaning. There are only few ways to fill the abundance of time “meaningfully”, so the actors get the feeling of losing precious days of their lives. Tarek, for example, speaks in hindsight of his time spent in the reception centre as a half year that is lost and for which he mourns. Asylum seekers with the legal status of a “temporary residence permit” are not entitled to attend free language lessons. They must pay for lessons with their own money and not everyone can afford the average course fee of 200 Euro. Those who cannot afford that, mostly never get to learn the language.13 The associations’ and organisations’ contingent of language and guidance courses and, thus, of a first orientation for “the temporarily permitted” and “newcomers” does not always suffice and does not reach everyone. Learning German, though, is the first step to having a perspective in Germany; people will not be able to start an education or get a college degree without having adequate language skills (BMF 2014b). Legal structures affect another level of the actors’ daily routine. The ban on work during the first twelve months in Germany – until November 2014 – adds a lot to the feeling of lost time. Being neither able to learn German nor having the opportunity to get a job and earn a living creates a huge amount of spare time which is approached with strategies such as climbing stairs due to a lack of alternatives.

M obilisation in rooms of immobility? Legal provisions, such as the ban on work, and, thus, the lack of funding, or the residence obligation, pre-structure certain spaces for the actors. Within this “given

13 | The Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees, together with the Bavarian State Ministry of Labour, Social Policy, Family and Integration, have developed an orientation course independent of the residence status (BMF 2014). However, this cannot be offered everywhere due to a limited budget. According to the Bavarian Ministry of Labour, Social Order, Family and Integration (e-mail conversation, May 2015), 3,776 asylum seekers undertook full-time language lessons and over 10,000 had voluntary lessons in 2013 and 2014. The number of people who applied for asylum in 2014 (“temporary residence permission”) and who were allocated to the Free State of Bavaria amounts to 25,667 (BSASFF 2014). This proves the still existing deficit of an overall supply of language lessons.

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setting”, the actors mobilise themselves individually and keep being confronted with borders. Arif creates a living space outside the communal accommodations, which he avoids and which is nothing more than a sleeping-place to him. His “creating of room” spans his institutionally allocated room of the communal accommodation. Tarek gains virtual mobility. Becoming mobile depends a lot on having or not having financial capital – those who do not, will be able to gain only a little mobility. In addition to money, knowledge becomes another central resource of mobility. Those who have city maps and are able to read them, know where to find the next bus stop or train station. Gaining mobility, thus, starts with knowledge and orientation regarding the new living space, something that residents of reception centres mostly do not have. Legal structures make the homes of the actors become places of waiting and growing immobility. Having no money or possibility to earn some, having no orientation aid and being unable to obtain basic language skills render the actors immobile. Residence obligation and the necessity of having to request a leave permit shows how institutional structures affect the specific mobilisation methods of the actors. Many do not even think of requesting a permit because they are deterred by others’ stories or because it is simply not worth the trouble. However, resistance occurs within this immobility, although only on a small scale 14, because the actors know that they can watch rather than participate.

Temporary future In spite of the resistance of the actors to mobilise themselves either via virtual networking, or online German lessons, or via financial support by relatives, asylum seekers find themselves within an essential limitation, in a creation of temporary rooms which is reflected in the daily routine of the people. Asylum seekers with a “temporary residence permit” can apply for a free membership card in the city library of Munich – on the one hand, this is a way to participate in culture, on the other hand, it reminds them of a time limitation, because the membership card is valid only as long as the holder has a “temporary residence permit”. Not knowing what the future will bring in combination with the feeling of losing time in life is a burden for the actors. Life in a constant mode of waiting wears people out. At the very beginning of our dialogue, Tarek says how important it is to him to not only be in Germany, but to also have a future, to learn, to start an education, to live. 14 | Resistance formed beginning with protests in the city of Würzburg in 2012 on a larger scale, too, when a march of protest towards Berlin, which deliberately ignored residence obligations, took place and, thus, got the media’s attention on the restrictions connected to residence obligation.

142  | Julia Sophia Schwarz Having looked at a specific example of the role temporariness can play in the confinement of people and their exclusion from things, bounded mobility emerges as a form of movement accompanied by situational enclosure, where time, its management and sacrifices, is lost, but, at the same time, is a resource to fight for – or something like that.

R eferences Agamben, Giorgio. 2002. Homo sacer. The sovereign power and the bare life. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. AufenthG (Aufenthaltsgesetz). Gesetz über den Aufenthalt, die Erwerbstätigkeit und die Integration von Ausländern im Bundesgebeit in der Fassung der Bekanntmachung vom 25. Februar 2008 (BGBl. I, S. 162), das durch Artikel 5 des Gesetzes vom 22. Dezember 2015 (BGBl. I, S. 2557) geändert worden ist. [Act on the Residence, Economic Activity and Integration of Foreigners in the Federal Territory Residence Act in the version published on 25 February 2008 (BGBl. I, p. 162), by Article 5 of the Law of 22 December 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 2557)]. Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. Accessed 8  January 2016. http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/aufenthg_2004/BJNR195010004. html. AsylbLG (Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz) in der Fassung der Bekanntmachung vom 5.  August 1997 (BGBl.  I, S.  2022), das zuletzt durch Artikel  2 des Gesetzes vom 20. Oktober 2015 (BGBl. I, S. 1722) geändert worden ist. [Asylum Seekers Benefits Act in the version published on 5 August 1997 (BGBl. I, p. 2022), last amended by Article 2 of the Law of 20 October 2015 (BGBl. I, p. 1722)] Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. Accessed 8 January 2016. http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/asylblg/BJNR107410993.html. BeschV (Verordnung über die Beschäftigung von Ausländerinnen und Ausländern; Beschäftigungsverordnung – BeschV vom 6. Juni 2013 (BGBl. I, S. 1499), geändert durch Artikel  2 Satz  2 der Verordnung vom 6.  November 2014 (BGBl. I, S. 1683). [Act on Employment of People from Abroad; Employment Regulation of 6 June 2013 (BGBl. I, p. 1499), as amended by Article 2 Sentence 2 of the Regulation of 6 November 2014 (BGBl. I, p. 1683)]. Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. Accessed 18  May 2015. http://www.ge​ setze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/beschv_2013/gesamt.pdf. BGBl (Bundesgesetzblatt [Federal Law Gazette]). 2014. Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsstellung von asylsuchenden und geduldeten Ausländern vom 23. Dezember 2014 (Nr. 64) [Act on Improvement of the Legal Status of Asylum Seekers and (temporarily) tolerated Foreigners, as of 23 December 2014 (no. 64)]. Accessed 18  May 2015. http://www.bgbl.de/xaver/bgbl/text.xav?SID=&tf=​xa​ ver.​c omponent.Text_0&tocf=&qmf=&hlf=xaver.component.Hitlist_0&​bk​

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=bgbl&start=%2F%2F*%5B%40node_id%3D’288972’%5D&skin=pdf​& ​t level​ =-2&nohist=1. BMF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge [Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees]), ed. 2014a. Bundesamt in Zahlen 2013. Nürnberg [Federal Agency in Figures 2013. Nürnberg]. Accessed 12 May 2015. http://www.bamf. de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren/bundesamt-in-zahl​ en​2013.pdf?__blob=publicationFile. BMF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge [Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees]), ed. 2014b. Deutschkurse für Asylbewerber [German Course for Asylum Seekers]. Accessed 20 May 2015. http://www.bamf.de/DE/Willkom​ men/DeutschLernen/DeutschAsylbewerber/deutschangeboteasyl-node.html. BSASFF (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Arbeit und Sozialordnung, Familie und Frauen [Bavarian State Ministry of Labour, Social Order, Family and Women]). 2014. Asylsozialpolitik. Zahlen und Fakten [Asylum Welfare Politics. Numbers and Facts]. Accessed 2 June 2015. http://www.zukunftsministe​ rium.bayern.de/migration/asyl/index.php. BSASFF (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Arbeit und Sozialordnung, Familie und Frauen [Bavarian State Ministry of Labour, Social Order, Family and Women]). 2010. Leitlinien zu Art, Größe und Ausstattung von Gemeinschaftsunterkünften für Asylbewerber [Guidelines to Type, Size and Environment of Communal Accommodations for Asylum Seekers]. Accessed 12 May 2015. http://www.f luechtlingsratbayern.de/tl_files/PDF-Dokumente/10-05-06_ Leitlinien_Fluechtlingslager.pdf. Cuttitta, Paolo. 2010. “Das europäische Grenzregime: Dynamiken und Wechselwirkungen.” In Grenzregime. Diskurse. Praktiken. Institutionen in Europa, edited by Sabine Hess and Bernd Kasparek, 23–43. Berlin/Hamburg: Assoziation‑A. Holert, Tom and Mark Terkessidis. 2005. “Was bedeutet Mobilität?” In Projekt Migration, edited by Aytac Eryılmaz and Frank Frangenberg, 98–111. Köln: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag. Lemke, Thomas. 2007. Biopolitik zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius. Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: Polity Press. RVO (Regierung von Oberbayern [Government of Upper Bavaria]), ed. 2006. Hausordnung für die staatlichen Gemeinschaftsunterkünfte für Asylbewerber im Regierungsbezirk Oberbayern [House Rules for Public Communal Accommodations for Asylum Seekers in the Administrative Region of Upper Bavaria]. Accessed 12  May 2015. http://www.fluechtlingsrat-bayern.de/tl_files/PDFDo​ ku​mente/Hausordnung_Fluechtlingslager_Oberbayern.pdf. Täubig, Vicky. 2009. Totale Institution Asyl. Empirische Befunde zu alltäglichen Lebensführungen in der organisierten Desintegration. Weinheim: Juventa. Wendel, Kay. 2014. Anmerkungen zum Rechtsstellungsverbesserungsgesetz (Änderung der räumlichen Aufenthaltsbeschränkung) [Comments on the

144  | Julia Sophia Schwarz Law of Improvement of the Legal Status (Change of Restriction of Sojourn)]. Accessed 20 May 2015. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=​j&q​=&esrc=s&​ source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAAahUKEwjRt-nlh​ovI​A hU​Fch​QKH​Wnd​ C4A​& url​=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.residenzpflicht.info%2Fwp-content%2Fup​ loads​%2F2015%2F01%2F2014-12-31_Anmerkungen_Rechtsstellungsver​bes​se​ rungs​gesetz.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFPZQsbUAYMikFct75TsnVsTyzzYw&cad=rja.

Small-Scale Mobility and National Border Politics: Western European Border Formation in the Nineteenth Century Katrin Lehnert Today’s efficacious reality of national borders and their link to national migration control is a relatively new phenomenon that emerged in the course of so-called western modernisation. The foundation of European national states in the nineteenth century was a culminating point of this development and accompanied the creation of spatially defined state territories with clearly specified demarcation lines and the shift of mobility control to the borders. A remark by Prussian King Friedrich II (known as Frederick the Great) in 1776 explains which endeavours were connected to this process: “All far away acquisitions are a burden on the nation. A village on the border is worth more than a principality which is sixty miles away” (Friedrich II [1776] 1913, 214). As a consequence, entire villages changed their nationality on the Saxon-Bohemian border in the nineteenth century in order to create spatially defined state territories. What had become a slogan of Latin American inhabitants of the Southern USA in 2006 applied to this population: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” (cf. Karakayalı and Tsianos 2007, 11). In reverse, common mobility in the borderlands actively contributed to the course of decades-long conflicts between Saxony and Austria over the regulation of the state border. The population crossed the national border for everyday business: on the way to their workplace, to attend school or church, to shop, to visit family and friends, or simply to have a beer. Business people on both sides of the border were dependent on customers from the neighbouring country. The goal of the state authorities to maintain economic exchange while simultaneously supervising it led to the first organised border control in terms of a customs check. At the same time, locals, including customs officials, often did not know where the boundary line was located exactly, which led to numerous conflicts between both nations. Regarding the location of the border line, actual and assumed smuggling strongly influenced boundary negotiations.

146  | Katrin Lehnert The problems outlined were an essential starting point of my PhD project: I did research on the correlations between the daily routine of the population and the creation of a modern border regime with mobility and passport controls.1 The field of examination was the historic border area between the Kingdom of Saxony, the Austrian Kingdom of Bohemia and the Prussian province of Silesia. This area is mostly equivalent to today’s trijunction of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, with only slightly changed borders. The countries’ borders and their crossing involved potential for conflicts between local authorities and the population, between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, as well as interstate conflicts. Additionally, mobility became visible through these conflicts. Thus, borders have a double role within historical research: on the one hand, the view of the border is a methodical resource which helps to uncover daily mobility and transregional relations. On the other hand, the conflicts around borders show how state borders in the nineteenth century were negotiated among different stakeholders and which meaning daily mobility had for these negotiations. In the tradition of historical anthropology, it is my goal to break through the contradiction of overall structure and individual agency and to let the interrelationship between both speak. Furthermore, I examine the effect of everyday life on macropolitical processes, such as the change of a state border. Consequently, I used different materials and sources to gather a diversity of opinions from political, ecclesiastical and economic actors, from border guards and from the lower classes. I have evaluated legal documents, news articles from several local newspapers, duty books of border guards, travelling books of journeymen, time books of servants and workers, autobiographical material, books of fiction, statistics, laws, court files and parish reports. The majority of my sources consist of letters between administration departments and their sub-departments, or between the authorities of neighbouring countries. The sources were assessed in different federal, regional and ecclesiastical archives of Saxony. Thus, both the supreme governmental authorities of Saxony, such as the interior ministry or the foreign ministry, and the local administration level of villages and parishes contributed to answering questions concerning certain topics. This chapter focuses on connections between everyday mobility, the surveillance of the customs border and the modernization of the political border between Saxony and Bohemia in the nineteenth century. I will discuss attributes of formative processes of borders in the nineteenth century and provide an overview of border crossing mobility. The example of a Bohemian enclave in Saxony will serve 1 | The dissertation (Lehnert 2013) was created at the Institut für Volkskunde/Europäische Ethnologie at the LMU Munich as well as the Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde e. V. Dresden, and will be published in the course of 2016 by the Leipziger Universitätsverlag. An excerpt entitled Weder sesshaft noch migrantisch. Ländliche Arbeitsmobilität im 19. Jahrhundert [Neither settled nor migrant: Rural job mobility in the nineteenth century] will be published by Campus Verlag.

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as a main point of analysis, because its population was well-known for smuggling activities between the enclave and its neighbouring villages. This led to discussions at the highest levels between statesmen of Saxony and Austria, who linked an incident of smuggling from the enclave with the negotiations on the Saxon-Bohemian demarcation line. The analysis of this very special case of border formation in the nineteenth century will allude to the topic of the interrelations between mobility and borders in general.

B order formation and border crossing in the nineteenth century A brief history of border formation The border of Saxony and Bohemia was not yet definite in the nineteenth century; there were a few Bohemian enclaves in Saxony as well as numerous boundary lines in dispute. The indefinite character of the border was also due to the divergence between ecclesiastical and secular borders, as people’s affiliation to churches and schools often stretched across the border. In a similar vein, the linguistic boundary and the national border were not identical either: In the north of Bohemia the majority spoke German, while the Czech language was more common in the south. The centrality of national borders was further undermined by local lordship and municipal boundaries, which were an important part of people’s daily lives and a central feature of social legislation. The new national borders demanded much more prestige than the old manorial delimitations and had yet to become embedded in the minds of the nation’s subjects similar to, for example, laws, administrative acts and border checks  – since in the nineteenth century, national borders still needed to be introduced, legislated and promoted before they became natural to the local population. In reverse, the border checks were also formed by the daily crossing of the national border and were continuously adjusted to the changing requirements. This process was described by German sociologist, Georg Simmel, who pointed out that “the border is not a spatial fact with a sociological impact, but a sociological fact that shapes spatiality” (Simmel [1908] 1992, 697). However, when nationalism became stronger, the imagination of unity in territory, (national) groups and culture arose in German regions (cf. Götz 2011, 93–96). This development in the Saxon-Bohemian boundary area was complicated by the “shifted” language border. Against the backdrop of the anti-Slavic politics of the German Empire, it led to a culturalisation of the national border, when at the beginning of the twentieth century “Germans” and “Czechs” were more and more distinguished. However, before that happened, the boundary had to be made visible and denoted. The contributing factor for the formation of a modern border regime with government-organised passport and mobility control on the borders had been the

148  | Katrin Lehnert establishment of sovereign territorial states all over Europe since the late Middle Ages. In order to form spatially defined territories, all treasures and properties had to be recorded, counted and measured; the boundary lines had to be negotiated, drawn, straightened and denoted; and enclaves and exclaves had to be removed. Only a clearly defined and linear state border seemed to be able to separate an extensive territory from others and make cross-national mobility controllable. Of course, the claim of a clear, uncontested and impermeable state border has persisted as an illusion ever since. The attempt to install a border control began with controlling customs, rather than controlling the movement of people: Access to economic profits and money gains in cash in the form of taxes made a major contribution to the formation of sovereign states. Customs duties and tolls had existed since the Middle Ages, but those were not boundary customs duties, but local territorial customs duties until the Early Modern Age. With the rise of mercantilism in the seventeenth century, customs duties were slowly shifted to the borders (cf. Blaschke 1969, 103; Komlosy 2003, 45). However, at the same time, there were cross-border economic zones, where the passage of goods and people across the border had to be regulated by the government. Thus, control of customs boundaries institutionalised the first border controls long before the routine checking of travel documents had become a reality. This had a “major national policy meaning”, because it symbolised a country’s sovereignty (Komlosy 2003, 48). That the state border was defined as a customs border, also becomes evident in this official definition by Austrian legislation in 1835: “The border, which divides the state from the foreign countries, […] is the customs border” (Blodig 1855, 1). With the help of customs duties, the government did not only gain control of the competitiveness of the economy, but, more importantly, it also gave rise to a new subject who paid taxes, and people who did not pay taxes could be subsequently criminalised. Uwe Schirmer (1996, 51–55) holds the view that the exclusion of the homeless and of beggars, both seen as mobile groups, correlates with the formation of the modern tax system, which was orientated towards tax payment and, therefore, towards settled and immobile citizens. However, settled residents became subject to rigorous controls: Along the Austrian borders, a 7.5‑ to 15‑kilometre-wide border district (Grenzbezirk) was defined in the 1830s, within which all people who seemed suspicious to fiscal and police authorities had to be controlled.2 The Kingdom of Saxony also established a border district which reached several kilometres into the land and was subject to special legislation, separated from the remaining state territory by an internal boundary (cf. Zollgesetz 3/4/1838, § 24, 293 f.). Customs control took place along the state border, while the process of customs clearance, however, reached into the interior 2 | Such border districts were established earlier in France (1791), Prussia (1818), the German Customs Association (Deutscher Zollverein, 1834), of which Saxony was a member, and in a few Austrian Crown lands (Lombardy in 1786 and Venetia in 1803), cf. Saurer (1989, 141 f.).

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of the country. In between was a special zone, which – as a border district – showed remnants of the mediaeval buffer zone (Grenzsaum). Within this border district, special restrictions and regulations were stipulated and had the main goal of preventing smuggling, since smuggling was a common way to avoid paying taxes and to prevent time-consuming customs examinations. Customs control on both the Austrian and the Saxon side fell within the responsibility of the respective ministry of finance. While in Austria, border guards were authorised to control passports, in Saxony, this was carried out by the gendarmerie (cf. Saurer 1993, 173 f.). The latter was founded to control travellers on country roads (cf. Fahrmeir 2000, 65). Austria and Prussia were the only German states which controlled travel documents at the border (until the 1860s3). On the Austrian borders, the controls included passport control, an examination of the luggage and an inquiry of the traveller (cf. Saurer 1989, 144 f.). In this situation, it was an advantage for travellers to belong to a higher social class. Day workers, domestics and journeymen were permanently excluded from mobility relief (cf. Fahrmeir 2000, 74 f., 78 f.).

Lives across the border In the more rural Upper Lusatia, small-scale mobility instead of long-distance travel was prevalent until the end of the nineteenth century. These travels took place within a short range, although people also moved between countries and in circles, as they returned to the same places a number of times or were at home in several places at the same time. Not only journeymen, who were known to be great travellers, or “beggars” and “vagrants”, but also others moved domicile quite often. Many other population groups showed a high level of mobility depending on their living conditions. What is known today as “job-hopping” and a “fragile” job situation was a widespread reality back then: Jobs were unsafe and changed a lot, each family member had to go somewhere else for different jobs (cf. Kocka 1990; StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no. 516, fol. 148–150). The temporary nature of wage work was normal for day workers in the rural areas and for workers within the developing industrial fields. Travelling from one occupation to another happened especially among workers in factories or in the building sector (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no. 4669, n. p.). Although farmhands and domestics were hired for longer terms, they also changed their workplaces or returned to their parents, relatives or spouses once in a while (cf. HStA Dresden, 10365 GH Liebstadt, no. 2863, fol. 12 f.). In this way, the border areas must be seen as a union of economic and living spaces, because, in addition to economic relations, people were also connected to 3 | Against the backdrop of a phase of deregulation of the passport system in all of Western and Central Europe, Austria abandoned passport controls on its outer borders in 1865, cf. Burger (2000, 23).

150  | Katrin Lehnert relatives and friends beyond the borders, especially in villages that spanned the border (almost) without a gap (cf. Lehnert 2013, 144). The locals had to get used to the situation of facing a barrier such as the customs border. At the same time, they used the customs border to their own advantage by purchasing goods in the neighbouring country and smuggling them, or developing an import-export business. The necessary conditions were a difference in price or quality between both sides of the border: The foodstuffs in Bohemia were usually cheaper than in Saxony, so the border population of Upper Lusatia went to the neighbouring country in order to buy goods, legally or illegally (cf. Murdock 2010, 30). Crossing the border was achieved by foot, with a carriage, by boat or, in later times, by train. People, livestock and goods were transported on custom roads, side roads or across the green line. Therefore, controlling the custom border was not easy, especially, because in Upper Lusatia, it led through forests and across mountains. People who lived within the border district usually benefitted from bilateral agreements on minor border traffic when they crossed the border (cf. Pacholkiv 2000, 551). However, a noticeable liberalisation of minor border traffic between Saxony and Austria did not appear before the last third of the nineteenth century: “Laws in 1879 and 1887 abolished tariffs on small quantities of grain, flour, bread, meat, and butter.  […] Every household received a book for recording its weekly imports” (Murdock 2010, 30). We have seen that the first border control between Upper Lusatia in Saxony and Bohemia in Austria was a customs control to prevent the local population from smuggling goods. A mobility control in form of checking travel documents rarely took place at the border itself. The locals crossed the border on a regular basis, for both professional and personal reasons. The borderlands still represented a coherent social and economic area whose population was educated by laws and customs checks to respect the prospective national border.

The formation of the borderlands from a micro - perspective Examining the history of the Saxon-Bohemian border necessarily includes a view of controversial boundary lines and Bohemian enclaves in Saxony. Removing the enclaves and, in this way, changing the borders in the nineteenth century was not (only) a result of a political and military balance of power, but also a consequence of general modernisation and territorialisation processes. The driving force was the mutual interest of Saxony and Austria “to establish a closed territory concerning traffic and administration” (Luft 2000, 113). An enclave that was an issue well into the nineteenth century was the village of Niederleutersdorf, which was approximately three kilometres away from the border. No later than in the sixteenth century, the formerly joint village was divid-

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ed into an Upper Lusatian dominion Oberleutersdorf and a Bohemian dominion Niederleutersdorf.4 When Upper Lusatia, which had been under the dominion of the King of Bohemia until then, became Saxon in 1635, the territorial affiliation of the inhabitants of Oberleutersdorf and Niederleutersdorf was determined after their respective seigneurs and, thus, Niederleutersdorf became a Bohemian enclave in Saxony (cf. Vieweg 1999, 2). After Austria had lost the war against Napoleon and Saxony in 1809, the peace talks determined that Austria had to hand over some areas, among them Niederleutersdorf and other Bohemian enclaves, to Saxony (cf. ibid., 34 f.). However, numerous conflicts flared up concerning the details of the handover and parts of some of these conflicts lasted the entire nineteenth century. They are a vivid example of the complexity of the formation of modern national borders. Conflicts emerged on different levels, among them the territorial level as well as in relation to the church and to fiscal matters. After another war5 between Saxony and Austria, the mutual handover of enclaves as well as a “correction of the border” (Grenzberichtigung) were once again determined. Niederleutersdorf was a special point of contention. The definition of its status was at first postponed, but remained a crucial factor in the border negotiations of Saxony and Austria until the end (cf. Vieweg 1999, 85). The conflict was in close connection to an unclear customs duties situation and widespread smuggling.

Daily routine in the boundary area: Smuggling and customs control Niederleutersdorf was a smuggler’s paradise, similar to other enclaves,. The border between Saxon Oberleutersdorf and the Bohemian enclave of Niederleutersdorf was physically only a small border creek with thick undergrowth along the banks, which is why this corner was called Pascherwinkel6 [Smugglers’ corner]. Eduard Walther, an Austrian customs officer, traced back life in the Bohemian enclave of Niederleutersdorf at the beginning of the twentieth century with the help of narratives and historic records.7 He reported:

4 | The Upper Lusatian dominion was Seidenberg, which is Zawidów in Poland today, the Bohemian dominion was Tollenstein-Schluckenau, which is Tolštejn and Šluknov in the Czech Republic today; cf. Lorenz (1913, 61). 5 | In the course of the so-called Wars of Liberation (1813–1815), Saxony had fought on Napoleon’s side and this time they lost against Austria. 6 | The German word paschen is an old expression for smuggling. 7 | Eduard Walther published the serial novel Pascherfriedel under the alias Artur Booden. The novel was first released in 1906 in the Oberlausitzer Dorfzeitung [Upper Lusatian Village Paper]. Hereafter, a slightly revised reprint of 1992 is quoted.

152  | Katrin Lehnert It often happened that people, who had some contraband goods on them, just threw them over the creek – across the border, that is – before they were caught by the officers […]. Even inhabitants of other places who did not have the opportunity of easy smuggling like the people from near the smuggler’s paradise had, took the way through the Pascherwinkel in order to safely reach their goal. (Booden [1906] 1992, 61 f.)

Later studies on Niederleutersdorf also verify: “There was barely a family who did not follow this manner” (Jährig 1995, 57). This was part of a widespread practice of everyday smuggling for personal needs, the “little house-smuggling” (kleiner Haus­pasch) (Booden [1906] 1992, 61). The customs and national borders were mostly ignored by people, which was easy for them, since neither the enclave’s borders, nor the national border between Saxony and Bohemia were language borders and had barely been important to common life in the centuries before.8 However, people in the boundary area still knew there was a customs border, because they came into conflict with customs officers on a regular basis. The latter suffered from this out-of-control life of the border community and complained that the people on both sides of the border would stick together and warn each other concerning customs officers and would reveal their hideouts (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50095 HZA Zittau, no. 58, fol. 26, 40 f.). The customs officials who tried to catch smugglers in the act as inconspicuously as possible, often with a surprise effect while guarding the customs border, were, in reverse, guarded by the border community, which made it impossible for them to accomplish their own strategy. Thus, crossing the border and customs checks turned into a game of “cops and robbers” and it was not always quite clear who was the “cop” and who was the “robber”. In return, customs officers had their personal revenge on identified smugglers out of all regulations (cf. Booden [1906] 1992, 62). This was possible because citizens and officers in these rural areas sometimes knew each other quite well. Generally, the people who lived along the border agreed to the acceptance of smuggling (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50095 HZA Zittau, no. 58, fol. 59). While this kind of job was illegal and risky, it guaranteed a minimum subsistence for the rural lower classes. “It is a fact that smuggling fed entire villages”, wrote contemporary Theophil Pisling (1856, 22) in the middle of the nineteenth century. In that way, smuggling was an answer to the custom regulations and official border crossing that benefitted the privileged: Immobilised by poverty and a lack of status and privilege, the lower classes, nevertheless, found ways to move and trade. However, merchants who could also have afforded a toll, preferred to avoid the time-consuming and humiliating customs checks. To watch the border community was quite a Sisyphean task for the customs officers, because minor border traffic, individual smuggling and professionally organised contraband trade blended fluently. Especially in the Bohemian enclaves of 8 | This is suggested by my research that shows a close border-crossing connection of the population still extant in the nineteenth century, cf. Lehnert (2011).

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Upper Lusatia, smuggling had moved onto a slightly higher organisational level. Eduard Walther wrote further about this in the above-mentioned Pascherwinkel between Oberleutersdorf and the enclave of Niederleutersdorf: It often happened that even bigger goods, which were not meant for the common personal need, were traded across the village creek at night after the area had been thoroughly spied out for the positions of all the border patrol guards, if possible. The goods were feedstock, food ingredients, or also ready products. (Booden [1906] 1992, 62)

The “professional smugglers” involved were highly cautious in their job: The execution of a bigger smuggling haul back then was in each single case equal to a precise clockwork that was adjusted with highest diligence. Once it was wound up in the right moment, everything worked out as planned in most cases. (ibid., 57)

Many a smuggling haul, however, ended with the death of the smugglers or the customs officers, because bigger horse wagons were especially accompanied by a number of armed men. Sometimes this also applied to smuggling hauls by foot, where the goods were carried on the backs of the smugglers.

The importance of smuggling and customs checks in the process of border formation Debates concerning Niederleutersdorf, that have been going on for decades, show that the need of European countries for a straightforward, manageable and controllable national border was connected to the need to protect the respective customs interests, among other things. In Saxony, customs checks were not only the first organised surveillance of the external border, but one of many developments on the way to a passport controlling authority on the borders. Raising a toll for import, export and transit was, at the same time, one of the most important tax revenues in Saxony (cf. Jährig 1995, 54; Vieweg 1999, 141 f.). In addition, fiscal access of the government to every single citizen is seen as one of the new achievements of national sovereignty. Consequently, the Niederleutersdorf customs issue was of a high (symbolic) significance for the outcome of the Saxon-Austrian border and enclave negotiations. In the course of Saxony joining the German Customs Association (Deutscher Zollverein) in 1834, the status of Niederleutersdorf and the adjacent villages of Neuleutersdorf, Josephsdorf and Neuwalde was repeatedly discussed, because Austria complained about the fact that Saxon customs officials controlled the region that connected Neuleutersdorf with the country of Bohemia. A conflict flared up especially around the so-called Diebsweg [Thief’s way], that connected the Saxon forest with the Bohemian forest area. Saxony closed this way for transporting goods in

154  | Katrin Lehnert 1834 because it was not an approved customs road. The issue was whether Neuleutersdorf, as Saxony alleged, was an enclave within Saxon territories or, as Austria claimed, the last point of a Bohemian tongue of land reaching into Saxony (cf. Jährig 1995, 33; StFilA Bautzen, 50009 Oberamt Budissin, no. 6030, n. p.; Vieweg 1999, 95  f.). Austria made further negotiations around the Bohemian enclave of Schirgiswalde and other regions at issue conditional on this affair, so that the “Leutersdorf question” became a plain “bone of contention”. First and foremost, the people suffered from the effects of Saxony’s joining the German Customs Association and the resulting new customs regulations, especially those in Niederleutersdorf and the adjacent villages. The inhabitants of the latter were mostly home weaver families, who worked for merchants in the neighbouring towns of Bohemia. They now had to pay duty on their raw materials as well as on the finished products because of the new customs regulations. For the weavers, who lived at a subsistence level, this was not only an economic burden, but also made their daily routine more difficult. Due to the closing of the Diebsweg, they had to tariff their products from and to Bohemia in customs offices in the interior of Saxony, which meant a considerable detour. The goods put on sale in Niederleutersdorf, consequently, became more expensive than in neighbouring Oberleutersdorf or in Bohemia, because the price of the customs duties was passed on to the end consumers (cf. Jährig 1995, 54). For that reason, the enclave municipalities kept filing petitions to the Austrian government which demanded that the latter convince the Saxon government to allow duty-free transport of food and raw materials from Bohemia to Niederleutersdorf via the Diebsweg. However, Saxony declined any suggestion from Austria (cf. Vieweg 1999, 99, 142–145). The “Leutersdorf question” was significantly responsible for tough bargaining in the negotiations without considerable results, and for the treaties about the so-called border correction being signed not earlier than 1848. The customs issues were also responsible for Niederleutersdorf, like Schirgiswalde, becoming popular as a hideout for gangs of robbers and smugglers. The legendary bandit chief, Karasek, who has been regarded up to today as a modern Robin Hood, was married to the daughter of the innkeeper of Neuwalde, from where he conducted his hauls. The smuggling hauls of the so-called Pascherfriedel also became famous – at least regionally (cf. Booden [1906] 1992; Kura, Ruhland, and Unger 1996).9 The enclave itself became famous as a place of origin of smugglers, and it also became a safe haven, a place of information exchange and for planning smuggling hauls. After a smuggling haul via the Diebsweg in 1835 ended with the deaths of three brothers, the nearest Bohemian authority warned that the bitterness about the distressing customs situation has “increased to the highest degree”, not only on behalf 9 | There is no evidence in the archive sources of the existence of Pascherfriedel himself, but there is of the brothers accompanying him (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50009 Oberamt Budissin, no. 6030, n. p.).

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of the inhabitants of Niederleutersdorf, but also on behalf of Saxon citizens (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50009 Oberamt Budissin, no. 6030, n. p.). The population on both sides of the border went along with their governments, accepting that the deaths had a national political dimension: According to Austria’s territorial claims, the deadly fight took place during a transport on a Bohemian tongue of land between the motherland and Niederleutersdorf, which means, the transport did not touch Saxon territory and, therefore, Saxon border guards did not have the right to control them. However, Saxony claimed that the region in question was on their territory and so they insisted on having merely performed their sovereign rights. So it is not surprising that the said incident – in local literature described as “Pascherfriedel’s final haul” (cf. Booden [1906] 1992; Kura, Ruhland, and Unger 1996) – became an affair between the Saxon and the Bohemian governments, which connected it with fundamental border quarrels. The Bohemian government demanded a joint criminal investigation against the Saxon border guards. However, the Saxon ministries rejected the request in unison, because they did not see any indication that the Saxon officials had exceeded their authority. Another request on behalf of Austria to exempt Niederleutersdorf from customs duties was rejected (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50009 Oberamt Budissin, no. 6030, n. p.; Vieweg 1999, 141 f.). The conflict around Niederleutersdorf was eventually concluded in another way, but only after it had stretched to other villages. In order to force the opening of the Diebsweg, Austria in return brought the population of the nearby Saxon village of Weigsdorf under Austrian customs regulations. This was possible because here, customs border and national border were separated. Goods transported through this gap now had tariffs imposed on the Austrian side. In response to this, Saxony effectively offered to open the Diebsweg in Niederleutersdorf, but the negotiations stalled again because Austria now changed its mind (cf. Vieweg 1999, 112–117). However, after the people of Weigsdorf filed a petition in 1843 against the unbearable customs situation, the border negotiations were refreshed again. The complaint was discussed in the Saxon State Parliament, which made Austria fear – with regard to the German and European public – that a negative image of the relations between two allied nations would be drawn. Rolf Vieweg (1999, 118–122) assumes that Austria’s fear led to a change in its attitude towards the enclave issue and, thus, made negotiations about Niederleutersdorf, Schirgiswalde and the entire border issue possible. In the course of a border regulation administered in 1848, Austria waived all claims to Niederleutersdorf and the adjacent villages. In return, however, it expected an approach by Saxony concerning other boundary lines at issue (cf. Haupt- Grenz- und Territorial-Receß zwischen Sachsen und Österreich, 5/3/1848, article VIII, 61 f.).10

10 | “Major, border, and territory legislative record between Saxony and Austria.” Schirgiswalde had already been handed over to Saxony three years earlier, in 1845.

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C onclusion: S muggling as a result and precondition of border modernisation

The Saxon-Bohemian borderlands are a vivid example of those conflicts which Andrea Komlosy calls “conflicts around a real power and the power to draw boundaries” (Komlosy 2003, 21 f.). Not only state institutions participated, but also common actors who expressed their social, economic and confessional interests with practical acting. Smuggling across borders was particularly highly appreciated in the nineteenth century, and was an inherent part of everyday life in the borderlands. Smuggling was a liberating and mobilising force for the lower classes, yet a dangerous one. It is remarkable that even the author Eduard Walther, who was himself a customs official at the beginning of the twentieth century, defended the formerly widespread practice of smuggling in the border area around Niederleutersdorf intensely and vigorously. Numerous explanations for smuggling can be found in his historical narration and considering the situation in the Bohemian enclave, he called it a “stopgap solution” (Booden [1906] 1992, 67). Looking back from the year 1906, he considered smuggling an economic necessity, “in order to give a young aspiring industry and trade enough elbow room without which it would have never been able to come to achieve its present status” (Booden [1906] 1992, 68). In fact, it was impossible for the citizens of enclaves and along controversial national borders to act upon the laws that were designed for straight national borders and defined territories. Modern customs laws, brought to Saxony by Prussia via the Customs Association, were orientated towards a modern territorial state that had not yet been established everywhere. Therefore, traffic conditions and the realities of life in the border area lagged behind a legislative designed for territorial statehood. Whenever the law enforcers did insist on legal definiteness, they reflected the national governments’ mutual interests in straight external boundaries and a standardisation of their territory. These interests only became the interests of the local population of the border area because they were helpless against the political power plays of their governments or the despotism of the customs officials. Thus, in regions with unfinished border formation, overeager customs guards served the state politics quite well. However, the people’s hope for settled conditions on the border was disappointed by the Saxon-Bohemian border regulation of 1848, which numerous conflicts between citizens and customs guards from the second half of the nineteenth century show (cf. e. g. HStA Dresden, 10736 Ministerium des Innern, no. 4775). The example of the Bohemian enclave of Niederleutersdorf in Saxony shows the difficulties and tediousness of the shift from premodern areal ideas to territorial dominion with clearly defined and straight boundary lines. Therefore, the Saxon-Bohemian border still did not meet the idea of a modern national border in the middle of the nineteenth century. Next to diplomatic negotiations between

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Saxony and Austria, smuggling and customs checks in the border area were only further political elements which actively influenced the process of border formation: The daily routine in the border area conveyed the governmental desire for a straight external boundary. On the one hand, people smuggled so intensely that their governments hurried to bring about a change, while, on the other hand, people in areas with undefined boundary lines suffered so much from the customs situation that their resistance against it indirectly contributed to the modernisation of the border: The Saxon-Bohemian border negotiations were not refreshed until the inhabitants of Niederleutersdorf and Weigsdorf filed petitions against the unbearable customs situation. These observations confirm the results of historic border research. In his ground-breaking survey about The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (1989), Peter Sahlins investigated the formation of territoriality and national identity in the Spanish-French frontier area “from the double perspective of the states and of local society” (ibid., 22). This and following research on the frontiers’ own dynamics shows consistently that the perception of borders by contemporary actors can turn out highly differently, and that administrative determinations of boundaries, their acceptance by the local population and trans-boundary mobility at all times met in a conflicting negotiating process (cf. Duhamelle, Kossert, and Struck 2007; François, Seifarth, and Struck 2007; Motsch 2001). Besides the subject of border modernisation, the history of customs control faces another issue: the im/mobility of the local population against the backdrop of developing migration control. Customs checks were supposed to encourage desired mobility (e. g. business travel) and to prevent unwanted mobility (e. g. smuggling). Concerning the mobility of workers, this involved the practice of distinguishing “day workers” from “vagabonds” (cf. StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no. 4556, fol. 40). However, the life of the population in the border district was hard to put into governmental categories. It also cannot be assumed that the population everywhere was familiar with the respective laws and regulations and the connected legal space. “Thus the question arises, whether the concerned travellers and migrants actually had a sense of justice concerning borders and crossing them” (Komlosy 2003, 371). Was the border about to be constituted by the emerging nation states, in fact, an entirely different “border” in the eyes of the people that surrounded it, as its cross-border movement and smuggling simultaneously challenged and shaped the boundary between Saxony and Bohemia? Concerning the customs border, it appears that there was rarely a sense of justice. If research in hindsight puts people into governmental categories, it ignores real everyday experience. Sigrid Wadauer advises a review of the meaning of migration and sedentarism systematically in their historical and social context. This includes the question of what has actually been “perceived, defined and recorded as migration, mobility and sedentarism” or as a crossable border against each re-

158  | Katrin Lehnert spective backdrop (Wadauer 2008, 10). This question has an effect on the selection of the research group: Migration as an undoubtedly given and distinctly definable research subject dissolves, when the numerous and changing connections of areal mobility are taken into account. Scientific understanding of migration needs to consider those people who do not migrate. (ibid., 9)

Concerning the border society of the nineteenth century as analysed in my research, we come to the following result: Both smuggling and other forms of mobility of the local population had an influence in several ways and several levels of intensity on the nature of state borders and controls (cf. Lehnert 2013). At the same time, customs checks helped people to get used to border controls, thereby contributing to the establishment of the border as something normal and everyday. It is no coincidence that the first passport controls in Austria were carried out by customs guards. In Saxony, it developed together with controls of rail travellers in railway stations (Lehnert 2013, 225–227; Stoklásková 2000, 646 f.). In parallel, an active mobility control in the interior developed, such as surveillance of beggars by means of handing out alms and by the implementation of time-books for workers, where their changes in location had to be stated (cf. Lehnert 2013, 302–306, 320–334). The first migration control concerning seasonal workers was established at the beginning of the twentieth century: Identification documents, issued when crossing the border, helped to monitor the workers (cf. Herbert 2003, 34). Systematic passport and migration controls at the borders were not established in all of Europe before the beginning of World War  I (cf. Fahrmeir 2008, 131). Together with a nationalist ideology and practice, as well as the foundation of welfare state institutions, it consolidated into a border regime, which differentiated more and more between citizens, on the one hand, and “foreigners” and “migrants”, on the other hand. However, the border has always been permeable and has always been changing while dealing with being continuously crossed. Adding this micro-history of the im/mobile local society to the larger history of European nation states illuminates the interrelation between (pre-)national border construction and transnational social life in the borderlands. The rise of a personalised border control in the twentieth century was prepared by a nineteenth-century customs check that not only tried to control a highly common small-scale mobility in the border region, but also helped the local society to get used to border regulations and immobilisation. In the Saxonian-Bohemian border region, the latter concerned the whole society that had to live in administrative border districts with special legislation and special mobility restrictions. Still, the population was not a passive one but found its own way to move and trade. Ironically, its own mobility and its political fight for better living conditions pushed forward the modernisation of the border, thus, unintentionally helping to immobilize

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those who did not have the money and the social status to benefit from mobility reliefs. Focusing on the analysis of the im/mobility of historical societies is crucial for the understanding of the fact that custom checks and personal border controls were social in the first place and played a major role in so-called western modernisation. The (historical) migration research must realise that speaking about “migrants” as the opposite of a “nation” means to deny that there is and has always been cross-border mobility that simultaneously challenged and shaped the boundary and, therefore, the idea of the nation itself. I suggest integrating im/mobility and border research into the general science of history.

R eferences Blaschke, Karlheinz. 1969. “Raumordnung und Grenzbildung in der sächsischen Geschichte.” In Grenzbildende Faktoren in der Geschichte (Veröffentlichungen der Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung  48), edited by Forschungsausschuss Historische Raumforschung, 87–112. Hannover: Gebrüder Jänecke. Blodig, Hermann. 1855. Die österreichische Zoll- und Staatsmonopolordnung. Nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande der Gesetzgebung bearbeitet. Mit einer geschichtlichen Einleitung. Wien: Prandel. Booden, Artur. (1906) 1992. Pascherfriedel. Eine Erzählung aus der Schmugglerzeit der Oberlausitz. Reprint, Bautzen: Lusatia. Burger, Hannelore. 2000. “Paßwesen und Staatsbürgerschaft.” In Grenze und Staat. Paßwesen, Staatsbürgerschaft, Heimatrecht und Fremdengesetzgebung in der österreichischen Monarchie 1750–1867, edited by Waltraud Heindl, and Edith Saurer, 3–170. Wien: Böhlau. Duhamelle, Christophe, Andreas Kossert, and Bernhard Struck, eds. 2007. Grenzregionen. Ein europäischer Vergleich vom 18.  bis 20.  Jahrhundert. Frankfurt, Main: Campus. Fahrmeir, Andreas. 2000. “Paßwesen und Staatsbildung im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts.” Historische Zeitschrift 271: 57–91. Fahrmeir, Andreas. 2008. “Klassen-Grenzen: Migrationskontrolle im 19. Jahrhundert.” Rechtsgeschichte 12: 125–138. François, Etienne, Jörg Seifarth, and Bernhard Struck, eds. 2007. Die Grenze als Raum, Erfahrung und Konstruktion. Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen vom 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt, Main: Campus. Friedrich  II. (1776) 1913. “Abriß der preußischen Regierung und der Grundsätze, auf denen sie beruht, nebst einigen politischen Betrachtungen (1776).” In Antimachiavell und Testamente. Vol. 7 of Die Werke Friedrichs des Großen. In deutscher Übersetzung, edited by Gustav Berthold Volz, 210–216. Berlin: Reimar Hobbing.

160  | Katrin Lehnert Götz, Irene. 2011. Deutsche Identitäten. Die Wiederentdeckung des Nationalen nach 1989. Köln: Böhlau. Haupt- Grenz- und Territorial-Receß zwischen Sachsen und Österreich, 5/3/1848, article VIII, In Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt für das Königreich Sachsen vom Jahre 1848: 59–96. Herbert, Ulrich. 2003. Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland. Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Flüchtlinge (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 410). Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. [HStA Dresden, 10736 Ministerium des Innern, no. 4775:] Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10736 Ministerium des Innern, no. 4775: Territorialverletzungen und Exzesse k. k. Grenzjäger an der sächsisch-böhmischen Landesgrenze (1847–1881). [HStA Dresden, 10365 GH Liebstadt, no. 2863:] Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10365 Grundherrschaft Liebstadt, no. 2863: Acta judicialia in Untersuchungssachen wider die Dienstmagd Amalie Theresie Hosemann zu Döbra, gebürtig von Altenberg, in Betreff eines ihr Schuld gebenden Kindermordes (1843). Jährig, Maik. 1995. “Die Geschichte der Enklave Niederleutersdorf (1635–1849) unter Einbeziehung alltagsgeschichtlicher Aspekte der Grenzregion Sachsen-Böhmen in der südlichen Oberlausitz.” Master Thesis [Staatsexamensarbeit], Technische Universität Dresden. Karakayalı, Serhat, and Vassilis Tsianos. 2007. “Movements that Matter. Eine Einleitung.” In Turbulente Ränder. Neue Perspektiven auf Migration an den Rändern Europas, edited by TRANSIT MIGRATION Forschungsgruppe, 7–17. Bielefeld: transcript. Kocka, Jürgen. 1990. Arbeitsverhältnisse und Arbeiterexistenzen. Grundlagen der Klassenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Geschichte der Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung im Deutschland seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts 2). Bonn: Dietz. Komlosy, Andrea. 2003. Grenze und ungleiche regionale Entwicklung. Binnenmarkt und Migration in der Habsburgermonarchie. Wien: Promedia. Kura, Annette, Volker Ruhland, and Roland Unger. 1996. Sachsens Mordbrenner. Räuber, Pascher und Wildschützen im Erzgebirge und in der Oberlausitz. Berlin: Altis. Lehnert, Katrin. 2011. “Räume und ihre Grenzen. Eine transregionale Perspektive auf den mobilen Alltag des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Transregionale Perspektiven: Kleinräumige Mobilität und Grenzwahrnehmung im 19. Jahrhundert (Bausteine aus dem Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde 20), edited by Katrin Lehnert, and Lutz Vogel, 117–132. Dresden: Thelem. Lehnert, Katrin. 2013. “Weder sesshaft noch migrantisch: Alltagsmobilität ländlicher Unterschichten und die Genese eines modernen Grenzregimes im 19. Jahrhundert.” PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Lorenz, Rudolf. 1913. Herrschaften und Enklaven der Oberlausitz. Leipzig: Printing: A. Papst.

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Luft, Robert. 2000. “‘Alte Grenzen’ und Kulturgeographie. Zur historischen Konstanz der Grenzen Böhmens und der böhmischen Länder.” In Grenzen in Ostmitteleuropa im 19.  und 20.  Jahrhundert, edited by Hans Lemberg, 95–135. Marburg: Herder-Institut. Motsch, Christoph. 2001. Grenzgesellschaft und frühmoderner Staat. Die Starostei Drostheim und zwischen Hinterpommern, der Neumark und Großpolen (1575– 1805). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Murdock, Caitlin E. 2010. Changing Places. Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870–1946. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pacholkiv, Svjatoslav. 2000. “Das Werden einer Grenze.” In Grenze und Staat. Paßwesen, Staatsbürgerschaft, Heimatrecht und Fremdengesetzgebung in der österreichischen Monarchie 1750–1867, edited by Waltraud Heindl, and Edith Saurer, 519–618. Wien: Böhlau. Pisling, Theophil. 1856. Nationalökonomische Briefe aus dem nordöstlichen Böhmen. Prague: C. Bellmann’s. Sahlins, Peter. 1989. Boundaries. The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley: University of California Press. Saurer, Edith. 1989. Straße, Schmuggel, Lottospiel. Materielle Kultur und Staat in Niederösterreich, Böhmen und Lombardo-Venetien im frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 90). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Saurer, Edith. 1993. “Zwischen dichter und grüner Grenze. Grenzkontrolle in der vormärzlichen Habsburgermonarchie.” In Grenzöffnung, Migration, Kriminalität (Jahrbuch für Rechts- und Kriminalsoziologie 1993), edited by Arno Pilgram, 169–177. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Schirmer, Uwe. 1996. “Grundzüge, Aufgaben und Probleme einer Staatsbildungsund Staatsfinanzgeschichte in Sachsen. Vom Spätmittelalter bis in die Augusteische Zeit.” Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte 67: 31–70. Simmel, Georg. (1908) 1992. Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, edited by Otthein Rammstedt (Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe 11). Frankfurt, Main: Suhrkamp. [StFilA Bautzen, 50009 OA Budissin, no. 6030:] Sächsisches Staatsarchiv – Staatsfilialarchiv Bautzen, 50009 Oberamt Budissin, no. 6030: Ein auf dem sogenannten Diebswege bei Niederleutersdorf vorgefallener Grenzexzess und die dabei stattgefundene Tötung einiger böhmischer Pascher (1835). [StFilA Bautzen, 50095 HZA Zittau, no. 58:] Sächsisches Staatsarchiv – Staatsfilialarchiv Bautzen, 50095 Hauptzollamt Zittau, no. 58: Grenz- und Schleichhandel (1834–1889). [StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no.  516:] Sächsisches Staatsarchiv  – Staatsfilialarchiv Bautzen, 50012 Kreisdirektion/Kreishauptmannschaft Baut-

162  | Katrin Lehnert zen, no. 516: Die Niederlassung und Verheirathung von Ausländern in hiesigen Landen betreffend (1850). [StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no.  4556:] Sächsisches Staatsarchiv  – Staatsfilialarchiv Bautzen, 50012 Kreisdirektion/Kreishauptmannschaft Bautzen, no. 4556: Die Legitimationen der Tagelöhner (1835–1842). [StFilA Bautzen, 50012 KD/KH Bautzen, no.  4669:] Sächsisches Staatsarchiv  – Staatsfilialarchiv Bautzen, 50012 Kreisdirektion/Kreishauptmannschaft Bautzen, no.  4669: Legitimationen der ausländischen Arbeiter in der Glasfabrik Scheckthal (1851–1856). Stoklásková, Zdeňka. 2000. “Fremdsein in Böhmen und Mähren. Der Reisepaß als Voraussetzung für den Eintritt von Fremden nach Österreich.” In Grenze und Staat. Paßwesen, Staatsbürgerschaft, Heimatrecht und Fremdengesetzgebung in der österreichischen Monarchie 1750–1867, edited by Waltraud Heindl, and Edith Saurer, 621–718. Wien: Böhlau. Vieweg, Rolf. 1999. Die böhmische Enklave Schirgiswalde zwischen Österreich und Sachsen von 1809 bis 1845. Hamburg: Gunter Oettel. Wadauer, Sigrid. 2008. “Historische Migrationsforschung. Überlegungen zu Möglichkeiten und Hindernissen.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 19 (1): 6–14. Zollgesetz, 3/4/1838, §  24, In Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt für das Königreich Sachsen vom Jahre 1838: 290–300.

IV. Gendered Im/mobilities

From the “Periphery” to the “Centre”: Cross-Border Marriages between Mainland Chinese Women and Hong Kong Men Avital Binah-Pollak Almost one third of all marriages which took place in Hong Kong in 2013 were between Hong Kong men and mainland Chinese women (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 2013). Previous studies on cross-border marriages between mainland women and Hong Kong men focused primarily on Hong Kong’s social, economic and political context and how it has shaped and influenced the migrants’ experiences after they received the one-way permit (OWP) and permanently immigrated to Hong Kong (Chan 2014; Ma 2012; Newendorp 2008, 2010). Ornellas’ (2014) study is exceptional because it aims at understanding the complexities which emerge during the period when the mainland wives still hold a visitor immigration status. While these studies concentrated mainly on the difficulties that mainland marriage migrants experience in Hong Kong and on their integration into Hong Kong society, they took for granted the women’s motivations and the circumstances that encouraged the women to migrate across the border. Cross-border marriages between mainland women and Hong Kong men are not simply a result of Hong Kong’s men inability to find a suitable local woman, as suggested by previous studies. The marriage migrants I came to know in Sheung Shui (North District of Hong Kong) did not meet their husbands in Hong Kong, but while they were working (dagong) in Guangdong Province (Chinese province north of Hong Kong). Similar to millions of other female peasant workers, they left their villages in their late teens and travelled thousands of miles to one of China’s coastal cities in search of employment and better opportunities. The women’s experiences as labour migrants, as well as the social connections they made during the time they spent working in mainland China, have a major influence on their everyday lives even after they legally immigrated to Hong Kong. Moreover, as I will discuss throughout this chapter, the reasons which encouraged them to leave their home provinces have a significant impact on their perception of Hong Kong and the fact that they continue living in Hong Kong despite the difficulties they experience. More specifically, I argue that in order to understand the phenomenon

166  | Avital Binah-Pollak of cross-border marriages between mainland women and Hong Kong men, it is essential to consider the women’s inner migration process in mainland China as it constitutes a major and significant part of their marriage–migration narrative. I intend to focus on mainland China’s social, economic and political conditions which encouraged the women to migrate to one of China’s coastal cities and, as a result, meet their future husbands and immigrate to Hong Kong. However, following Freeman (2001), instead of demonstrating that the women’s actions are a result of structural conditions, I aim to expose the crossing points between their local practices and the structural conditions, and to discuss the constraints and opportunities, as well as the women’s actions as agents. I will focus on the physical and symbolic journey mainland women who married Hong Kong men experienced, and will highlight the different meanings “mobility” and “immobility” have in contemporary China and Hong Kong. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the marriage migrants’ different individual strategies to achieve mobility and how they are intertwined in their migration narrative. This study is based on 13 months of fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 among families residing in Hong Kong which consist of a mainland wife, a Hong Kong husband and one or more children. My ethnographic work included participant observations and interviews. I also conducted dozens of conversations and structured interviews with mainland Chinese labour migrants and Hong Kong local activists. Most of the interviews were conducted in Mandarin, while some were conducted in English. The names used throughout this chapter are pseudonyms.

G endered im /mobilities Variables such as gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and class influence people’s ability to migrate. Although gender is significant in understanding different processes related to globalization and migration, most studies about migration up to the 1970s focused primarily on men, while women were presumed to play a passive role as companions (DeLaet 1999, 13; Mahler and Pessar 2003). The attempt to “compensate” for women’s absence ended up in studies “about female migrants” and did not lead to a significant change which is characterised by a gendered analysis of the migration processes (Gaetano and Yeoh 2010, 2–3). Towards the end of the twentieth century, studies began to focus on the individual gendered experiences, the agency of women migrants and the way in which these experiences intersected with dominant social discourses and practices. These studies highlighted the idea that women who are immobilized in their own societies due to structural conditions, choose migration as a strategy to search for better opportunities. Most studies that used gender as an analytic construct focused on the “international division of reproductive labour” (Perreñas 2006). This division refers to

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the growing pattern of women from developing countries (with a large percentage from Asia) who migrate to developed countries and regions, usually to work in the export processing regions or as domestic workers. This division of labour enabled global production by providing a cheap and disposable labour force, thus creating “a gendered and radicalized world order” (Yang and Lu 2010, 16). These studies also emphasised women’s agency, their ability to influence their own fate and, in general, women’s own capability to become mobile (Constable 2007; Gaetano and Jacka 2004; Jacka 2006; Ong 1991). The first major theme which arises from studies about female labour migration is women’s agency and their ability to influence their own fate. Constable (2007), for example, in her study on Philippine domestic workers in Hong Kong, shows that although many of the women experience great difficulties living away from their families and, in many cases, suffer from bad employment conditions, they are not docile or passive. Constable argues that the women are conscious of their actions and that they strive to resist in their own ways and for their own benefits. Aiwha Ong (1991), in her studies about gender and the politics of labour, argues that although Chinese female migrants are regularly exploited by the contracting services and by the factories, they still experience feelings of personal freedom since they were living as single women in dormitories, have more consuming power and are able to delay marriage. The female migrants’ feelings of personal freedom described by Constable and Ong are reinforced in two other studies which were conducted on rural-to-urban female migrants in mainland China: Gaetano and Jacka (2004) and Jacka (2006). According to Gaetano and Jacka (2004), the female migrants’ experiences led them to a feeling of independence and empowerment, especially since they left behind the authority of their parents or in-laws (4). The second issue which comes up in studies about female labour migration is the politics of labour identity. Pun Ngai (1999, 3), in her study about women factory workers in Shenzhen, argues that three major factors influence the women’s new social identity inside the workplace: the urban–rural dichotomy, and regional and gender inequalities. Besides the rural–urban and the regional distinction which Ngai points out, Sun (2009) argues that another important factor which influences the migrant’s experience is the division between locals (bendiren) and outsiders (waidiren). In a study on rural domestic workers in Beijing, Sun shows that although most rural migrants leave their home to escape their rural identity, as it turns out, their mobility does not usually help them shed rurality. Instead, they become more “rural” and less “civilized” in the new urban surroundings. The images of the poor rural areas are part of a hegemonic discourse based on a structural dichotomy between “centers and peripheries, knower and known, and the independent and the dependent”. This structurally unequal relationship concludes that those who migrate to the “centre” from the “periphery” (for example, less developed provinces) become subalterns in the city and almost always gain the status of having low suzhi (quality) (Sun 2009, 618).

168  | Avital Binah-Pollak As part of the growing phenomenon of worldwide migration, studies in recent years have begun to focus on cross-border and transnational marriages around the world. This phenomenon did not practically exist in the early-1990s. However, the percentage of foreign brides has risen dramatically in the second decade of the twenty-first century, especially in East Asia (Kawaguchi and Lee 2012). Cross-border marriages are also common in Europe. While in Europe and the US, marriages including a foreign spouse are usually a result of migration, in Asian countries, migration is usually followed by marriage (The Economist 2011). This pattern of migration has a significant influence on the marriage migrants’ social position in their receiving societies. Many of the marriages have an unstable foundation because, in most cases, the wife depends on her citizen partner for legal status (Friedman 2012). Cross-border marriages were usually framed under the “international division of reproductive labor” up to the late-twentieth century (Parreñas 2001). Under this framework, cross-border marriage migrants were considered a “commodification of reproductive labor” (ibid.). Although this framework is useful for understanding a gendered analysis of migration, it does not make a distinction between labour migration and marriage migration. This distinction is extremely important because marriage migrants in Hong Kong, as opposed to labour migrants, are entitled to receive the Hong Kong Identity Card (HKID), which provides them with a legal status. Although the phenomenon of cross-border marriages between Hong Kong men and mainland wives has a tremendous influence on Hong Kong society, relatively few studies have been conducted on the topic. Ornellas’ study (2014) focuses on the migrants’ and their families’ engagement in political organising to claim citizenship rights. Newendorp’s study (2008) is based on ethnographic work conducted between 2001 and 2002 at a social welfare centre in Kowloon. The main focus of this study are the difficulties mainland female immigrants in Hong Kong experience while trying to adapt to their new lives. In an article published in 2010, based on interviews that the author conducted a few years later than the former research with some of the same women, Newendorp demonstrates that, contrary to her previous study (2008) which depicted the migrant women as somewhat passive, her new findings demonstrate that some of the women have gained positions of responsibility, took pleasure in their jobs and focused on their new employment as a positive way to characterise their life experiences in Hong Kong (Newendorp 2008). Lau (2008) argues that after migrating to Hong Kong, the women go through a process of losing their “mainland identity” in order to gain a local one. Lau’s study focuses on the everyday experiences of the women in Hong Kong and on the different themes and practices which they need to learn in order to “acquire” their new identity. So (2003) aims at understanding Hong Kong’s men motivations for marrying a woman from across the border. The first reason is related to Hong Kong’s demo-

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graphics: statistical data shows that there has been an imbalance in the sex composition of the population of marriageable age in Hong Kong in the past few decades. So argues that the sex ratio increased from 109.2 males for every 100 females to 115.8 males for every 100 females as a result of the massive flow of mainland immigrants during the 1970s. He goes on to argue not only that men outnumbered women, but also the mainland migrants were in a disadvantaged position and it was easier for them to find a mainland wife than a Hong Kong woman (ibid., 525). A second explanation suggested by So (2003) is related to the social position of the men. Hong Kong men who marry mainland women are usually working-class men who, in many cases, are unable to find a suitable wife in Hong Kong, and they find it easier to marry a mainland wife since “they have much more to offer to rural mainland Chinese women than they can offer to Hong Kong women of similar age and education”  (ibid., 524). In addition, Hong Kong men believe that mainland women are “more stable, less sophisticated, and less picky than Hong Kong women, and thus would give them a greater sense of control and security” (ibid., 525). While the dramatic sex ratio might explain marriages which took place during the 1970s and the early-1980s, they fail to explain the large number of cross-border marriages which intensified during the late-1990s after Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty. Based on the Hong Kong National Statistics Bureau, an imbalance in the sex composition continued to exist at the end of the twentieth century, but it was not as acute as it was during the 1970s and 1980s.1 Moreover, similar to previous studies which focused mostly on the implications of the marriages on the women’s everyday lives and on Hong Kong’s society (Newendorp 2008, 2010; Yau 2010), So (2003) does not explore the conditions which enabled the marriages from the women’s perspectives.2 The marriage migrants I came to know in Sheung Shui, although married to local Hong Kong men, did not meet their husband in Hong Kong, but while they were working in Guangdong Province. In other words, mainland women who marry Hong Kong men pass through at least three different living spaces: the village or small town in which they grew up, the region in which they worked as labour migrants and Hong Kong. Each of these spaces is characterised by different legal, political and social systems and, thereby, influences the women’s social status and mobility opportunities.

1 | The sex ratio in 2000 was 103.4 males for every 100 females. In 2005, it rose to 108.69 males for every 100 females (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 2012). 2 | So mentions briefly that the main reason mainland women find it attractive to marry a Hong Kong men is related to the economic gap between Hong Kong and mainland China (So 2010, 525–526).

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The first step in a long journey The first step the mainland women I came to know in Sheung Shui took in order to change their social position was to leave China’s inner provinces and to migrate to the coastal areas. This strategy is considered in China as moving from the “periphery” to the “centre”. The women’s migration within China constitutes a major and significant part of their cross-border marriage narrative. The number of rural-to-urban labour migrants has been growing rapidly as part of China’s economic development since the early-1980s. Surveys on female rural-to-urban migration in mainland China estimate that around 35  per cent of all labour migrants were female during the 1990s, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, female migrants constituted about half of all labour migrants (Luo 2006, 69). In Shenzhen, where most of the women I came to know met their husband, the number of labour migrants rose from less than 1 per cent in 1979 to 72 per cent in 1994 (Kuhn 2010, 9). Moreover, Shenzhen has the largest concentration of female migrants between the ages of 15 and 29 (Liang and Chen 2004). In Pun Ngai’s (2004) study in factories in Shenzhen, she found that 90 per cent of the total labour force in the light manufacturing industries was “young, female, and under 25 years of age” (30). In other words, Shenzhen’s growth has depended, to a large extent, on rural female labour migrants. Several factors influence single rural women towards choosing labour migration as a strategy to achieve social mobility. The first factor is China’s hukou system and its influence on the rural sector.3 The basic idea of the hukou system is that any Chinese citizen has a “residential status” which is classified by two related parts: the geographical location in which a person is supposedly residing and the type of hukou (“agricultural” or “non-agricultural”). The hukou system’s original aim was to monitor the country’s mechanism of population movements. However, over the years, the system has been used by the government to limit and control migration, especially from the rural to the urban sector. Studies compare the hukou system during the Mao era (1949–1976) to a “domestic passport system” which divided the population into two “castes”. During the 1980s, although peasants were able to leave their hometowns and migrate to one of China’s cities, the social boundary which began during the Mao era continued to exist. Moreover, it created a cultural boundary which turned the peasants into “marginal citizens” (Fong and Murphy 2006). Since Mao Zedong’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China has undergone significant economic and social reforms which have had a dramatic influence on the rural and the urban sectors. Since 1978, China’s economic growth has been extremely rapid, reaching close to 10  per cent a year for three 3 | The translation of the word hukou is population but it is used mostly in relation to the residential status.

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decades and generating dramatic improvements in the average living standards of the Chinese citizens (Beaver, Hou, and Wang 1995; Whyte 2010, 4). Although China has undergone massive economic reforms, statistics on the average income of urban and rural households show that the gap between the rural and the urban sector has widened further since the end of the 1970s. The mainland women I met in Sheung Shui had left their homes during the 1990s when the gap between the rural and the urban sector was very large and the coastal cities were progressing economically at an extreme rate in comparison to the inland rural areas. Although poverty is considered a major motivation for out-migration, Jacka’s (2006, 134) survey demonstrates that young single rural migrants’ main reason for migration is not the economic necessity or past experiences of deprivation or suffering. The most frequently cited reasons for out-migration in her study were actually: “to develop myself” (48.9 per cent), “to broaden my horizon” (38 per cent), “to exercise independence” (32.6 per cent) and for my education” (30 per cent). This survey demonstrates that the women are concerned with their own future and that they had a desire to gain new experiences and develop themselves. Moreover, they viewed the village as constraining and the city as a place which had the ability to fulfil their hopes. Lou et al. (2004, 219) also conclude that single migrants are more interested in developing themselves and less with worrying about providing a secure future for themselves and their families. When I asked A-lin why she left her hometown at the age of fifteen, she replied: “I wanted to look at the outside world, to grow up and experience (chuxi); I wanted to find employment, to earn money and to change my living conditions (gaibian jiating shenghuo).” A-lin’s reply was similar to the replies I received from other informants who also told me that they left the countryside to find employment and to “change their lives” (gaibian ziji de shenghuo). Although some of the women experienced concrete economic difficulties while growing up, for most of them, the poor conditions in the villages were perceived as limiting on the personal level. The gap between the rural and the urban sector does not influence young men and women in a similar way. Young rural women’s motivations for becoming labour migrants are closely linked to the rural female’s position in their families and in society (Fan and Huang 1998, 231). Although there are indications that women’s labour opportunities in rural areas have increased as a result of the economic reforms, young women are still considered marginal to the rural economy and men usually have a better chance of obtaining non-agricultural work. As a result, families tend to value their daughters’ domestic and agricultural labour over their education. Studies also demonstrated that women workers were gradually eased out of the labour force to take primary responsibility for their homes and their families’ welfare (Beaver, Hou, and Wang 1995, 208). As a result of rapid industrial development, the traditional notion that “men are in charge of the outside, and women are in charge of the inside things” (nan zhu wai; nu zhu nei) has re-emerged, and

172  | Avital Binah-Pollak with it, a new social status of the housewife (Zhang and Ma 1988 in Beaver, Hou, and Wang 1995, 12). Although the position of women in society and in their families has changed significantly over the years, gender inequality in contemporary China has not declined dramatically (Fan and Huang 1998, 230). Rural women in contemporary China continue to be subject to various constraints which limit their social, economic and physical mobility. In order to escape their rural destiny, the marriage migrants I came to know in Sheung Shui decided to choose labour migration as a strategy to achieve social mobility. However, for most labour migrants, social, economic and political constraints continue to influence their ability to acquire a local hukou and the opportunity to improve their social status in the city. As a result, many choose to return to their village after a few years of working in the city (Han, Huang, and Han 2011, 209). From the women’s perspective, marrying across the border and obtaining an HKID is another step in their journey towards acquiring social mobility. The meaning of becoming a Hong Kong permanent resident is related to the way in which Hong Kong is envisioned by the women and to the way in which “the other side of the border” is mediated by Chinese state and other social agents. These powerful imaginations have influenced the way in which people collectively envision the world in which they live and their own “positionalities and mobilities within it” (Salazar 2011, 577; see also Morley 2000).

H ong K ong as an imagined centre One morning, after having breakfast with several mainland women, I joined them for a stroll in one of Sheung Shui’s shopping centres. Although Sheung Shui is a relatively small town, it has several new shopping centres with an array of fashionable brands and expensive shops. As we strolled the stores, tried on clothes and learned about new make-up and cosmetic products, we entered one of the stores which specialise in imported cosmetics, and A‑min, A‑xia and Chun began to contemplate which products they would like to purchase. I noticed that they were looking at three women who just entered the store. The women, who were speaking Cantonese, examined the products but did not purchase anything and left the store after a few moments. I thought that the mainland migrants knew the women who just entered the store, but when I asked them, they immediately replied they did not know them and that they were looking at them because “they are tourists from Guangzhou (mainland China)”. I wondered if they were able to guess that the women were from mainland China by listening to their accent, but A-xia explained: “It is easy to tell they are from the mainland because of their clothes and the way they walk.” The episode I described above is a manifestation of the common views Sheung Shui mainland marriage migrants shared about mainland China, mainland Chinese people and Hong

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Kong. The mainland marriage migrants seemed to have a certain image of what mainland tourists in Hong Kong “look like” and “act like”, and in their everyday day lives, they made a clear distinction between the mainland tourists, who were temporary guests, and themselves, who were Hong Kong permanent residents. The boundary Sheung Shui marriage migrants drew between “us” and “them” is similar to the distinction urban hukou holders make when referring to the rural labour migrants (waidai ren) who they perceive as temporary guests in their cities. The emphasis on Hong Kong’s superiority is closely related to the discussion about the different meanings and usage of the term suzhi (quality). In contemporary Chinese society, the concept suzhi has become “highly mobile and seems capable of being deployed in almost any context in which comparisons between individuals, communities, and populations are being made regardless of gender, location, class, or ethnicity (or indeed because of them)” (Sun 2009, 618). Studies began to show how the term suzhi has entered discourses regarding the rural/urban division. Sun (2009) argues that suzhi is usually found lacking in rural labour migrants who have moved to one of China’s wealthier metropolises and industrial centres. The term has been widely used to criticise the various scarcities regarding rural migrants from the “lack of formal schooling and low literacy to poor personal hygiene and table manners”  (618). Mobility to an urban area, in other words, does not help the migrant shed rurality and gain “quality”. As opposed to rural migrants, who are considered “outsiders” (waidi) with “low suzi” (suzhi di), being a Hong Kong permanent resident enabled the Sheung Shui marriage migrants to institutionally situate themselves as “locals” (bendi). Marrying a Hong Kong man enabled them to gain a permanent social status and to “build quality” into themselves and their children.

The H ong K ong I dentity C ard (HKID) as a mobility regulation The marriage migrants I came to know in Sheung Shui had to wait a period of about five to seven years before they received their permit to live permanently in Hong Kong. Nicole Constable (2014) claims that because Hong Kong is not a nation-state, “citizenship may be a strange word to use in relation to Hong Kong” (10). However, based on Hong Kong’s Basic Law,4 people with the right to abode in Hong Kong hold the status “Hong Kong permanent residents”. As a legal category, permanent residency bears basically the status of local citizenship, which safeguards one’s rights to unconditional stay in the territory and freedom from deportation (Ku 2001, 260). Arrangements for family reunions between Hong Kong and mainland residents have been governed by the Chinese authorities since 1980 by the OWP 4 | The Basic Law came into effect upon Hong Kong’s return to China on 1 July 1997.

174  | Avital Binah-Pollak scheme. Each application for family reunion is given a certain amount of points based on the family’s situation. The quotas are set to about 55,000 people per year, and the system enables the mainland Chinese authorities to control the flow of immigrants from mainland China. The OWP scheme is justified in the context of the Chinese government’s agreed human rights obligations regarding “facilitating family reunification at a rate that Hong Kong’s economic and social infrastructure can absorb without excessive strain” (Bacon-Shone, Lam, and Yip 2008). On the day that A‑lin’s HKID was approved, her husband took a day off from work, they went to pick up the card together and to celebrate in a shopping centre in Shatin. A-lin was very excited and it seemed as if it was a huge relief for her. Receiving an HKID has a significant meaning to mainland immigrants in Hong Kong; the following episode from my field notes gives another illustration for this point. During one of our Cantonese breakfasts together, I mentioned that I had just returned from a doctor’s appointment. The women seated around the table asked me about my appointment and were interested to know which clinic I visited, and I explained that it was a local public clinic. They next enquired whether it was expensive for foreigners to use Hong Kong’s health services. I replied that because I was a Doctorate student in a Hong Kong university I was entitled to receive an HKID which enabled my family and me free access to health care in Hong Kong. The women seemed so surprised that I had received the HKID only a few weeks after arriving in Hong Kong and asked me if I could show them the card. After handing over my Identity Card, the women passed it around the table and examined it. A-yan took out her own card, compared it to mine and explained that opposed to them, although I held an HKID and was entitled to free health care, I was not considered a Hong Kong permanent resident, and that might be the reason I received my Identity Card so quickly. In other words, the HKID signified an institutional belonging to Hong Kong and not only represented a vague idea about a desired life. It was clear that this card had a significant meaning to them. Hong Kong social benefits (Xianggang fuli) comprise a wide range of significant services including free education for children, free health care, public housing for eligible citizens and others. These services, which are provided by Hong Kong’s government, are considered by numerous mainland people I have talked with to be superb and one of the most important advantages Hong Kong has to offer its citizens. The Sheung Shui marriage migrants used to emphasise the advantages of Hong Kong’s social services and they often compared them with “the way things are in mainland China”. One of the benefits which was usually brought up during our conversations was Hong Kong’s free medical care. Mainlanders I have interviewed in Shenzhen also emphasised that free medical care was one of the most important advantages Hong Kong offers its citizens. The contrast between mainland Chinese citizens’ access to medical care and the health benefits Hong Kong offers its citizens is evident in the following example.

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One day A‑lin received a telephone call from her brother in Hunan Province. Her brother explained that his wife, who was eight months pregnant with their first child, had gone into early labour, apparently as a result of food poisoning. At the hospital, the couple lost their baby due to the wife’s serious condition. The wife continued to be in a critical condition and was hospitalized for further treatment. A‑lin’s brother and his wife both hold a rural hukou and A‑lin explained that they do not have health insurance because it is too expensive and will not receive the health care they deserve. She added that the doctors in mainland China “only care about the money they will receive from patients and that the health care a patient receives is related to the amount of money a person is able to pay”. A‑lin decided to help her brother and to send him 20,000 RMB (around 3,300 USD). When A‑lin and Wang Jian, a mainland marriage migrant and A‑lin’s close friend, discussed A‑lin’s brother’s situation, they criticized mainland China’s hospitals, the Chinese doctors, who lack a sense of morality, and also the low quality of street food. A‑lin said: “No wonder his wife got food poisoning. She should not have bought street food.” During the period her sister-in-law was hospitalized, A-lin was very worried about her brother and his wife, but, at the same time, I noticed that she felt very secure as to her own social position. Mainland Chinese people from different social backgrounds I interviewed in Shenzhen usually emphasised the sharp difference between Hong Kong’s superb welfare system and the lack of a comparable welfare system in mainland China, especially for rural hukou holders. As an example, in a conversation I conducted with a mainland couple who live and work in Guangzhou, they praised Hong Kong’s excellent social services. The wife argued that although mainland Chinese people who hold an urban hukou and work in one of China’s cities are entitled to some kind of medical care, it does not usually cover the basic expenses when visiting a physician. She further explained that when she went to see a doctor a week earlier, her medical insurance covered only a small portion of her expenses and, as a result, she had to pay for the medical care and the medicine by herself. She concluded that, consequently, many mainlanders, including herself, do not feel “safe” living in mainland China. The marriage migrants I came to know in Sheung Shui, similar to other labour migrants, were considered by the Chinese government as a “floating population” (liudong renkou) and by the local population as “outsiders” (waidi ren). As waidi ren, they were entitled to very few of the social benefits offered by the government to residents born in urban areas, such as medical insurance, housing subsidies, pensions and educational opportunities for children (Han, Huang, and Han 2011). However, after migrating to Hong Kong, the marriage migrants managed to change their legal status. Obtaining an HKID meant that they have received the OWP, are legally part of Hong Kong’s society and are entitled to all of the social benefits they lacked when they lived in the village or as labour migrants in the city.

176  | Avital Binah-Pollak The HKID and the social benefits that come along with it enabled the marriage migrants to differentiate themselves from mainland tourists, mainland Chinese citizens in general and, most importantly, from their previous social position as labour migrants. These were, in fact, the tools with which they could draw a boundary between “us” and “them”. The card marked the significant change in their legal status, as well as their higher suzhi in comparison to the mainland tourists and especially the labour migrants, who are perceived in mainland China as “marginal citizens” (Fong and Murphy 2006) and as having low suzhi.

N egotiating the cultural and social boundaries in everyday life During the period when I conducted my first fieldwork between 2010 and 2011, most of the marriage migrants’ children were of kindergarten age. Every morning after the mothers had taken their children to the kindergarten, they regularly went to have breakfast together. It was usually a fixed group of six women, but often other mothers who lived nearby joined our morning gatherings as well. The breakfast gatherings were an important part of the day. The women usually went to a traditional Cantonese tea-house and spent between one to two hours eating, drinking and chatting. After breakfast, the women did not return home but strolled through the streets, hung out in the shopping centres, bought groceries in the market and went to pick up the children at noon. In many cases, on our way back from the kindergarten, we would make plans for the afternoon and dinner. The important thing was that the decision on how to spend the day was made as a group. In addition to the breakfasts together, playing the Chinese tile game of mahjong was a major component of the women’s everyday lives. The game took place in one of the women’s homes and, in addition to the four players, other women usually joined the group and the game turned into a social event. The games lasted between two hours and a whole day. In some cases, although the women began to play when the children were still at the kindergarten, the game continued for a long time and one of the guests was sent to pick up the children. The breakfasts, the mah-jong playing and other gatherings which usually took place during the holidays were liminal spheres: on the one hand, the women sat in a local restaurant, acted according to the local customs and enjoyed local food. On the other hand, their husbands and children were absent and it gave them an opportunity to discuss their everyday worries and troubles. It was a sphere in which they were neither “mothers” nor “wives”. At the same time, these get-togethers highlighted the women’s social position as immigrants and their isolation in Hong Kong; during these gatherings, they were mainland women immigrants in Hong Kong. Sheung Shui marriage migrants often expressed a desire to find employment. A-min told me that she was very bored at home and that she would love to learn

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English and then find a job. However, contrary to their previous experience as labour migrants, and although many of the families could have used the extra income, most of the women I knew in Sheung Shui did not work outside their homes. The women’s level of education and relatively low Cantonese proficiency contributed to their lack of employment opportunities. On top of that, Wang Jian also explained that because their parents live in mainland China and they did not have any help from other family members, they needed to stay home and take care of the children when they returned home from kindergarten. Some of the women told me that the main reason they did not look for a job was that their husbands preferred that they did not work. Wang Jian explained: We can’t work because there is no one to take care of the kids. Hong Kong grandparents don’t want to take care of a baby whose mother is from China. Hong Kong women earn 20,000 HKD (2,580 USD) a month, so they can afford a nanny, but if we work we would earn around 8,000 HKD (1,032 USD); 5,000 HKD (640 USD) would go to the nanny, so it is not worth going to work.

The women’s employment opportunities changed when their children began to attend primary school. Unlike kindergarten, primary school lasted every weekday from 8 am to 4 pm, which left the women with more free time. After their child/ren began to attend first grade, some of the women found employment. A‑lin began to volunteer at her son’s school a few hours each day, three days a week. She told me: “Although I don’t earn any money, it makes me feel whole.” Wang Jian and A‑yang, who told me previously that their husbands preferred that they stayed home and invest their time in taking care of their child/ren, began to work as well. They helped prepare lunch boxes for school children, three days a week, three hours a day, and earned 100 HKD (17 USD) per day. A‑lin explained that “although it is not a lot of money, they are very happy”. In a study on the integration of mainland migrant women in Hong Kong, Newendorp (2010) demonstrates that some of the women have gained positions of responsibility, took pleasure in their jobs and focused on their new employment as a positive way to characterise their life experiences in Hong Kong. This was contrary to the findings of her previous study (2008), which depicted mainland migrant women as somewhat passive. Newendorp concludes that the women’s workplaces provided a “way” into Hong Kong society. Although many of the women I met in Sheung Shui found employment when their child/ren began to attend primary school, as opposed to Newendorp’s findings, they did not treat their job as a major part of their everyday lives. They explained that they were bored at home now their child was at school and that they wanted to find “something to do”. A few months after A‑min began to work she told me: I spend my time pretty much as before, like a housewife. From Monday to Friday I am busy making breakfasts and packed lunches for my son’s school. During the morning I also do some volunteer work

178  | Avital Binah-Pollak at the school. If I don’t go to the school, I meet with friends and have breakfast, play cards, but recently I don’t play as much as before. In the evenings, I make my son dinner and then we do the homework together. On the weekends, my husband returns and we go to eat outside, drink coffee.

The excerpt above demonstrates that A‑min’s job does not occupy an important part of her day. Sheung Shui marriage migrants’ jobs were usually temporary; some of them quit after a few months and either changed jobs or stopped working. The “boredom” they felt was in sharp contrast to their previous experience as labour migrants. Sheung Shui marriage migrants used to recall that although working in Shenzhen was very tiring, they felt free and, most importantly, independent because they earned their own living. After migrating to Hong Kong, they were anchored to their homes and the social gatherings became a way to express their freedom. Yet, this was a form of freedom that existed within the context of limited social mobility and was usually practiced in the confined and crowded spaces of their private homes.

C oncluding thoughts China has undergone great changes in social structure and class hierarchy since the economic reforms of 1978. The reforms contributed to the dismantling of many social classifications and divisions, such as urban and rural areas, work-unit boundaries and others (Bian 2002). As a result of the economic reforms and social discourses about the “improvement of the population”, the pursuit of social mobility has become a major component in mainland Chinese people’s lives. One of the most popular means which rural mainland Chinese used to “move up” has been the strategy of labour migration. Migration from the village to an urban area holds great opportunities and contributes to geographic, occupational and class mobility. However, studies show that after the initial upward move from the rural to urban labour force, most migrant peasant workers are unable to move up to higher positions in urban industries, even when changing between jobs (Li 2004). Many migrants experience exclusion and numerous social disadvantages in urban areas and, thus, continue to be a marginalized group (Fong and Murphy, 2005; Han, Huang, and Han 2011). This social exclusion has effectively prevented rural migrants from attaining urban status, which is still considered higher than rural status (Han, Huang, and Han 2011, 206–207). Although there have been significant changes in China’s hukou system in recent years, the significance of hukou conversion on social mobility is still very large. As argued by Zhang and Treiman (2013), it is a crucial pathway to achieving institutional upward mobility. Instead of returning to their villages after a few years of working in Shenzhen, marrying a Hong Kong man became the next step in the marriage migrants’ journey towards acquiring institutional social mobility.

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The growing cross-border activities in recent years have resulted in Hong Kong locals fear growing for their city’s future. Most media devices have been treating mainland immigrants as “outsiders”, “exploiters” and “intruders”. Exemplarily, a video of an argument between a local passenger and a mainland mother who was giving a snack to her child on the Hong Kong subway train was uploaded to YouTube in February 2012, receiving more than one million views within a few days. The video also received hundreds of offensive comments, among them: “mainlanders have no manners”, “they are all farmers” and “[they] are not welcome in Hong Kong”. Hong Kong peoples’ negative attitudes have a tremendous influence on the marriage migrants’ everyday lives. Although they have managed to obtain legal status, they are situated at the margins and experience alienation from indigenous Hong Kong society on a regular basis. Moreover, while their initial intention was to escape their rural destiny, after migrating to Hong Kong, the traditional notion that “men are in charge of the outside things and women are in charge of the inside things” became once again the women’s everyday experience. Sheung Shui marriage migrants spent most of their time taking care of the household and the children, and their work outside the home sphere evolved around the spare time they had left. On the other hand, in the eyes of the women, being a Hong Kong permanent resident symbolises the ability to build suzhi into themselves and, most importantly, into their child/ren. Even though they are confined within the social and cultural boundaries by which they are surrounded, they also manage to negotiate them in their everyday lives, thus, creating spaces in which they become mobile and support each other.

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Dislocating Punjabiyat: Gendered Mobilities among Indian Diasporas in Italy Sara Bonfanti

I ntroduction: constraints and opportunities in transnational migration

The new “mobility turn” (Sheller and Urry 2006) in “the age of migration” (Castles and Miller 2007) has become paradigmatic in sociological and anthropological thought (Faist 2013) during more than the last decade. However, ever increasing ethnographies within migration studies have proved that mobility and stillness are not mutually exclusive (Adey 2006; Cresswell 2010; Werbner 2008), rather that the possibility for individuals and groups to move across space tangles with a ceaseless production and dismantling of borders and crossings, material as well as symbolic. Global interconnectedness seems evermore sought after, but critically uneven; mobilities and inequalities are tightly linked in a non-linear way (Soderstrom et al. 2013). This paper explores some dilemmas associated with human mobility practices and processes of social differentiation in the Punjabi “culture of migration” (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011). Why do Punjabis move out of their homeland and what are the personal and structural conditions that render their journeys more or less feasible or successful? A macro-region whose borders are historically hazy and contested, the Punjab is identified today with both the homonymous Indian Federal State and the wider north-western area of the Indian subcontinent, marked by the national frontier between India and Pakistan. While the Punjab has long been deemed a land of hypermobility (Axel 2001; Blunt 2007), the contemporary paths of Punjabi Diasporas transiting to and resettling in Europe and particular Italy (a country which hosts to date the largest Indian minority on the continent, second only to the UK post-colonial migration; Lum 2012) provide an insight into how territorial borders and social crossings are reproduced, challenged or defied in transnational migrations. Though physical mobility within and out of the Punjab, besides depending on socio-economic capital and manoeuvring geopolitical borders, is often thought of as fostering upward social mobility, such an equation becomes

184  | Sara Bonfanti ambiguous once the emigrant has moved to the other side of migration, where they qualify as an immigrant, enmeshed in new social relations and “glocal” hierarchies (Kearney 1995). The empirical material presented here draws from the multi-sited ethnography (Falzon 2009; Marcus 1995) I carried out between Lombardy and the Punjab for almost two years (from September 2012 to May 2014) as part of my doctoral research project. After sketching the sending context of the Punjabi migration, I will raise some critical issues emerging from my data, focusing on the lives and narratives of first- and second-generation immigrants in Bergamo and Brescia, so as to compare and discuss personal accounts of spatial and social mobility. Since I accessed the field and built my ethnographic relations through a reflexive gender dimension, I chose to adopt an intersectional stance (McCall 2005; Purkayastha 2012; Yuval-Davis 2011) regarding a selected sample of women interlocutors. As I interpret my informants’ mobility experiences, paying special attention to family ties, I consider how multiple social variables (such as age, class/caste, faith, education/occupation, nationality) might work jointly in allowing or denying actors moving across spaces over their life-course. The gendered lived experience of my research participants will prove, being embedded in densely networked migration routes, that they might have either chosen or been imposed upon, flanked between structure and agency, regulatory restraints and self-determination (Benhabib and Resnik 2009).

A note on vocabulary and method: interpreting diasporic Punjabiness Claiming a distinctive “Punjabi identity” against a pan-Indian national belonging or a wider South Asian orientation (Werbner 2008), what my interlocutors called Punjabiyat (“Punjabiness” in English, a second idiom for most Indians, migrants or not; Ayres 2008) encompasses complex world-views and habitus. Hybrid for centuries, due to continual foreign invasions and cross-cultural exchange, Punjabi heritage stretches across northern India and overlaps the Pakistani border (a national and religious frontier), besides being restaged and altered among its Diasporas worldwide (Jayaram 2011; Singh and Thandi 1999). Adopting a transnational perspective (Jain 2010), the time-space scenario inhabited by Punjabi migrants is not just twofold (departure and settlement), but multiple. The ancestral home, the country of abode and the prospective homeland for new generations abroad add up to lived “homes from home”, desh pardesh (Ballard 1994). Global linkages are evermore developed on the web: hundreds of Punjabi sites (including those explicitly Sikhi1) are registered online and most Indian immigrants in Italy, interacting via social media, touch base daily with transnational kin, overseas co-ethnics and devotees. 1 | Sikhi is the adjective professing Sikh people themselves adopt for self-description.

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If the refrain on Indian society upholds “unity in diversity”, Punjabi society is assumed as “diversity within diversity” whose cultural heterogeneity rests on differences in caste, region, tongue and religion. To isolate one feature of Punjabiness would be misleading, although the literature converges on “its obsessive concerns for family, community, faith and the country” (Jayaram 2011, 10). In this essay, I argue that the family stands as a prime site for “gendered ethnic identity work” among Punjabi Diasporas (Merhotra and Calasanti 2010). The tension between biraderi and parivaar2 (Malhotra and Mir 2012), the ideal endogamous kin group which constitutes one’s transnational network and the living-in household, displays how social continuity through change is played out within the cultural code of patrilocal kinship in the Diaspora (Palriwala and Uberoi 2008). Without overstating a typecast Indian patriarchy (against which leading feminist scholars have written: Dube 2001; Uberoi 2006), my qualitative data prove that male and parental control are key powers in a Punjabi family and that the first arena of many agonistic public interfaces in resettlement lies within domestic walls (ghar) (Werbner 2008). Carrying out family ethnography in the private homes of Punjabi migrants took more than intruding into small spaces concealed from public view. I found ghars, the headquarters of equally “hidden geographies” (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007), backstages where mobile subjects design and settle into motion petty or major routes that are also fastened to their intersectional positionalities as family members. Nuclear and extended kinship, the ethno-community, the local neighbourhood in the host society and global media connections all play a role in framing potential Punjabi mobilities. Assessing the displacement of Punjabi “identity”, but shunning the risk of reifying cultural change, means to grapple with how these migrants make sense of their plural and often ambivalent belongings and loyalties in different situations. It also means to observe how, in being re-territorialised, Punjabi identification is enacted through social networks rescaled in localities, but continuously transcended (Kearney 1995; Malhotra and Mir 2012). Finally, diasporic processes of social change are neither uniform nor equitable; in fact, they are liable to produce new highly differentiated spaces and subjects: centres and peripheries, dominants and marginalised (Jain 2010). Cultural diversification in the Punjabi Diaspora unfolds through social differentiation, which becomes evident tracing migrants’ trajectories or ranges of motion (Glick Schiller and Salazaar 2013). I here conceptualize mobility as constituted not only by movement, but also by meaning or ideological representations, and by power, be it economic, symbolic or political (Cresswell 2010). To pinpoint “the link between spatial and social mobility” (Kaufmann, Bergmann, and Joye 2004, 749), I refer 2 | While there is a whole vocabulary to designate different aspects of the western notion of “family” in the Punjabi language, I here focus my attention on how mobile subjects experience parivaar and biraderi, respectively, one’s affective household and their extended patrilineage.

186  | Sara Bonfanti to motility as a “movement capital” (752). Through and beyond the enactment of one’s migratory route, the capability of moving physically and symbolically (the potential for going elsewhere and raising one’s status) is the ultimate goal for most Punjabis; a twofold aim towards which they activate many resources with great personal and collective efforts.

The culture of migration in the P unjab : a historical overview Cohen and Sirkeci (2011, 10) describe a culture of migration as (…) a framework that helps migrants define their mobility in relation to their household, home, community and world (…), that relates to the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals (…) as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their sending and receiving contexts and the global patterns of social and economic life.

I highlight some critical points to portray how specific social patterns and cultural beliefs provide Punjabis with a canvas to move out: 1) the supposed demarcation between Sikh and Punjabi Diasporas, 2) the post-colonial frame of Indian transnational migration, 3) the family-engineered mobility from the Punjab, and 4) the recent development of an e-Diaspora.

Sikh and Punjabi studies: filling the gap An edgy territory, now extending from Pakistan in the West to Tibet and Nepal in the East, Northern India has always been crossed by countless and diverse migratory flows (Blunt 2007). Focusing on the massive Punjabi emigration over the past two centuries, it is crucial to reconsider the breach between a separate Sikh Diaspora (triggered by the 1984 “Blue Star Operation” 3, though previous mass displacements were reported; Das 2007) and a general Punjabi economic migration (aloof from religious persecution, consisting of the exodus of a huge subaltern workforce, low-skilled and landless labourers). The advance of an independent Sikh Studies scholarly field contributed to this alleged separation (Tatla 1999): political drives shaped the ground for bounded social science research, often reiterating (and inflating) a common-day sociality divide (Jayaram 2011). However, the 3 | In 1984, the Indian militia under Indira Gandhi’s mandate broke into the Golden Temple in Amritsar to remove J. Singh Bhindranwale (the Sikh separatist leader) and his armed followers. A few months later the Prime Minister herself was murdered by her two Sikh bodyguards in an act of vengeance and anti-Sikh riots spread throughout the country leaving thousands killed and displaced. The event assumed great significance for collective remembrance and it remains a trope of contestation within the Diaspora longing for an imagined Khalistan (Axel 2001).

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term Diaspora, firstly used to identify Sikh displacements, has since been adopted inclusively for Indian transnational migrations (Mishra 2007), intending Diaspora as a survival strategy for displaced groups who self-identify with shared cultural or spiritual roots and ideally long for a departed homeland (Cohen 1997; Vertovec 2000). Punjabi Diasporas include the Sikh one, but the latter, though most sizeable and visible (Axel 2001), is itself inherently plural, being made ​up of different social groups, based on their jati (caste-lineage4 within the four main varna), in spite of Sikhism ideally backing egalitarianism (Sani 2008) or their affiliations to intra-religious orders. In addition, regional and idiom commonalities may bind together Hindu and Sikh Punjabis in immigration settings, beyond their diverse spiritual or political associations5 (Mohammad-Arif and Moliner 2007). Although some of my Sikh informants still recalled how their relatives fled from India after 1984, all of the Punjabi families I met in both Italy and India had experienced kinfolk moving out and relocating. While acknowledging the uniqueness of each experience, all my interviewees situated their personal and family mobilities in the narrative frame of structural migration designs, which bore more consistencies than happenstances. Fundamental historical and economic drives are largely shared in the panorama of Punjabi Diasporas.

Post-colonial migration designs The composite Punjabi Diasporas in the literature refers to the descendants of local ethnic communities who began to emigrate from the fabled “land of five rivers” at the end of the nineteenth century (Ballantyne 2006). Geopolitical reasons linked to the former British Empire illustrate the overseas trails of millions of Indians and South Asians. It has been argued that a “new” Diaspora of late capitalism, whose fortunes intertwine with post-colonial opportunities and imaginings (Jayaram 4 | Jati and varna are Hindi terms for caste distinction: jati stands for one of many and fluid birth groups; varna one of the four main traditional stratified social groups. I consider caste a hierarchical system of social classification, given by birth and endorsed with specific work profiles, which establishes permitted or forbidden interactions with other groups (interdining and intermarriage) and is perpetuated through an endogamic rule. While sometimes dismissed as a relic of ancient Hindu traditions (opposed by the Sikhs and by other politically conscious groups), the caste system is a complex reality which is still alive and debated in contemporary India. I refer to the literature (Gupta 2000; Srinivas 1996) for a detailed analysis of this category of difference, which has no equivalent outside the subcontinent, but point out its resilience in the ideologies and social practices of Indian Diasporas in Italy. 5 | I here deliberately overlook that a great number of those who identify (and are identified) as Punjabis are actually Pakistani Muslims, so that Punjabiyat itself ought to be located in a broader South Asian Diaspora (Werbner 2008).

188  | Sara Bonfanti 2011), supplanted an “old” Diaspora of early capitalism, following the abolition of slavery. When Independence was achieved in 1947, Indian citizens withheld preferential corridors for migration towards the UK through the rules established in the Commonwealth (1949). The early post-imperial age challenged the prior establishment with a “colonial nemesis” echoed in the Anglo-Indian fiction of the late-twentieth century (Mishra 2007). While the UK remained the favourite destination for Indian expatriates for decades, Punjabis count more than 10 million worldwide out of 25 million Indian diasporans recorded today, clustered in Britain and North America, and also in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, with Europe and Australia being the most recent destinations (Jacobsen and Kumar 2004). Under a hasty de-ruralisation (Blunt 2007), the modern political economy of the region accounts for the propensity of Punjabi natives to leave their homeland. Once known as “India’s breadbasket”, the Punjabi floodplain underwent a chronic rural crisis in recent times, due to the unsustainable effects of the “Green Revolution”6 implemented in the 1960s. After a bout of increases in grain productivity, this ruthless reform spoilt the environment heavily, as it drained soil fertility and escalated social conflicts, with joint households torn apart between land partitions and new modes of production (Singh and Bhogal 2014). Haunted by small farmers’ suicides, much of the rural workforce abandoned agriculture going to swell the ranks of indentured labour and fuelling aspirations for mobility through regional urbanisation or transnational migration.

Enacting the quest for mobility When it comes to ethnographic evidence, collective and individual perceptions of how the Punjabi Diaspora unfolded are blurred and nuanced, but firmly inserted in a culture of emigration rooted in all Punjabi families regardless of their background (Thapan 2013). All my interlocutors admitted that the twin decision to emigrate/immigrate (Sayad 2002) was taken as a family resolution. In Italy, Indian immigrants who have obtained a residence permit through family reunification exceed 70,000 (ISTAT 2012), a figure which signals a dense network of relations, generally initiated by a young male who took the plunge with the blessing of his parents and elders. The extended family then continues to exercise remote social control on new generations, setting the rules for safeguarding traditions, while encouraging upward mobility (Bonfanti 2015). On the one hand, collective desires are entrenched in individual but family-oriented migration plans, where the hope for material success and symbolic ascent 6 | The mechanisation of agriculture, introduction of high-yielding crops, increased use of irrigation and chemical fertilizers launched a new era for India to gain food self-sufficiency after decades of recurrent famines. However, by the 1980s, the effects of the Green Revolution showed irreversible soil degradation and dramatic social conflicts over the reform of land property rights.

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interlace (Hage 2004). Those who actually move and those who stay put (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011) share a corresponding mobility quest. Concrete icons of success abound in the life-stories I collected, both from aspiring migrants in the Punjab and immigrants in Italy. Migration nourishes self-esteem and the public image of the extended family: expats who return for visits boast about their European experience, described in terms of better education, higher wages, luxury goods, modern comfort and freedom of movement, despite financial or social hardships. As I drove through the Punjabi countryside, emigration was epitomized by new deluxe brick mansions backed by transnational remittances (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2004). While being able to build one’s dream house some years after departure is the proof of achievement abroad and consumer display, envy and resentment towards the expats load the moral landscape of migration where biraderi clashes may arise (Taylor 2013). On the other bank of migration, daily life as an immigrant often entails challenges and setbacks. Even once compensated, the middlemen (dalals or brokers) who allowed distant travel and entry documents, networks of solidarity among Indian immigrants, may be difficult to gauge, as they lie between social capital, exploitation and petty corruption (Gupta 1995). Moreover, as Morris (2003) argued, a hierarchical “regime of rights” operates in receiving contexts where immigrants are given different legal statuses (regular/irregular, guest worker residents or nationals) and both formal and informal “deficits” (not merely in terms of citizenship, but also of access to social rights) influence the dynamics of inclusion/ exclusion. Punjabi migration to Italy being a form of family mobility (Bertolani 2012), civic stratification affects family members differently (Kraler 2010). Within an “engendered theory of citizenship and migration” (Benhabib and Resnik 2009), both motility and social integration are staged in each parivaar or domestic unit, where gender and age power relations intersect. As we shall see, the capability to move and/or to stay intersperse not only with regulatory constraints, but also with contradictory desires and responsibilities of migrants.

Emergent Punjabi e-Diasporas Finally, whether we label it transnational migration (considering its shift across national borders; Glick Schiller et al. 1995) or adopt the term Diaspora (emphasising its political aims and long-distance homemaking; Clifford 1994; Cohen 1997; Vertovec 2004), by the twenty-first century, overseas Indians have been moulding an “electronic migration”, dwelling in locales while living in a worldwide space through media-enhanced connections (Glick Schiller and Levitt 2004). The spread of low cost information and communications technology and accessible broadband turned “uprooted” migrants in “interconnected” ones (Diminescu 2007), retracing and expanding the cartographies of Indian Diasporas (Brah 1996). There is a stringent dialectics between real and virtual movement, where the Internet offers

190  | Sara Bonfanti arguments and networks for designing and acting a range of mobilities, including double, multiple or “serial” migrations (Bhachu 1999, 2004). Again, facing diverse structural limits and opportunities, differently situated members in the Punjabi ethno-community, within biraderis and parivaar, hold diverse movement capital and may be more or less empowered to exercise individual and kin mobility. Given this theoretical framework, I will now sketch the case of Punjabi Diasporas in northern Italy in order to locate the experiences of some Indian immigrant women between alternative “motilities and moorings” (Soderstrom et al. 2013), possible movement and enforced stillness.

The ethnographic context of P unjabi D iasporas in I taly Indian immigrant communities in Italy, mostly of Punjabi origins, are historically recent (pioneering settlements date back to the 1980s, with a peak in the last decade; Lum 2012) and geographically clustered in rural areas, such as the Pontine marshes and the Po River valley (figures top over 150,000 admissions into the country; Caritas-Migrantes 2013). My ethnographic field includes the Lombard districts of Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua and Cremona, where over a third (36.7 per cent) of all Indian immigrants in Italy are registered to date (ISMU Foundation 2013). These migrants were often portrayed in sociological studies and local chronicles as bergamini, temporary agricultural labourers, “turbans who do not disturb”, following the adage that Indian immigrants would be a reliable workforce in “the sacred cows’ business” (Azzeruoli 2013), at once sheltered and excluded in a condition of relative invisibility (Compiani and Galloni 2002). Employment diversification, longer settlements, family reunifications, generational changeover and recent naturalisations have reshaped the landscape of these migration flows and of entire communities now dwelling on Italian soil. It is hard and awkward to define a second generation of young Italian Indians or Indian Italians: a new generation labelled 1.5, 1.75 or 2.0, depending on whether these youngsters were born in Italy or entered the country at an early age embarking there on formal education (Colombo, Domaneschi, and Marchetti 2011). I adopt the neologism Inditians to account for the issue of citizenship and the hybrid politics of belonging this generation plays out on several grounds: at home, within their “ethnic” group, in the local “host” society, across different institutions (from school to work, from temples to recreational settings) and, last but not least, on the internet (Indit7 also stands for a binational online portal based in Milan).

7 | http://www.indit360.com/, with offices in Delhi and Milan, is a “bi-national, bi-language, bi-cultural” web portal launched in January 2013 with the aim of informing and connecting a growing

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Much has been written about the integration of Indian minorities in post-colonial British society, which have now reached third, even fourth migrant generations (Bhachu 2004; Charsley 2012; Uberoi 2006). In the Italian context, topics of interest have since focused on the labour market of Indian migrants in the countryside (Bertolani, Ferraris, and Perocco 2011; Denti, Ferrari, and Perocco 2004) or the ethnography of their places of worship (Gallo 2012), while modest attention has so far addressed families, gender and generation matters (Bertolani 2012; Galloni 2009; Thapan 2012, 2013). These issues became crucial in my ethnographic work, since the selection of my earliest interlocutors took place in local public schools where I taught Italian to immigrants,8 mostly Punjabi women and teenagers. Some of them entrusted me with a friendship and intimacy that made a close ethnographic collaboration possible, granting me access behind the scenes of their family lives and engaging me in shared discourses and experiences. Participant observation and narrative interviews merged to construe the small-scale qualitative data I am about to discuss. Pseudonyms are used hereafter to protect my interlocutors’ privacy.

Roots on routes: Indian migrant women between moving and mobilising I will now present the “life stories” of four Inditian women resident in the rural districts of Bergamo and Brescia. Bearing diverse migration experiences, my ethnographic informants embody some of the heterogeneity in Punjabi Diasporas, representing a social sample varied in age and in ascribed and achieved status (caste and faith, education and occupation). The friendship tied with these young women and mothers allowed me to partake in their personal and family dramas and to access a gendered cultural intimacy (Herzfeld 2004) within Punjabi communities in Lombardy at large. These relations, however, exposed me to some ethical dilemmas associated with the emotional commitment and social engagement I developed in the field (Low and Merry 2010).

Acquainting with the prime movers 9 Asha is a 38-year-old woman; she introduced herself as being middle-class and high caste, Rajput. She practices Bhakhti Hinduism and holds a degree in political Inditian community interested in “diaspora, travelling/moving, business, cultural sharing” (quotes from the Indit website homepage). 8 | Italian classes addressed to immigrants are scheduled daily all-year round in lifelong learning centres, public schools for youths and adults financed by the Ministry of Education. 9 | I here acknowledge the choice of tenses in ethnographic writing (Clifford 1983). Whenever I use the ethnographic present, I believe this may be the only construction of time that renders the truth about the absent reality, fieldwork.

192  | Sara Bonfanti science from Jalandhar University. At the time of the interview, she had lived in Italy for 13 years, moving there after her husband with whom she then had two children. While she has always been a housewife in Bergamo, her husband works in a permanent position as a metal labourer and has recently applied for Italian naturalisation. Akal is a 40‑year-old woman, who described herself as lower-middle class and middle caste, Jat. She is a fervent Sikh believer and holds a child educator diploma attained in Himachal Pradesh where she worked as a governess. She has lived in Italy for 11 years and recently renovated her long-term stay permit, for which she now depends on her husband, temporarily hired in a local bakery, as she does some needlework off the record. They have two grown-up children still living at home who were born in India and taken to Italy before they became teenagers. Praneet is 21  years old and is Akal’s elder daughter. Thus, her family background is lower-middle class and middle caste, Jat. She has just finished high school attaining an Italian diploma in tourism and business. She is an amrithdari (baptised orthodox) Sikh and has lived in Italy for eight years after being reunited with her parents with whom she still cohabits. She is unmarried and is hired as a handworker in a local textile firm. Veena is an 18‑year-old, middle-class and upper-middle caste, Sonar, attending her final year in secondary school before becoming a certified accountant. She belongs to the Hindu community (though most relatives on her mother’s side profess Sikhism). She has resided in Italy for 11 years after family reunification. She is unmarried and lives with her parents and younger sister, depending on her father who is a labourer in a horticultural factory outside Brescia. Asha and Akal are first-generation migrants. Veena and Praneet are middle 1.5 generation, not formally second, and find it hard to identify with their parents. They emigrated from the Punjab when they were about ten and have spent half their lives in Italy, both recounting their childhood as faded and dreamlike. While Akal and Praneet and Asha and Veena belong to the Sikh and Hindu communities, respectively, and to two jatis considered rather high in Punjabi social hierarchy (the Jats are dominant landowners in rural Punjab and the Sonar and Rajput are high Hindu urbanites), their similarities end there. Different life experiences before and after the shift from India to Italy account for diverse trajectories of social integration and future intentions. Out of these thick life tales, I will examine only some foci, in order to unravel the nexus between spatial and social mobility, discussing how Indian women migrants north of the Po Valley experience aspired movement and imposed limits. However, female narratives are not a feminist theme “by women, on women, for women” (Oakley 2005). I consider any construction of the self as being intersubjective and deem that looking at the lived (im)mobility of migrant women, too often disregarded as marginal subjects (Benhabib and Resnik 2009), can cast new light on gender relations and social life, especially in transnational contexts where

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diverse patriarchal structures may collide (Salih 2005).10 The episodes and passages11 analysed (Fairclough 2003) are inscribed in intimate and lasting ethnographic relations. I hung out for years with my interlocutors and regularly visited their Italian-based homes, while their kin hosted me for weeks during my stay in the Punjab.

Asha: patterns of transnational gendered mobilities Asha was the first woman recruited for the research. I had known her for years since our elder children had attended kindergarten together. While my friend stood as a reference model among her Indian female friends, who called her Bhabi or Bhar ji (a title reserved for a brother’s wife) and turned to her for help, I could not depict Asha as a well-integrated immigrant. Her husband, a skilled labourer in a permanent position, had just applied for Italian nationality (a grant that would extend to her as a spouse by law only two years later) and their children in primary school mingled easily with Italian peers. Though a smart graduate, Asha had never worked outside her home in Italy and had not yet mastered Italian, erratically attending language classes due to family duties. Among the countless episodes we shared, I once invited my friend to join me in a seminar on Punjabi culture I was to run at a public institute. The ensuing debate was heated and prolonged: after Asha had related her migration experience, the audience began to scorn her feeble knowledge of Italian and query that her “self-arranged” love marriage was a forced one with a chance happy ending. Discussing the scene afterwards, Asha regretted her “performance” and lamented that nobody had understood how she had fallen in love with her future husband as soon as her parents had introduced him to her.

10 | While I assumed gender as an interpretative tool intersecting other social variables, mainly age or first/second migrant generation, female subjectivities cannot be split from male ones (and from cultural models of gender associated with Punjabi ethics and aesthetics; Gayer 2012). I tried to avoid representing my informants in a paternalistic or naively positive light (Spivak 1989), and also refrained from describing them as oppressed subjects (Bimbi 2012). Inditian women seemed to devise new tools to determine their lives beyond the dichotomy “fate vs. freedom” of popular north Indian culture (Uberoi 2006), and beyond a neat feminist paradigm “hegemony vs. subordination” (Strathern 1987). 11 | Interviews and informal talks in the field were carried out in a mixed register, according to the cross-understanding with my interlocutors; generally in English, when possible or desirable in Italian and sometimes in a basic Punjabi (a language which I learnt at an elementary spoken level, but whose smatter was decisive for opening up relations with “native” speakers). In this paper, I have translated those parts of the discourse that were given in other languages into English.

194  | Sara Bonfanti He was such a charming expat, gentle and knowledgeable (…), but above all he could take me away to Italy, a place I’d always dreamt of! I read all about Florence, Rome, Venice, the arts and food (…) naturally he won me over!

That was a prospective groom who could outdo all other local spouse candidates thanks to his “mobility capital” (Kaufman, Bergmann, and Joye 2004), providing her with the prospect of moving to Europe after him and fulfilling her most compelling desires. That training worked out as a participatory ethnography (Clifford 1983), as we both realised to what extent mutual representations of cultural diversity might affect social encounters in migration contexts (Vertovec 2007). Sobbing, Asha noticed: Being a Punjabi woman is not easy, whether you are born in a wealthy or poor house, a higher or lower varna. I know that international media depict India as a women-unfriendly country  (…) but it all depends on where you come from and can move forth.

Connecting global rights to local realities, my friend added: To tell you the truth, I felt more a modern woman back in Jalandhar, after I finished college and went to teach 4 th grade (pupils). Now I can barely walk around, not because my husband forbids me to do so, but because Italians don’t see me as someone who could go out and do some work, I mean who could do something good.

Asha bitterly acknowledged the setbacks of pursuing her goals in Italy as an immigrant Indian woman who was subordinate on the grounds of gender, culture and legal status. Conceding she might put more effort in searching for “integration” (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010), she denounced being daily put off by most locals, whether “civil servants or shopkeepers” who treated her as an “unfortunate immigrant lady”, deprived of any knowledge, skills or autonomy. It was a commonplace sociability she felt alienated from more than formal policies. Two months later though, Asha phoned me in frenzy to announce she had enrolled in driving classes, encouraged by her husband, and intended to train to become a cultural mediator, aiming for a professional role recognised in the local context with an advance of status within and beyond her ethno-community. While my friend’s decisions soon appeared hard to sustain, her attempts to mobilise herself impinged again on her family: “I really want my dears to be proud of me (…), especially my daughter, to rejoice I can help her (…) and to have them [Italians] see that Indian born women are worthy of respect.” Social recognition in multiple domains turned out to be an individual requisite to fulfil Asha’s migratory path, which initiated through her husband, but seemed to have come to a standstill in her personal experience of immigrant women (Rinaldini 2011).

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Akal and Praneet: motility and generational (in)consistencies A bond of female genealogy I want to explore, between generational conflict and closeness, is the mother–daughter relation between Akal and Praneet. Migration plans sounded central to life projects in both my interlocutors’ words, for whom motility, the capability to move, equated with the possibility of (well)being. Akal’s migratory path contradicts the standard model of family reunification via male spouse, widely in use among the Italian Punjabi Diaspora (Bertolani 2012). Akal came firstly on her own to Italy, sponsored by her expat “brother’s cousin” (a distant relation in her close-knit biraderi) and leaving her husband and children at home. Two years after she had arrived in Italy, once residential and employment stability had been gained, the requirements for joining them over, she filled in the papers so they could all move over to Bergamo. Akal’s recollection was marked by fleeing from the Punjab as a girl and living in exile in Himachal Pradesh in order to escape anti-Sikh pogroms after 1984, when some of her kinsmen, held involved in separatist actions, were imprisoned or murdered. What struck me most in her biography, however, was that once reunited with her household in Italy, Akal mutually agreed with her husband, Kash, to give him back the reins of their ghar, handing over to him her post at the bakery where she had found steady employment. While her sister-in-law still teased Akal, calling her the sardar (head) of the house, she explained that her migration project had always been a collective design: I left for my children. It felt so bad being away for two years, but then the hard work was rewarded  (…). When they arrived, we all lived in with uncle, then we could rent a place of our own. My husband got the job in the bakery, I had to take care of the children (…) now I add with a little sewing (…), together we sent lakhs [thousands of rupees] home and my father-in-law had the villa built on our land with the savings.

Akal proudly recounted their efforts to remit home. Over time, her family migration underwent significant changes with the 2008 economic crisis and ongoing recession in the Po Plain while the children were coming of age. Akal pondered sending her younger son, a turbaned amrithdari yet well integrated young Sikh, “further north” to attend university (to Britain or Canada where kin could support him) and reap a better future (rather than remaining in Italy as a marginalized denizen, discriminated against in the labour market; Colombo and Rebughini 2012). The span of options for her elder daughter sounded quite different. Praneet, who had never felt confident in her 1.5 Inditian condition and spent most of her

196  | Sara Bonfanti free time playing kirtan12 in the local gurdwara (Sikh temple), complained of being somehow “stuck up” in migration, with little chance of becoming naturalised 13 or having career prospects. Praneet is a short-term apprentice in a textile factory. She entrusted her mother to slow down her father’s plan of wedding her to a Sikh lad from Birmingham sponsored by her aunt. However, she conceded: I don’t look forward to getting married soon, but if I have to choose, I’d prefer to meet someone like me, I mean, of a similar lifestyle and that my parents approve of. Maybe, if he lives in England, I could move up there (…) then I think of BabbaJi (granddad), I know he’s screening guys back home (…) he raised me and wishes me to return and give him great-grandchildren!

Praneet lived the apparent contradictions in her immigration status with active disquiet and she still imagined her future as dim, possibly pointing to a double or a return/circular migration. While she never disputed that family funds were reserved for her brother’s third-level studies, she believed that motility for her meant a sound marriage for which a dowry had long been set aside (Shenk 2007). Contrary to many diasporans who surfed online “matchmaking sites” to pick the ideal spouse from a virtual global repertoire (Bonfanti 2015), Praneet waited for her kin to supply options she would then weigh and decide. In her mobility quest, marriage was not intended as a burden, rather a chance to circumvent migration uncertainty and visas restrictions (Charsley 2012). Precisely because of her gender (Mooney 2006), she could apply personal agency over two combined structures: the neoliberal governance of migrant human capital in Italy and the patriarchal texture of diasporic Punjabi society. In Praneet’s view, to set up her own parivaar with the “right” partner “somewhere else” would give her an alternative to the material and social moorings she could not confront otherwise.

Veena: rehearsing for gender mobilisation Veena was somehow Praneet’s alter ego: she mastered Italian fully and confidently voiced phrases in the local dialect. Contrary to her Sikh girlfriend, she regarded 12 | Kirtan is liturgical chanting; a ritual music performance usually sung and played in Sikh temples during religious ceremonies with diverse traditional instruments, such as harmoniums, tablas and hand cymbals. 13 | Citizenship assessment in Italy is determined by ascendancy rather than by birth (ius sanguinis vs. ius soli). Foreigners who have regularly lived and worked in the country for more than ten years can apply for naturalisation. Naturalisation extends to the children of immigrants provided they are minors: 1.5 young immigrants are particularly disadvantaged, as they often reach their majority before this scheme can work in their favour (Colombo and Rebughini 2012). A partial amendment to this legislation is currently under review, especially for children of immigrants born in Italy.

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herself not as an Indian in Italy, but a fully-fledged Indian Italian. During a focus group with her mates, to my usual question regarding how much Punjabi and how much Orobian (Bergamo-born) she felt, she wittily replied: “Why should I say only 50‑50? I feel 100 per cent Indian and 100 per cent Italian (…). It’s not that one belonging must necessarily cut down on another.” Her positive integration into local peer groups was also due to her commitment in acting as an ambassador of her culture of origin. She enjoyed performing bhangra14 and had even organised a dancing flash mob reported in the local press. Since we met, conversations with Veena soon turned “girlish” as she quipped, wanting a confidant to negotiate the restrictions imposed on her by her Punjabi parents. Being close to my teenage friend cost me a lot in terms of personal emotions and maintaining my credibility in the field. As I was dragged into Veena’s family upheavals, I was forced to “take a side” (her side, in fact) and could not pretend that my “research interest” was unbiased or neutral (Low and Merry 2010). Veena used to be rebuked by her parents as a naughty daughter who tried to defy some Punjabi traditions and was captivated by what they defined as “vicious Italian habits”. One day the situation got edgy when she fled from home after a quarrel with her father. She rang me from a friend’s house (a second-generation Albanian migrant) asking me to intervene and mediate with her parents. The spring term was almost over and Veena had expressed the desire to partake in a beauty contest known as “Miss India in Italy” that, in her opinion, might turn into a springboard to access a career in fashion modelling. A prospect to which her parents were strongly opposed as, in their eyes, this venue might “pollute” their daughter and question her purity (ghee) and the whole family’s honor (izzat). While her father never confronted me directly, I could not mistake her mother’s outspoken remarks. Maybe you are well-intentioned, but we do not want our daughter to mimic customs which do not belong to us (…). Please don’t fool my daughter with rubbish that will cause her only women’s troubles (…) she must bear in mind that we come from the Punjab and Italy is not the US!

In disputing her daughter’s choice, Veena’s mother did not only contest a stereotypical Italian femininity (young women who exploited their body to reach fame and success; Bonfanti 2013), but also noted that some Italian morals, Catholic and patriarchal, would advise against it. As for her, Veena came to my place to enjoy a shared mehndi (henna body-painting) and bluntly blamed me for not having been “active (or activist)” enough in supporting her rights.

14 | Bhangra is a style of “ethno-pop” dancing (now popularized by Bollywood) which traces its origins in Punjabi folklore and was developed by Indian Diasporas in Britain in the 1990s.

198  | Sara Bonfanti I was born Punjabi, and know what Indians think of models and actresses (…) but I live in Italy, I’ll become citizen and reach my majority  (…) am I not entitled to seek the career I dream of? Today dad does not let me go to Puglia [where the gala took place], what about tomorrow if I ask to go and live in England like my cousin? Why should I ask permission to move at all? We, daughters of Indians [immigrants], are so restrained: we ought to speak out, if we want to turn the tables!

Struggling with her double-rootedness and cosmopolitan openness (Werbner 2008), Veena eventually went back home and, while family rows did not stop there, she dismissed the event, which was cancelled anyway due to the diplomatic clash between India and Italy over the infamous “Marò Affair”15. Meanwhile, that domestic affair endangered my mobility as a researcher (Falzon 2009). For weeks, I was looked upon with rage by Indian acquaintances in the local gurdwara, overhearing small talk about my being a threat to Indian girls’ decency and family harmony. My discomfort healed months later, when Raman, Veena’s uncle, hosted me in Jalandhar during my research in the Punjab. After being interviewed by Raman and his wife for hours, Veena clarified to the relief of us both that her uncle had endorsed my probity in a long transnational Skype call with her father, restoring my positive relation with their kindred. Recapping these life tales, first generation Punjabi women migrants who settled in Italy generally (though not always) after their husbands, manoeuvring the meshes of family reunification conceded by immigration laws (Tognetti 2011), remain in the shade of a patriarchal family model despite large expectations (Morris 2003, Bonfanti 2015). Almost nailed down in their domesticity, they often experience serious distress in living in Italy for a lack of key integration factors: a good knowledge of the local idiom, a driving license (decisive for commuting through the rural Po Valley poorly served by public transport) and the leeway these would pave for accessing paid employment outside the home, providing for themselves and becoming less dependent on male relatives. If these women remain partially strained into cramped confines within their family, ethnic community or neighbourhood, in a paradoxical condition of shielding exclusion (Thapan 2013), the symbolic and economic investment that mothers put forward for their offspring opens gleams of emancipation. Young migrants of Punjabi descent, whether they are second-generations or moved to Italy as children, face countless mobility challenges, negotiating multiple identifications and ambivalent loyalties in overlapping networks: within their community, in the host society and on the global stage they experience as e-diasporans. In particular, Punjabi young women stand at the heart of possible social 15 | A diplomatic incident which occurred early in 2012 and is not yet solved, when two Italian Marine Army Officers were charged with killing two local anglers in Kerala (South India) and who are still held there pending judgment. The chronicle turned hip in both national presses, also because of the Italian origins of the Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi.

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changes, from private intimate experiences to public visibility strategies, mobilising against a resilient north Indian patriarchy. This new generation imagines and claims different prospects that Italian naturalisation could lead them to achieve (Benhabib and Resnik 2009; Bonfanti 2013), extending their mobility scenarios to wider European landscapes. Italy is ironically becoming a transit country for Inditians, who fear remaining caught between segregation and civic stratification (Colombo and Rebughini 2012) and thus invest in the Italian national identification to unlock new transnational routes. Motility for Punjabi diasporans remains a vital tool to overcome shifting local and global borders (Kearney 1995) and “b/orders” (Van Houtum, Kramsch, and Zierhofer 2005), designed spaces of exclusion or differentiated inclusion, which also lie dramatically on an underexplored gender disparity.

C onclusion: gendered strategies for moving through “hidden   geographies ”? In this paper, I first gave a historical account of the multifaceted Punjabi culture of migration, considering how social mobility is pursued through spatial mobility. I then presented original ethnographic data on the lives and narratives of four Inditian women from different backgrounds, Punjabi mothers and youngsters who had resettled in Italy through family immigration. With a gender and intersectional analysis, I tried to locate strategies for the mobility/mobilization that these subjects assumed to navigate structural inequalities and forms of physical and symbolic stillness. Drawing to a close, Punjabi Diasporas today challenge the modern dualism “stasis vs. passage”, enacting alternative movements and moorings along a mobility quest continuum. Besides hinging on binding legal structures, as well as on economic and material possessions that ensure feasible permanence once moved beyond spatial borders, personal and collective (im)mobilities for Italian Punjabis are deeply relational and situational. Their motility (capability to be mobile) is seen as a form of social capital that depends on bargaining one’s symbolic status and it first responds to a “micro-physics of domestic power”, in most cases still held by male householders or paterfamilias. If migration studies conceptualise mobility as being inextricable from questions of justice, the daily crossing of borders does not only take place at the “territory’s edge” (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007), in spaces of exception secluded from public view where free movement is controlled or outlawed. I argued that we could track “hidden geographies”, taking ghar, domestic nests, as a vantage point among long-term Punjabi settlements in Italy. Within a private home lives the affective household, but transnational kin creep in, with expectations and requests

200  | Sara Bonfanti from the ethno-community and global Diaspora, the local society and national State, either supporting or hindering one’s family mobility and differently affecting hopes, rights and duties of their members. Whether itinerant or landlocked, diasporic Punjabi women call us to consider the pivotal role that gender (with its many intersections) plays in reproducing or shifting motility regimes. Overall, gendered mobility experiences are traced with unequal imaginaries, powers and vulnerabilities and urge us to reassess the promises and perils of family-engineered migration in the contemporary transnational world.

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V. Virtual Im/mobilities

“The World Has no Limits, so Why Should You?”: Migration through Marriage in Times of Increasing Digitalization and Securitization of Borders Miriam Gutekunst Khalid 1 clicks on the blue and white circle on the app list on his smartphone. A white globe appears. Colourful dots stand for the continents and the headline reads “shake to chat”. With a quick swipe over the screen he gets the globe spinning. Suddenly he pulls his hand back and taps the still spinning earth with a pointer finger. One of the colourful dots expands and a photo of a young woman with long brown hair appears. She is smiling into the camera: Jenny, 26, San Francisco, CA. Khalid laughs: with this app he has made friends all over the world. He wears a somewhat dusty red cap and a neon-yellow safety vest over a faded jumper. He is actually at work right now: Khalid is currently earning his living as a parking attendant at the boardwalk in the Moroccan port city of Tangier. “I speak six languages”, he says in fluent German. Khalid studied in Germany for two years. Then he had problems financing his studies, so he returned to Morocco. But he wants to go back soon, since his girlfriend is waiting for him there. “I will just marry her and then I’ll get a stamp in my passport”, he says. The app Khalid likes so much is called Skout. On the homepage, the firm attracts new users with the claim: “The world has no limits, so why should you?” Seoul, London, San Francisco, New York  – in addition to meeting people from every continent, the app even offers digital tours given by locals in popular cities: “Got wanderlust? Passport lets you virtually travel to anywhere in the world”, is how this feature is described. Digitalization and the use of communication technologies in everyday life have drastically increased over the last two decades worldwide. The sociologist John Urry sees the key moment of this development in the years 1989–90. While before the 1990s, letters, postcards or expensive long-distance telephone calls were the only option to communicate overseas, the invention of the internet and the market launch of the first mobile phones have led to an extreme change in worldwide 1 | Names have been changed.

210  | Miriam Gutekunst communication and the perception of closeness and distance (Urry 2007, 161). Additionally, the collapse of the Soviet Union and, thereby, the opening of the whole world to virtual communication technologies as well as the shift of financial markets to online real-time trading were considerable, according to Urry. “These various interdependent systems dating from around 1990s […] have the effect of both massively spreading virtual connections and of bringing virtual objects into the background of much social life” (Urry 2007, 162). This virtual mobility was accompanied by improvements in transport infrastructure and, thereby, heightened the physical mobility of people. Nowadays, it is possible to travel in nine hours from London to New Delhi, in 13 hours from Paris to Johannesburg and in 14 hours from Berlin to Mexico City. For many, it is worth travelling long distances for a very short stay – for a short meeting with colleagues from another continent, an international conference with guests from all over the world or an extended weekend in one of the global megacities. While travelling, one stays connected virtually with other places and people. “Things are speeding up, and spreading out”, as the geographer Doreen Massey puts it (1991, 24). However, not everyone profits from this development equally; there are power structures that enhance the mobility of some people and lead to the immobility of others (Sheller and Urry 2006, 207) – especially the ones already discriminated against in the global hierarchy, such as from postcolonial countries. What is seen in Western societies as freedom and great benefit means an inequality and hegemonic order in a global context, as Holert and Terkessidis (2005) write: “The normativity of mobility creates a worldwide hierarchy that ranges from the mobile elites of the highly paid and highly qualified scientists and professionals to compulsorily mobilized residents of refugee camps” (Holert and Terkessidis 2005, 101; translated by the author). While a small percentage of the global population travels the earth with relative ease, the mobility of the majority of the world’s inhabitants is severely limited – in particular at the edges of the European Union (EU), and also along the borders of the US and Australia. National migration control policies went through a crisis in Europe in the 1990s. It had become clear that transnational movements could no longer be hindered by national entry conditions and regulations. The consequence was a Europeanization of migration policies, in the sense of outsourcing migration policies to transnational actors, an attempt to govern migration and a change from migration control to migration management (Bahl and Ginal 20, 208). This Europeanization of migration policies also implied the simultaneity of an on-going securitization of Europe’s external borders and a reinforced control of those, as well as the opening of internal borders between EU member states and the abolishment of controls there. The starting point of this development was the Schengen Agreement of 1985, which was progressively implemented during the 1990s (Baumann 2014). There are few legal ways to travel to the Schengen countries for people from third countries that are subject to strict visa requirements, such as Morocco. The

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term third countries refers to all countries that are not members of the EU. To be granted a tourist visa, an applicant must demonstrate the will to return to their country of origin. A young man like Khalid who is not married and earns a below-average income has almost no chance of being admitted to Germany. Only the highly qualified or people who meet certain needs of labour of the Federal Republic have access to a working visa. Moreover, a student visa is only granted to very few applicants, for example, there were 676 students who obtained a visa in 2013 (BAMF 2015, 29). Once a student has arrived, for example, in Germany, it is very difficult for many to finance their studies and keep up with the comparatively high cost of living, particularly if they do not get support from their families. This happened to Khalid. Therefore, if he does not want to enter illegally, Europe might remain closed off to him. There have been two simultaneous developments since the 1990s. On the one hand, since the invention of the internet and the mobile phone, it has never been easier to meet people from all over the world on a virtual level. Digital technologies, such as Skout, make it seem like there is a world without borders. This is only one example of a huge range of dating sites, social networks and other platforms offering to get in contact with other people and travel virtually. On the other hand, there is a development towards a tight migration management, the securitization of borders and a global inequality concerning the access to mobility. In this article, I will show how these seemingly converse developments affect the situation of people from the Global South 2 who meet a partner online from the Global North, and will analyse the impact of these trends on one specific channel to Europe: migration through marriage.3 At first glance, the increasing digitalization and securitization of borders stand for converse developments: a limitless virtual mobility and, at the same time, a physical immobilisation. I argue that these im/mobilities are highly interdependent and that virtual mobility increases the significance of migration through marriage as a mobilisation strategy to overcome physical immobilisation due to border regimes. The chapter is structured into three parts: firstly, I explain how the increasing digitalization enhances the meeting of people across borders from different world regions, and how digital technologies, such as dating websites and social networks, 2 | The term Global South describes a position which is socially, politically and economically disadvantaged in the global system. Global North means a privileged position. The division refers to different experiences with colonialism and exploitation. This concept is not just used on a geographical level, but also in the sense of hierarchies within a country (e. g. Aborigines in Australia or illegalized people in Europe). Thereby, judgemental terms such as “non-developed countries” or “Third World” can be avoided (glokal e. V. 2013, 8). 3 | I am using the term “migration through marriage” instead of marriage or spousal migration in order to emphasise that, in this context, the meaning of marriage changes, as it becomes an instrument to get access to mobility and to overcome borders.

212  | Miriam Gutekunst are consciously used to find a partner from a country where life conditions are better. Secondly, I show how the couples who meet online get immobilised due to the fact that one partner has citizenship from a country in the Global South and how during the last ten years, a securitization of borders has influenced migration through marriage. In the third and last part, I outline how digital technologies and virtual mobility are used by couples to overcome physical immobilisation and borders; that means, how virtual and physical mobilities work as substitutes. It will become clear that virtual mobility can also lead to physical mobility, thereby strengthening the moment of the autonomy of migration (Bojadzijev and Karakayali 2007). The following analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2013/2014 in different cities in Morocco. I made use of the methodological approach of the Ethnographic Border Regime analysis developed by Sabine Hess, Vassilis Tsianos and the Transit Migration Research Group (2010). The idea is to analyse the function and the constitution of the border, starting from the meaningful practices of the different actors that are part of the border regime (Hess and Tsianos 2010, 255). This involved conducting interviews and carrying out participant observation in the institutions involved in the border regime, among them the German consulate and the Goethe Institute, the German cultural institute. I also accompanied people who have a partner in Germany during a period of up to one and a half years through the whole procedure of migration through marriage from the German language course until the entry of the partners into Germany. I mainly concentrate the analysis in this paper on the case of one couple I accompanied over a long period, Najim and Zineb. However, more actors involved in my research will appear, such as Khalid, whom I introduced at the beginning. I am arguing from the perspective of the migration: this means from the perspective of the partners in Morocco who are immobilised and become mobile through marriage with a EU citizen.

D igitalization: facilitating the meeting of people across borders Zineb and Najim met each other two years ago. She is nearing the end of her 20s and lives in a tiny city in Morocco between Rabat and Casablanca. She wanted to find someone to marry, she explained to me. “I am not the kind of person who goes out a lot. And I have the internet at home and plenty of time,” she said. So she decided to register on a website which is called Muslima.com – of course, not just to chat. The slogan of Muslima.com: “Find your Muslim life partner”, fits well with Zineb’s motivation to use this platform to meet her future husband. While global networking is the focus at Skout – “from friendships to romance” – the range on this website is more specific: it offers to help people find a life partner with a Muslim background. After only one week, she met Najim online. He is in his early

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forties, also Muslim and lives in a large city in Germany. Soon, both closed their mailboxes, as they no longer wanted to receive messages from other users. They moved from this chat to regular meetings on Skype. Zineb was not the only interviewee who found her partner online. Quite a lot of them told me that the first encounter with their partner took place on the worldwide web. There are many different virtual rooms where they can get in contact with other people and also start relationships. I have already mentioned Skout and Muslima.com, but there is also, for example, Mustapha, whose hobby is playing games online, mainly on Gametwist.com. He also told me that he had met many other players from all over the world and practiced his foreign language skills through these contacts. One day, he was playing rummy with someone from Germany. At the beginning, he did not know the gender of his opponent. They started to discuss, via chat, the rules of the game, as there were some inconsistencies. After a while, they changed the topic and began to talk about more private matters. One day, she came to visit him in Morocco. Now they are married and Mustapha is applying for a visa in order to move to Germany. Others met on Facebook or mere dating websites such as Jappy.de or Badoo.com. In the last two decades, the internet has become an important space for Morocco’s young generation to get in contact with people from all over the world, as the anthropologist Ines Braune demonstrated in her dissertation (Braune 2008). In this context, the virtual space does not only enable one to meet a potential partner, but also to meet people with different citizenships, living in regions almost inaccessible for the majority of Morocco’s youth. As Braune puts it: “No visa requirements exist in cyberspace” (Braune 2008, 225; translated by the author). It means virtually overcoming physical immobilisation and borders. Urry argues “that these information and communication technologies and especially new kinds of software do indeed transform networks and social life through transforming the background within which human movement takes place, through new mundane virtual objects that remodel the ‘technological unconscious’” (Urry 2007, 162–163). Zineb has always lived in a reality of migration and im/mobility. One of her older sisters moved to Italy many years ago. She married an Italian man and founded a family. Zineb’s mother visits her daughter every year. During that time, Zineb looks after her siblings and the house as she is not able to accompany her mother: she has not been granted a visa due to the regulations that exclude people who are young, unemployed, unmarried and do not come from a rich family, as, from the perspective of the authorities, the will to go back is then not guaranteed. When I spent an evening at Zineb’s house with her family, I also met her younger sister who was unemployed at that time. While we were watching a Moroccan TV series, she was sitting in front of her laptop looking for job offers. She was searching for a job in Qatar as she knows some young women who went there to work and that the working conditions are much better there compared to Morocco. Zineb is, consequently, familiar with a culture of migration, in the sense that in her environment

214  | Miriam Gutekunst and in Morocco, more generally “migration is pervasive, has historical presence and the decision to migrate is part of everyday experience” (Hahn and Klute 2007, quoted from Khosravi 2010, 14). It means that having a partner on another continent and, thereby, the opportunity to migrate too, is nothing strange or new for Zineb, but a part of her everyday life – in the sense that she knows these practices from her environment. She did not explicitly decide to search for a partner in order to leave the country, but, at the same time, she was familiar with the imagination of migrating through her environment and her experiences of immobilisation. Almost all my informants were already connected to Europe, for example, through Moroccan friends or family networks. There were also some who had already tried to move to Europe and failed. Mustapha, for example, had already travelled once to Lybia in order to take an illegal route to Italy where his cousin was living at that time and who provided faked passports to friends in Morocco. When Mustapha’s father died, he did not continue his journey and returned to Morocco. Khalid has also tried his luck in Germany as a student. Now he is back in Tangier and, fortunately, connected with his girlfriend he wants to marry. Leaving the country and going to Europe is an idea almost everyone has once in a lifetime and is an inherent part of youth culture in Morocco (Braune 2008, 222). The worldwide web is of major importance to realise this dream. Besides getting unlimited information about politics and life in Europe and travel virtually, it offers the possibility of finding a partner from the Global North without actually moving. Being married to a citizen from a member state of the EU means having the basic right to live together and be granted a visa. Consequently, active search for a partner in the virtual world of dating platforms and social networks becomes a mobilisation strategy in this context. The anthropologists Daniel Miller and Don Slater made a similar observation in their study on the impact and the use of the internet in Trinidad and Tobago: “Since already many Trinidadians know of others who have found partners this way, the Internet has quickly become a specific option for those in search for love, with the additional implication of leaving for another country through marriage” (Miller and Slater 2001, 69). However, in times of increasing securitization of borders, having a partner and being married are not enough to be granted a visa.

S ecuritization: the problematisation of migration through marriage

Najim and Zineb have met every day since their first meeting, often for hours. Not at the same place though, but in the virtual world, with Zineb in front of her laptop in Morocco and Najim in Germany. Their story is a good example of what restrictive migration policy means for a couple who have found each other beyond the confines of territorial boundaries. They are subject to two different entry policies: Zineb is a Moroccan citizen and as a young, unmarried woman without a steady

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job, she cannot secure a visa for Germany. Najim has lived in Germany for fifteen years and has a permanent resident visa, but is an Iraqi citizen. He has repeatedly applied to the Moroccan embassy for a visitor’s visa, but has been refused every time with no reason given. There are not many options for them to be together in one place, but one is to marry: they are planning to apply for a marriage visa to Germany for Zineb. If a national of a “third country with visa requirement” is married to someone who is either an EU citizen or in possession of a resident visa, they have the basic right to enter the Schengen area and live with their spouse. The protection of marriage and family is guaranteed in German Basic law (Deutscher Bundestag 2012, 16), the Charter of the EU (European Parliament 2000, 10) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948). Zineb, Mustapha and Khalid all want to invoke this right. However, in these current times of an increasing securitization of Europe’s borders, a marriage certificate is not necessarily enough to be issued a marriage visa to join a spouse. The authorities and consulates view migration through marriage as a loophole in the system – which became very clear during conversations with employees from these institutions. Compared to labour migration, especially of highly skilled people, migration through marriage is seen as “unproductive” (Block 2012, 44). Over the last decade, migration through marriage to Europe and North America has become a specific target of restrictions and control (Block 2012; D’Aoust 2013). The first hurdle is providing proof of German proficiency for level A1, the lowest level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, before being entitled to apply for a visa. The introduction of the language certificate was part of the reform of immigration law in 2007. This requirement applies only to citizens from third countries who want to live with their partner in Germany. Nationals of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Brazil, Honduras and Israel are excluded from this regulation “because of long-standing and close relations”, as the German Government explained in a requested statement (Bundesregierung 2014). Back then, the German government emphasised that this measure was aimed at facilitating the integration of spouses, and especially women, once they arrived in Germany (Bundesregierung 2007). With these changes in immigration law, Germany has followed other countries in the EU, such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and Austria, which also require a language certificate from marriage migrants. In order to pass the language test, it is necessary to have sufficient financial capital to pay for the preparatory courses and the test. One needs to live in a city with the possibility of attending a language course and being able to learn a foreign language: illiterate people who have never attended school have almost no chance of learning German or, at least, it takes a very long time (Gutekunst 2015b). This new regulation is part of a more general trend in Europe and North America towards

216  | Miriam Gutekunst calls for stricter controls and an optimization of the management of international migration flows (D’Aoust, 2013, 258). The control of marriage migration is nothing completely new. However, the introduction of the language certificate has led to a new level of intervention: “Disguised as an integration facilitating measure […], the utilitarian logic of neoliberal migration management has found its way also in the control of marriage migration  – a migration form traditionally linked to private matters” (Gutekunst 2015b). Zineb, Najim’s girlfriend, has already passed this test, which was no problem for her, as she speaks French fluently and studied law at university. She was already used to attending courses, studying and learning a language. However, solely the preparatory course at the Goethe Institute took three months until she was prepared to take the test. Consequently, for some – for example, illiterate people – the language certificate means a total exclusion from this channel to Europe, for others, at least a deceleration of the migration process. However, having the language certificate is not enough to be granted a visa. It is followed by an investigation by the German consulate, for example, in Morocco, and the Immigration Office (Ausländerbehörde) in Germany. Its staff are tasked with finding out if a marriage is genuine or a so-called sham marriage. This is what the authorities call a marriage that is contracted for the sole purpose of allowing a spouse to stay in a country, and is seen as a violation of immigration law and, thus, a crime. As my interviews with employees of the German consulate in Rabat showed, the first check begins at the counter when the visa application is submitted. The employee responsible observes how a couple appears, how they interact and communicate. If something is suspicious, it is noted in the dossier. Afterwards, all the documents are reviewed. If a couple does not meet certain criteria,4 both partners are subjected to further investigations, such as a simultaneous interview: both spouses are separately interviewed in the German consulate in Morocco and the Immigration Office in Germany. Questions can be very intimate and detailed in these interviews, such as how they met, how they celebrated the wedding, which shoe size the partner has, which drink the partner prefers for breakfast, what the favourite meal of the partner is, how many children does he or she want to have, and what the names of the family members are.5 In the end, the answers of both partners are compared and the last decision is left to the discretion of the authorities. The fact that a couple met online is assessed in this context differently. In conversations with employees of the consulate, dating platforms were often linked to a discourse around Bezness, a term used to describe mainly North African men who simulate love for a European woman with the sole purpose of getting access to a visa and financial support. At the same time, it seems to have become normal that these couples meet online and is not necessarily a reason for a doubt. Consequent4 | More about those criteria following normative concepts of love and a heterosexual relationship in Gutekunst 2015a. 5 | These questions are part of official questionnaires I received through lawyers and informants.

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ly, depending on the attitude of the street-level bureaucrat responsible for the visa application towards online relationships, it is possible that the fact that the first meeting of a couple happened in virtual space can be used against them. However, proving steady virtual communication can also have a positive impact on a decision concerning a visa application. An additional strategy of the authorities for verifying genuine marriages is demanding different proofs that a relationship is real. That can be, for example, plane tickets, entry and exit stamps in a passport, pictures of the time spent together, at least if one partner is mobile – which is mostly the case because one has the citizenship of an EU member state. Zineb and Najim are an extreme example, as in this case, neither are entitled to cross the borders between their respective countries. Proofs can also be documentation of regular virtual contact, such as protocols of Skype conversations or Whatsapp messages, as another couple told me in an interview. Throughout this process, the state gains a deep insight into the intimate sphere of these couples. Even if the couples cannot be forced to hand in such private proofs, most of them agree because they are afraid of being rejected. Zineb and Najim will have to deal with all of this when they apply for a marriage visa. It would lead to another deceleration before Zineb can move to Germany, along with feelings of uncertainty whether Zineb will be granted a marriage visa at the end or not.

I m /mobilisation: getting mobile , crossing borders Until Zineb is granted a visa, the couple have no other option than continuing their relationship online. Digital technologies today make it easy to maintain contact and create a close bond no matter the distance. Zineb and Najim meet online almost daily. Using especially the free internet telephony with video transmission, such as the software Skype, as a net-based and virtualised face-to-face encounter (Berchem 2011, 547), has become an integral part of the couple’s everyday life. Zineb and Najim do not only have long daily talks on Skype, they also watch films together, eat together or leave the webcam on while each does his or her own thing. Their relationship is based on such ritualised virtual practices and the production of common spaces. What happens in other relationships in the same place is “socio-technically reorganised” between two different places and “medialized” in this context (Döring and Thielmann 2008, 15). It was even possible for Zineb to accompany Najim when he was looking for a new apartment – he sent her photos, she explored the neighbourhood with Google Street View. This software stands for a new density and intensity in the medial transmission of pictures and, thereby, also the production of closeness between partners. It creates new imaginative spaces and, thus, becomes an “extension of human spaces” (Fassler 2008, 31). Najim has also met Zineb’s entire family on Skype and even asked her mother for her hand

218  | Miriam Gutekunst while sending a golden ring by mail. Even if the situation cannot go on forever for Zineb and Najim, it is much easier to endure the distance over a longer period through the current state of digitalization and communication technologies. Miller and Slater (2001, 70) also observed in discussions with couples living at a distance from each other that when they talk about their online relationships there is no big difference between those and other long-term relationships offline. It is possible through these communication technologies to trigger emotions despite the distance, so that an absence becomes present, as Illouz puts it (Illouz 2011, 421). The anthropologist, David Johannes Berchem, speaks of “transnational copresence” in this context (Berchem 2011, 546). Thus the increasing digitalization and the improvements in communication technologies do not only enhance the encounters of couples across borders, but also facilitate the maintaining of a relationship over a certain distance, a forced distance because of the immobilisation by border regimes and the long period of the visa procedure. Virtual mobility here becomes a substitute for denied physical mobility. However, the effect of substitution is only one aspect of the interplay of these two mobilities. Another one is that, in the end, this virtual mobility effectively enhances physical mobility. Without the virtual space and the widespread use of it, many couples would perhaps never have met and would, thereby, not have had the opportunity to use the channel to Europe of migration through marriage. At the same time, only through the seemingly limitless opportunities of communication technologies and software, such as Skype, Whatsapp or Google Earth, has it become possible to maintain a distance relationship over such a long period they are forced to have in order to get the required language certificate and to pass the visa procedure. I often talked to Zineb and Najim just before the day of the language exam when both were really nervous whether Zineb would pass the test or not, or when an application for a visiting visa was rejected once again. Sometimes I was with Zineb in Morocco or with Najim in Germany and communicated with one of them face-to-face and with the other one via Whatsapp or Facebook. In such difficult times, it was very important for them to be able to support each other and to comfort the other when he or she lost hope that they would be together one day. Before the 1990s, such a situation would have been much more difficult, at least on the virtual level. At the same time, travelling was much easier before, as I explained in the beginning. The sociologist, John Urry, observed a similar relation between virtual travel and physical mobility: “[C]ommunications and travel are partially substitutes for each other in that sometimes communications can replace travel while some travel may mean that communications need to take place. Overall I consider many ways, in which communications can effect substitution or complementarity in relationship to physical travel” (Urry 2007, 158). This complementarity is materialized and becomes very obvious when proofs of virtual communication become

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objects of evidence of the genuineness of a marriage that favour a positive decision for the visa application in the consulate. In the context of the border regime, this impact of virtual mobility on physical mobility through migration through marriage strengthens the moment of the “autonomy of migration” (Bojadžijev and Karakayali 2007). The concept of the “autonomy of migration” understands the mobility of people as a global social movement which follows its own logics and ways and is not completely governable and controllable as political discourses and economic theories assume. As Bojadžijev and Karakayali put it: “Autonomy arises within social contestations where new forms of cooperation and communication, new forms of living are constituted” (2007, 215; translated by the author). Migration through marriage is already seen as a loophole in the system by authorities and, at the same time, it is a way of claiming the right to free movement by people who are immobilised due to their citizenship. The increasing digitalization and virtual mobility reinforce the agency of immobilised people of appropriating this channel to Europe through finding a partner online. Khalid, who I introduced at the beginning, understands that it might, ultimately, not be as easy as he claimed in the beginning – until he has that stamp in his passport. So far, he is stuck in Tangier and bound to his job as a parking attendant. He is now standing on the roadside mesmerised by his smartphone again, typing messages into the Whatsapp window on the display. He uses every spare minute to stay in contact with his girlfriend. She just messaged him that it was 18 degrees in Germany. He looks up as a white SUV comes closer. Suddenly, the driver honks his horn to indicate he wants to park in this lot. Khalid jumps up, for a moment he forgets the place where he sees his girlfriend every day, as she stares at her smartphone screen over two thousand miles away.

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Practices, edited by Begonya Begonya and Jordi Roca, 27–44. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gutekunst, Miriam. 2015b. “Language as a New Instrument of Border Control: The Regulation of Marriage Migration from Morocco to Germany.” Journal of North African Studies 20 (4): 540–552. Hahn, Hans P., and Georg Klute. 2007. Cultures of Migration: African Perspectives. Münster: LIT Verlag. Hess, Sabine, and Vassilis Tsianos. 2010. “Ethnographische Grenzregimeanalysen: Eine Methodologie der Autonomie der Migration.” In Grenzregime, edited by Sabine Hess and Bernd Kasparek, 243–264. Berlin, Hamburg: Assoziation A. Holert, Tom, and Mark Terkessidis. 2005. “Was bedeutet Mobilität?” In Projekt Migration, edited by Kölnischer Kunstverein, Aytaç Erılmaz and Frank Frangenberg, 98–107. Köln: Kölnischer Kunstverein. Illouz, Eva. 2011. Warum Liebe weh tut: Eine soziologische Erklärung. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Khosravi, Shahram. 2010. “Illegal” traveller. An Auto-Ethnography of Borders. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Massey, Doreen. 1991. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today 6: 24–29. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. 2001. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford, New York: Berg. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38: S. 63–94. United Nations. 1948. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. Accessed 14 August 2015. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Virtual Im___mobilities: Three Ethnographic Examples of Socialised Media Usage, Civic Empowerment and Coded Publics Daniel Kunzelmann Berthold Brecht seems to intriguingly anticipate the reality of today’s social media – be it Twitter, Instagram or Facebook – where every user receiving a message is just one click away from socially sharing its content with a good many “others”. At the beginning of the 1930s when Brecht developed his radio theory, he did not think of a radio as just a nice little gadget, but envisioned a truly revolutionary potential that this media technology might bear: [T]he radio has only one side where it should have two. It is an apparatus of distribution, it merely allocates. Now, in order to become positive – that is, to find out about the positive side of radio broadcasts – here is a suggestion for changing the function of the radio: transform it from an apparatus of distribution into an apparatus of communication. The radio could inarguably be the best apparatus of communication in public life, an enormous system of channels – provided it saw itself as not only a sender but also a receiver. This means making the listener not only listen but also speak; not to isolate him but to place him in relation to others. (Brecht 1967, 129; emphasis mine) 1

If we consider the public to be an important part of any democratic society, one can easily imagine that such a “conception-come-true” would indeed bring along tremendous political consequences. Brecht’s model of broadcasting would revolutionise the texture of medialized politics: externally governed subjects metamorphosing into self-determined citizens. What had at that time been a monolithic, centralised and state-controlled monopoly of mass communication – Brecht called media usage “propaganda” (132) – could become a pluralistic, decentralised and democratic net of competing political thoughts and opinions. In 1932, this idea of a technology that places people “in relation to others” instead of “isolating” them seemed very Utopian. And today?

1 | The translation is from Niels Werber (2003, 233).

224  | Daniel Kunzelmann Looking briefly at the contemporary German social science literature, for example, shows that academia also  – at least partly  – shares the Brechtian idea of the empowering potential of (now) digital media: Whether it is “Democracy 3.0” (Meisselbach 2009), “E‑Participation” (Sarcinelli 2012) or “NETIZENS” (Leggewie 2010), political scientists often suggest the positive effect that digital media technologies might have for democracy and civil society. Here, the barely 20‑year-old assumption of individuals’ separation from community matters (Putnam 1995) seems rather outdated, having been replaced by the notion of a new civic mobilisation, which, in turn, has been enabled through a new type of media technology. This is frequently explained by the emergence of, as Manuel Castells (2007) has framed it, a distinctive new type of “socialised communication” that such media brings along. It is “self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many” (Castells 2007, 248; emphasis mine).2 In fact, there are 3,079,339,857 globally networked media users today (Internet World Stats 2015) who keep sending and receiving incredible amounts of information through their keyboards, smartphones and webcams; 844,000,000 mobile Facebook users who communicate in virtual spaces while, simultaneously, moving from one place to another physically (Facebook 2015); and more than 5,000,000 tweets (USSEC 2013) are sent out into the digital ether – day after day after day. Civic power, open access and free flows of information are at the ethic core of contemporary narratives of digital democracies. Just as the equation of the now dominating mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006) often indicates that – almost by default – mobility equals freedom, virtual mobility through the usage of contemporary digital media technologies is supposed to lead to political freedom as in “empowerment”, “participation” and “inclusion”. Yet, what does such socialised communication look like if we approach today’s intersections of media and politics from the micro perspective of cultural anthropology? Do digital media technologies really open up new paths of democratic participation?

M edia , power and democracy : ethnographies of socialised communication

The term “virtual mobility” – for the purpose of this article defined broadly as access to digital media technologies, meaning both hardware and software – usually transports the notion (Kenyon 2006) that such novel technologies enable someone to do something (e. g. access to education at a foreign university) that might otherwise not be available in equal measure through other types of mobility (e. g. a restriction to physical mobility due to the lack of a visa). In the field of politics, virtual mobility can, thus, be defined as enhanced access to political power through 2 | It should be noted that Castells is not one of those apologists.

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digital media technology usage. Rather than sharing a Utopian perception of socialised communication and instead of looking at the macro level of millions of acts of communication, this chapter seeks to have a differentiated ethnographic look at the realities of virtual mobility in such fields by also taking into account the opposite phenomenon: “virtual immobility”.3 The analysis draws on qualitative field work conducted within three local political contexts. Research on civic practices was carried out in Germany, Israel and Spain, on-site as well as online, over several months. The methodology consisted of three elements: network analysis, participant observation and discourse analysis of a broad range of media contents (e. g. Facebook, Twitter, newspapers, online magazines). It seems obvious that the briefness of an article may only allow an initial glimpse of today’s socially medialized spaces of micropolitics – a spotting of phenomena, so to speak. Consequently, the aim cannot and will not be to provide general answers to a global question. As Daniel Miller and his colleagues have shown with their Global Social Media Impact Study, “anthropological global generalizations” are quite difficult tasks (quoted in Miller 2015). This is not only true because social media platforms in China are different from, let us say, the ones in Turkey. Even more important is Miller’s ethnographically driven insight that Facebook in Trinidad actually differs from Facebook in Great Britain not because the technology is different – Facebook shares the same technical features and interface in both countries – but because the local media culture of its users differs in each context (Miller 2011). Social media is not only about technology, but also about its cultural practices. Keeping this valuable lesson in mind, the following three ethnographic examples are not supposed to produce global assumptions of media, politics and power by claiming a strict comparison of cases. Each of the three ethnographic vignettes addresses a separate research question empirically exploring the daily life worlds of politically engaged individuals within a specific democratic context: citizens who negotiate, deal with and struggle for political power through digital media technology usage within their particular “multimedia symbolic environment” (Castells 1996, 394–406). In Israel, the ethnographic vignette will be about public space, media politics and virtual empowerment. The focus of research was on a party list in Tel Aviv called City for All. Its political activists seek to put aside the all-dominating national conflict with the Palestinians on the municipal level, and to fight jointly for sustainable city policies beyond all ethnical, religious and social boundaries. This 3 | Virtual immobility is sometimes referred to as “digital illiteracy”. Recently, for example, the European Commission (2014) published data suggesting that almost half of the European population has insufficient digital skills and might be labelled “digital illiterate”. While the second part of the chapter shows that digital illiteracy may certainly be part of the phenomenon in some cases, political exclusion should not be reduced to a lack of knowledge. Consequently, the chapter as a whole argues that there is more to virtual mobility/immobility than this “knowing-how” aspect of digital technology.

226  | Daniel Kunzelmann section addresses the question, how can digital media transform democratic practices on the local level, while, at the same time, being connected and intermingled with traditionally institutionalised forms of power? In Spain, political action was explored online and on-site within a social movement: the local branch of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) in Murcia.4 Its main goal is to prevent the enforcement of evictions which have been ruled and executed by state authorities for more than five years. The PAH acts politically both physically and virtually through non-violent occupations of flats and houses, and by providing the necessary legal information to affected families online. The issues at stake here are to what extent does access to digital media technologies empower citizens? Or is there even a new form of virtual immobility evolving, which – to the contrary – leads to political exclusion, even broadening the “digital divide” (see, e. g. Friedman 2001; Hindman 2009)? Finally, in Munich, taking the example of a traditional democratic institution, negotiations of internal party politics within the Pirate Party (PIRATES) were analysed. “In the course of the digital revolution of all spheres of life” the party members’ vision is to rethink and redo democracy.5 The guiding research questions for this section were: What regulates, structures and distributes political action within digitized spaces of politics, and how do digital infrastructures invisibly coact with human political agents? Even though all empirical cases and their contexts are different, a shared analytical perspective will be developed throughout all of the following three sections: Virtual mobility, too, is bounded. Socialised communication within today’s socalled “liquid democracies” has structural constraints that set limits and generate opportunities to act. Unlike a fence or a wall that cannot be crossed, its borders are not always visible at first sight. This is why each section tries to uncover such socially medialized border zones of action, making the digital dimension of a political phenomenon visible. Where do the elements of contrastive pairs such as “inclusion vs. exclusion”, “lack of power vs. empowerment” or “participation vs. lack of agency” start empirically, where do they end and where do we have to look to find its shifting boundaries in the light of an omnipresent digitization? Each ethnographic example demonstrates how today’s novel media technologies might shape political spaces and actions, yet always in a very distinct manner producing a concrete power structure, which might lead to civic empowerment, but also bears the risks of new forms of exclusion.

4 | The translation would be something like “platform for all people affected by mortgage” (resp. by the “mortgage crisis”). 5 | They explicitly define this in their manifesto (Piratenpartei 2013a).

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“This is a public place !” P olymedia and the privilege of   institutionalised power Well before the internet existed – or at least before it had its commercial breakthrough – residents of Tel Aviv had fought against what they called the “privatization of public space”. The areas close to the city’s beaches have often been the cause and subject of these struggles. Due to their central location close to the sea, these spaces not only appear fairly attractive for the outdoor activities of city dwellers, they are also valuable real estate. The Israeli Rachel Gilad-Wallner has been a political activist for several decades. She was one of the city council members of the party list City For All in 2013, a list aiming to bridge national parties’ political differences on the municipal level. In October that year, Rachel was taking a walk to the harbour of Tel Aviv – “on public space” as she emphasised several times – when she, all of a sudden, spotted “a private event”.6 The whole area was closed off and someone had ordered security guards. Being “a citizen of Tel Aviv”, she did not want to “put up with this intolerable event” and confronted the organisers. Being physically there – at a place representing what she considered to be “public space” – and digitally equipped with the video camera of her tablet, she recorded the following discussion: Rachel [filming]: “Citizens of Tel Aviv, please, all of you look how our accessibility to pass here is blocked by these two giant men, because there is a wedding of the rich! This wedding is taking place here, and it’s against the law!” A security guard: “Hey lady, what do you care? Ten minutes and this is over.” Rachel: “No! I want to know whose wedding this is! I couldn’t get married here, and this is a public place!” (City For All 2013b, emphasis and translation mine) 7

Rachel’s demands to respect open access to a public place and transparency of any events that might happen there, as well as the adherence to the rule of law and its principle of equality, are not novel themes in politics. Indeed, they represent traditional democratic values. However, what is novel here is the particular shape of the media culture, and the way such values, respectively their breaches, were addressed. Rachel’s on-site confrontation of the wedding was uploaded to a social media video platform by City For All, and subsequently shared online through a set of channels (e. g. Twitter, Facebook, e‑mail). And yet, the linked YouTube video was just a tiny facet of socially medialized micropolitics. As a matter of fact, the social 6 | All case studies in this article were composed from the author’s field work diaries. Direct quotations are usually “marked”. Hyperlinks, to the extent that they exist, were added to all media contents. 7 | I first heard about this particular controversy on Twitter while I was doing field work during the 2013 city council elections’ campaign of City For All. The video can still be watched on YouTube (City For All 2013b). Even without knowing any Hebrew, one can tell that Rachel was quite outraged.

228  | Daniel Kunzelmann media were just the beginning of this controversy. Mobile technologies enabled Rachel to start doing politics, but they did not automatically bring along political impact. Their original tweet had only two shares (one retweet and one favourite). The video itself is very unprofessional and really hard to watch. Being unbelievably jittery, it was seen by about 300 people receiving two likes. This is not to underestimate the importance of her initial media usage. As a document, the video became a political argument. Using her web-enabled device to shoot and upload it online was the first thing Rachel naturally thought of when she was on-site. It was the most effective way to prove what she considered a breach of democratic values. She did this by drawing on the latest contemporary media technology personally available to her, by making use of means of media production that were formerly available only to professionals. Rachel’s case, thus, offers an illustrative example of how media technology gets appropriated to (firstly) become mobile virtually. Yet, if City For All had stuck solely to social media and had not broadened their strategy using other channels of communication as well, the story would have most likely stopped at that point. It did not, because City For All decided to hook up to a different type of media channel by informing newspapers and TV stations.8 This is when traditional and institutionalised mass media entered the political stage interconnecting two different realms of media. What made this incident particularly compatible to mass media interest was its public outcry factor. As things turned out, the groom did not only close off a public place, but he also happened to be the son of a well-off Tel Avivian hotel owner. He was, as Rachel put it, “more than a ‘normal’ citizen”, because he and his father were “closely tied up with the political establishment”. This “well-off son” was celebrating a private wedding on public ground. Rachel’s assumption proved right. Mass media would bite the bait addressing this controversy several times. But there is more to it: Being a formal party list and having city council members, City For All wired up a third line of communication using formally institutionalised politics. As a councillor, Rachel had the legal authority to introduce a bill to the respective city council committee demanding a rigorous, legal prohibition of the use of public areas for purely private purposes. This third channel of discourse paving its way into the city’s space of politics seemed to have taken place far from any virtual channels: it was injected on paper, through a committee sitting and discussing the matter in a small dusky room in Tel Aviv city hall. However, at the same time, it was inseparably connected with digital media, because one of its council members had not only been there when the incident happened, but was also able to prove this physical and personal experience with her multimedia recording. Now, how are we to understand this political space of medialized communication within Tel Avivian city politics conceptually?

8 | One of City For All’s tweets, for example, (City For All 2013a) contains a hyperlink to the news coverage of Haaretz, one of Israel’s most important newspapers.

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Drawing on ethnographic examples from a comparative migration study of Filipino and Caribbean transnational families, Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller (2012) have made similar observations in their book, pointing out that media practices are not and have never been “monomedia”. The shape of today’s media culture is polymedia – precisely what the micro-ethnography above has shown. The distinction between “real” and “virtual” has become increasingly blurred, finding expression in a broad net of medialized actions. We might still use the differentiation “real/virtual” for analytical purposes, but it does not make any sense ontologically. Reality exists as hybridity (de Souza e Silva 2006). Political action happens as much on-site as it does online, and these two spheres are mutually interlocked in many ways, so are virtual mobility and other forms of mobilities.9 Understanding this spatial hybridity of reality seems central to any contemporary media ethnography of politics. Studying mobilities should pay attention to its virtuality and vice versa.10 What does all of this mean with regards to power? It became evident in the Tel Aviv example that locally produced and socially medialized information is mobile across the boundaries of different media. This cross-media mobility of sharing information and the powerful resources necessary to mobilise them, both hardware and software, can be necessary to overcome an initial immobility of information, but without alternative channels of political communication such new media capacities might just not make a difference. Rachel was a member of the city council, and the medialized translation from a beach incident into a legal document in the council was due to her privileged, vertical usage of power and not due to a socialised, horizontal one. She used a traditional democratic institution. We definitely have to take the polymedia nature of today’s medialized world seriously in order not to overestimate the enabling democratic potential of socialised media. Virtual mobility does not generate political impact by default, it rather adds another (media technological) point of entry into a political discourse – another low-threshold layer of potential democratic empowerment. “Low-threshold”, thereby, does not refer to the technical knowledge of using digital technologies, but to the fact that, at least in democratic societies, there is usually no political authority that hinders their usage. The means of media production – to frame this from a Marxist point of view – are easily obtainable. However, as the next section will indicate, new perils of virtual immobility are another side of the coin. Reflecting on the relationship between political ability and practical capability, the following empirical example demonstrates that virtual mobility is about the knowledge both through technology and of (the usage of) technology.

9 | Marion Hamm (2006) describes the concept of “spatial hybridity of politics” vividly using the example of global protest cultures. 10 | For a good example of the issue of migration, see Kuster, Pieper, and Tsianos (2011).

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M ore than just a link ! G local empowerment and technological meta - knowledge My first encounter with the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) took place in Spring 2013. As on every Tuesday, the PAH Murcia had organised its weekly four-hour support meeting in the basement facilities of La Cruz Roja – the Murcian Red Cross. It was the session of a self-help group for eviction victims.11 During such PAH meetings, often for the first time, people affected get the chance to tell their worries, fears and feelings to each other. The sessions are moderated by political activists. This time, there were about 40 people in the room when an older woman tried to catch the moderator’s attention – “tried” because she hardly spoke any Spanish showing a very strong Eastern European accent. One could see that she was desperate. Suddenly, realising that no one could understand her, she helplessly burst out crying. This was one of my first experiences with the PAH selfhelp groups. But what do such meetings have to do with virtual mobility when they take place in a thick-walled room that renders any attempt to access the internet basically impossible? Entering the Red Cross building, one could see ten tables and two rows of chairs next to a bunch of lockers. No beamer. No PowerPoint. The only other piece of furniture was an old flip chart. Before a session started, activists would point to this flipchart. On it were a mobile phone number, a handwritten updated e‑mail address and a “uniform resource locator” – a URL. The website itself was referring to something called documentos útiles: useful documents. This is where the digital realm of politics starts. Virtual mobility is not only connected to global spaces – the internet being the most prominent one – but also to local places. Materialised on a piece of paper, PAH’s hyperlink on the flip chart symbolises this connection. On the virtual side of this amateurishly looking poster emerges a powerful political weapon: special legal knowledge. The link does not lead to a local Murcian activists’ website, but rather it connects individuals from Murcia with a Wordpress-based national cyberspace that contains the cumulative collected knowledge of the social movement as a whole – ready to be called up at any time. The empowering potential of this knowledge is so high, because it is so difficult and complicated to fight an imminent eviction in Spain. If a family has trouble paying their mortgage, it is very important to initialise appropriate legal steps at the proper time in the proper sequence. Through many years of locally situated ex11 | PAH activists exist in almost every Spanish city. They support the hundreds of thousands people who have been affected by the Spanish housing crises, and who have either lost their homes or  – threatened by evictions – might be about to lose them, because they can no longer afford to pay the interest rates on their bank loans. Even if the Spanish government has not yet been able to provide any official figures to assess the overall scope of the many individual tragedies, valid sources suggest that up to 2012, there might have already been up to 400,000 evictions that have been taking place in the shadow of the Euro crisis (Agencia EFE 2012).

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periences, the PAH has figured out how these social negotiations between a bank, the state and its citizens work effectively. Using their Wordpress-based website, they have broken this legal, highly abstract process of an eviction down into a set of easy to handle pieces of information which can be applied by any individual no matter where they are located in Spain, and without being an expert or a specialist in such matters. One can come upon things like a draft for a “letter of information” to send to one’s bank, templates containing correctly drafted “letters of objection”, or an important piece of advice about how to integrate the latest European Court of Justice’s decision, which has just ruled the practices of certain Spanish banks “to be illegal”, into a legal dispute. All this can be done by non-professionals doing mostly “copy and paste”. This virtual path is tremendously empowering. It contains the downloadable essence of all political and legal experiences that PAH activists from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostella have gone through since 2008. It leads, to put this conceptually, to a glocal network of information which provides a special type of knowledge that can – and in the case of the PAH often does –empower citizens successfully through media cultural practices. Barry Wellman’s concept of “glocal networks” (2002) helps one to grasp a notion of such a civic and socially medialized space that has just been described. This information network, while possessing global, regional or national connections, still has a form of local situatedness. Because “[t]he Internet”, as Wellman puts it, “both provides a ramp onto the global information highway and strengthens local links within neighborhoods and households” (Wellman 2002, 13; emphasis mine). The key to understanding this connection is the particular mediation of knowledge which novel media technologies enable, and which may be utilised politically, as the PAH example demonstrates. Thus, the people affected do indeed find documentos útiles. The latter protect them from being evicted. The provision of special legal knowledge might make the difference between living with your neighbours and friends or – at worst – ending in tragedy.12 In Spain, this kind of knowledge is not provided by the state, but rather by a 12 | These PAH self-help groups almost always unveil social and psychological hardships which are incredibly sad to listen to and expose the abysses of a society: a 50‑year-old Spanish father crying like a little child, physically breaking down in front of 38 strangers. Firstly, he had lost his job. Since he could no longer pay the interest rates on the mortgage on his house, his parents agreed to use their own mortgage to cover his debt. But their son still could not afford to pay the exploding rates. Ultimately, he ended up not only losing his own home, but his parents were also evicted from their house. Other cases involved a young mother who had been living with two small children in her flat without any water or electricity for more than a year and an old man threatening to shoot himself if he really lost his house. All three stories mentioned were told to me during my ethnographic encounters with the PAH in the basement of the Red Cross. In Spain, the people affected during the process of an eviction (un desahucio) quite frequently commit suicide. On the one hand, this has probably something to do with “feeling ashamed” about their own situation, as activists have stated many times. On the

232  | Daniel Kunzelmann glocally networked social movement whose activists not only do politics in their local neighbourhoods (e. g. by “occupying houses”),13 but also on a regional (e. g. “organizing demonstrations”), national (e. g. “internal coordination”) and European level (e. g. “lobby work at EU institutions”).14 The legal information provided by the PAH was, thereby, openly accessible and it could take effect if one knew where to find it and how to use it. The amounts of data were rather small. All you needed was a temporary internet access point, and the formats of all shared documents were widely distributed. Nevertheless, the people affected quite often had problems and difficulties related to issues of technology, because they could not open, find or print a document. Activists of the PAH had to constantly provide this technological knowledge: they had to deal with outdated software, the poor design of their own website or a difficult usage of hardware. If we shift our focus from the “citizens as users” to the “citizens as producers” of this glocal network of information, the point becomes even more obvious. Whether to handle Wordpress correctly perhaps to upload a new “letter of objection”, to edit an appealing and educational video for YouTube or to administrate the local Facebook group, polymedialized work was always a central part of the activists doing politics.15 Such mediation of this type of media competence seems to be essential to virtual mobility – a key competence, so to speak – if the emergence of a new form of discrimination is to be avoided: political exclusion through “digital illiteracy”. It is not that the peril of virtual immobility is akin to a direct consequence of somewhat exceedingly complicated technologies. The argument is not about any technological determinism. Concluding with the initial example of the older Eastern European woman who could not express herself in Spanish might clarify this point. In the meeting described, the PAH finally managed to help her, but it was when another Bulgarian participant present at the meeting started translating. Only then could the poor woman tell about her eviction case, and the activists managed to provide her with the relevant information. Before, they were just not other hand, it might also be due to the fact that evictions in Spain are particularly hard. A personal insolvency law does not exist in Spain (as of November 2014). Once evicted, affected citizens not only physically lose their home, but also have to pay off the debt. Now the bank’s property, this “home” is transformed into “real estate” again. Sometimes shelterless and often without a job, these evicted people are supposed to continue paying off their loan to their bank while their (former) house usually remains empty. 13 | I have written a short but sad ethnography showing such local activities of neighbourhood politics for the Transformations magazine (Kunzelmann 2014). 14 | Even the “global” applies here, since the PAH helps many citizens from Latin American countries who are also quite often affected by evictions in Spain. In Murcia, for example, the local activists work together closely with the Ecuadorian consulate. 15 | In a way, the PAH activists represent something similar to the prototype of a political media entrepreneur.

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able to understand what she was trying to say. Or, to change perspectives, she was not capable of expressing herself using the appropriate medium – in this case, the Spanish language. At first sight, this seems to have nothing to do with digitization. At second thought, the example gives a valuable hint. Just as language – being a medium as well – has to be learned, using and applying digital media can be learned, and has to be appropriated. Glocal medialized spaces of politics do not, by default, generate democratic participation. Empowering civic practices may occur within such spaces, as the example of the PAH network of information has proven. However, new possibilities of failing also exist. Just as language has to be practiced to empower individuals to express themselves, virtual mobility does not come by birth. The more important the usage of digital media technology becomes, the more urgent “digital literacy” becomes: the acquisition of a technological meta-knowledge. The novel technological layers of potential democratic empowerment, which were also described in the last section, may be low-threshold, and compared to the access to means of media production that existed just a few decades ago, it certainly is, but such new media technologies do have a threshold for potential political exclusion. As the following section will show, the digital infrastructures that compose these layers of action also bring a different kind of co-agency with them. There is something underneath the wires and glass fibres that acts. Let us open the “black box code”.

“M y software did this?” C oded publics and the infrastructures of virtual mobilities

The party convention of the Bavarian PIRATES. Unterhaching, a small town close to Munich. 4:30 pm. 12 January 2013. The setting: a small, ill-lit rural gym normally used for basketball. About 100 participants. Lively. Noisy. Somebody yells, asking for silence. Tables and chairs are packed with digital equipment. Cables, speakers, laptops, mobile phones everywhere. A huge screen on a provisional gallery shows the latest agenda item. A crew of technicians – also party members – live streams the happening, so that all PIRATES who did not physically make it into the gym are still able to keep up to date. The official aim of the party convention is to take a vote on the party’s programme and to decide on its political positions. One of the most heated debates flared up when members were supposed to vote on a position paper called “Game Changer: Neutral Societal Platform”.16 This draft, which finally got accepted with a tiny majority, was against any affirmative action for women, justifying its position by arguing that “female quotas” would not eliminate the reason for social injustice, but only treat its symptoms. In addi16 | In German it was called “Gamechanger: Neutrale gesellschaftliche Plattform” (Piratenpartei 2013b) – just as cryptic as in English.

234  | Daniel Kunzelmann tion to all the loud and “buzzy” debates that were taking place either through the stage’s microphone or simply by yelling across the tables, another “sp@cial” layer of discussion existed where PIRATES could simultaneously argue and exchange opinions – Twitter. In order to understand politics in all its media dimensions – in this case: the shaping of internal party opinions – one cannot simply ignore this channel of debate. The use of Twitter produced something similar to a locally situated simultaneousness during the ongoing discussions. Space and place overlapped each other. The party members were physically and virtually present at the same time, discussing across the tables, while discussing on a digital medium.17 The opinion-forming process was again polymedia, but there was something else to it. Next to acting party members, there was another form of co-agency that had an impact on the PIRATES micropolitical spaces of the party event. It was something hidden deep down in the infrastructure which enabled the simultaneous Twitter discussions, featuring another media cultural dimension that can be framed as meta-mediality based on code. This terminology refers to the structuring elements that reside behind optical fibre cables, touch-screens and data processing centres. Adrian Mackenzie’s (2006) concept of “software-like situations” will be used to illustrate this dimension. In Cutting Code: Software and Sociality, he addresses a very specific type of social configuration that might be subsumed as human-interface-relations.18 Beyond any technicism, he asks what type of agency is produced through the use of software and whether this could also represent something similar to an operating system of social action. Mackenzie does not conceive software and its structuring code as an abstractly defined (mathematical) set of operations, but embeds them into social and cultural situations: Software in its specificity is not a given. What software does is very intimately linked with how code is read and by whom or what, that is, by person or machine. Sociologists and anthropologists of technology have established that any formalization needs to be understood “in use”. (Mackenzie 2006, 6; emphasis mine)

Any time an interaction involves the use of software, one could sum up his concept: code pre- or co-structures this action to a certain degree. Code is culturally “in use”. This fragment of a source code is from the interactive democracy software ­Liquid​Feedback, which is sometimes used by the PIRATES to shape internal party

17 | The hashtag “#lptby” was used to create this supplementary, common sp@ce of online discussions. 18 | Mackenzie’s concept is more specific with regards to digital media than, for example, Actor-Network Theory-based approaches which are usually applied in such technological contexts, and may contain any human-non-human network whatsoever – e. g. even cars and batteries (Callon 1986).

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opinions. It defines – to put it simply – how the software calculates the weighting of votes (PSG-Berlin 2014):19 Line source 152 if (logging && candidates[i].score < 1.0 && !candidates[i].seat) log_candidate = 1; 153 if (log_candidate) printf(“Score for suggestion #%s = %.4f+%.4f*%.4f”, candidates[i]. key, candidates[i].score, scale, candidates[i].score_per_step); 154 if (candidates[i].score_per_step > 0.0) { 155 double max_scale; 156 max_scale = (1.0-candidates[i].score) / candidates[i].score_per_step; 157 if (max_scale == scale) { 158 // score of 1.0 should be reached, so we set score directly to avoid floating point errors: 159 candidates[i].score = 1.0;

Mackenzie’s concept helps us to understand the cultural dimension of these abstract symbols distinguishing between four elements that define any software-like situation: code, originators, recipients and prototypes (2006, 11–16). “Code” symbolises more than the semantics and syntax of a computer language. It is a “direct expression of human agency in relation to things”, precisely because it does not remain formal or abstract, but really acts: something does “start”, “move” or “stop” (10; emphasis mine). Code is also part of a wider net of social relations, while, in turn, defining these relations in a specific manner itself. Being executed – .exe – it may then change this very composition. To bring back the code fragment mentioned above: it defines “if (logging && candidates[i].score < 1.0 && !candidates[i].seat)”, and it does not define “if (logging && candidates[i]. score  < 50.0 && !candidates[i].seat)”. Of course, the symbols “