Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 44

After Deportation: Ethnographic

Perspectives 1st Edition Shahram


Khosravi (Eds.)
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/after-deportation-ethnographic-perspectives-1st-editio
n-shahram-khosravi-eds/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic


Perspectives Irfan Ahmad (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-nation-form-in-the-global-age-
ethnographic-perspectives-irfan-ahmad-editor/

The Ethnographic Radiographer

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-ethnographic-radiographer/

Vehicle Dynamics and Control: Advanced Methodologies


Shahram Azadi

https://ebookmass.com/product/vehicle-dynamics-and-control-
advanced-methodologies-shahram-azadi/

Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity


and Self 1st Edition Tom Vine

https://ebookmass.com/product/ethnographic-research-and-analysis-
anxiety-identity-and-self-1st-edition-tom-vine/
Care After Covid Shantanu Nundy

https://ebookmass.com/product/care-after-covid-shantanu-nundy/

Global Diversities - The Nation Form In The Global Age


Ethnographic Perspectives Palgrave Macmillan 2022 Irfan
Ahmad And Jie Kang

https://ebookmass.com/product/global-diversities-the-nation-form-
in-the-global-age-ethnographic-perspectives-palgrave-
macmillan-2022-irfan-ahmad-and-jie-kang/

Irish Traveller Language: An Ethnographic and Folk-


Linguistic Exploration 1st ed. Edition Maria Rieder

https://ebookmass.com/product/irish-traveller-language-an-
ethnographic-and-folk-linguistic-exploration-1st-ed-edition-
maria-rieder/

Neuroscience for Neurosurgeons (Feb 29,


2024)_(110883146X)_(Cambridge University Press) 1st
Edition Farhana Akter

https://ebookmass.com/product/neuroscience-for-neurosurgeons-
feb-29-2024_110883146x_cambridge-university-press-1st-edition-
farhana-akter/

Aquinas after Frege 1st ed. Edition Giovanni


Ventimiglia

https://ebookmass.com/product/aquinas-after-frege-1st-ed-edition-
giovanni-ventimiglia/
GLOBAL ETHICS SERIES
S e r i e s E d i t o r : C h r i s t i e n va n d e n A n k e r

AFTER DEPORTATION
ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES

EDITED BY

SHAHRAM KHOSRAVI
Global Ethics

Series Editor
Christien van den Anker
Department of Politics
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK
Global Ethics as a field builds on traditions of ethical reflection about
(global) society and discusses ethical approaches to global issues. These
include but are not limited to issues highlighted by the process of glo-
balisation (in the widest sense) and increasing multiculturalism. They
also engage with migration, the environment, poverty and inequality,
peace and conflict, human rights, global citizenship, social movements,
and global governance. Despite fluid boundaries between fields, Global
Ethics can be clearly marked out by its multidisciplinary approach, its
interest in a strong link between theory, policy and practice and its inclu-
sion of a range of work from strictly normative to more empirical. Books
in this series provide a specific normative approach, a taxonomy, or an
ethical position on a specific issue in Global Ethics through empirical
work. They explicitly engage with Global Ethics as a field and position
themselves in regard to existing debates even when outlining more local
approaches or issues. The Global Ethics series has been designed to reach
beyond a liberal cosmopolitan agenda and engage with contextualism as
well as structural analyses of injustice in current global politics and its
disciplining discourses.

More information about this series at


http://www.springer.com/series/15010
Shahram Khosravi
Editor

After Deportation
Ethnographic Perspectives
Editor
Shahram Khosravi
Department of Social Anthropology
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden

Global Ethics
ISBN 978-3-319-57266-6 ISBN 978-3-319-57267-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57267-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944109

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Carleen van den Anker


Cover design: Jenny Vong

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature


The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to the contributors for sharing their work in


this book. I am also grateful to Christien van den Anker for her gen-
erosity and intellectual engagement. I thank my editor Anne Schult at
Palgrave Macmillan who helped me as I made the final push to get this
book done. Thank you the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social
Research for financial support.

v
Contents

1 Introduction 1
Shahram Khosravi

2 Fieldnotes from Cape Verde: On Deported Youth,


Research Methods, and Social Change 15
Ines Hasselberg

3 Starting Again: Life After Deportation from the UK 37


Sarah Turnbull

4 Helping Women Prepare for Removal: The Case of


Jamaica 63
Alice Gerlach

5 Back from “the Other Side”: The Post-deportee Life of


Nigerian Migrant Sex Workers 81
Sine Plambech

6 Paying to Go: Deportability as Development 105


Michael Collyer

vii
viii Contents

7 Deportees Lost at “Home”: Post-deportation Outcomes


in Afghanistan 127
Nassim Majidi

8 “My Whole Life is in the USA:” Dominican Deportees’


Experiences of Isolation, Precarity, and Resilience 149
Tanya Golash-Boza and Yajaira Ceciliano Navarro

9 Making It as a Deportee: Transnational Survival in the


Dominican Republic 169
Evin Rodkey

10 Post-Deportation Movements: Forms and Conditions of


the Struggle Amongst Self-Organising Expelled Migrants
in Mali and Togo 187
Clara Lecadet

11 Ripples Across the Pacific: Cycles of Risk and Exclusion


Following Criminal Deportation to Samoa 205
Leanne Weber and Rebecca Powell

12 “Non-admitted”: Migration-Related Detention of


Forcibly Returned Citizens in Cameroon 231
Maybritt Jill Alpes

13 Afterword. Deportation: The Last Word? 253


Nicholas De Genova

Index 267
Editor and Contributors

About the Editor

Shahram Khosravi is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm


University in Sweden and the author of Young and Defiant in Tehran,
University of Pennsylvania Press (2008); The Illegal Traveler: An Auto-
Ethnography of Borders, Palgrave (2010); and Precarious Lives: Waiting
and Hope in Iran, University of Pennsylvania Press (2017). He has been
an active writer in the Swedish press and has also written fiction.

Contributors

Maybritt Jill Alpes works as Senior Policy Officer on deportations at


Amnesty Netherlands, and as a researcher at the University of Utrecht on
the EU Turkey deal. She is the author of Abroad at any cost: Brokering
High-risk migration and illegality in West Africa and has been publish-
ing in international journals, such as Africa, Social and Legal Studies,
POLAR, and Identities, on topics spanning from exploitative labour
migration, the intersection of migration control and social protection, to
marriage migration, and the work of migration brokers, consulate offices,
and airport staff.
Michael Collyer is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex,
UK. His most recent book is Migration, Routledge (2017, with Michael
Samers). During the 2012/2013 academic year he held a Fulbright

ix
x Editor and Contributors

scholarship in the Department of Geography at the University of


Washington, Seattle. He has held other visiting positions at Universities
in Egypt, France, Morocco, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. He is on the
steering committee of Sanctuary on Sea, Brighton’s City of Sanctuary
group, an umbrella organisation for refugee and migrant commu-
nity support groups in the city. At the national level he is an academic
member of the Independent Advisory Group on Country of Origin
Information, part of the office of the UK’s Chief Inspector of Borders
and Immigration. He is also a member of the UK Department for
International Development’s External Reference Group on Migration.
Internationally, he regularly undertakes research or analytical work in
collaboration with the UNHCR, IOM, various sections of the European
Union and International NGOs amongst other organisations.
Nicholas De Genova is currently on sabbatical in Chicago. Most
recently, he held a permanent appointment as Reader in Urban
Geography and Director of the Spatial Politics research group at King’s
College London. He previously held teaching appointments at Stanford,
Columbia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as visiting pro-
fessorships or research positions at the Universities of Amsterdam, Bern,
Chicago, and Warwick. He is the author of Working the Boundaries:
Race, Space, and “llegality” in Mexican Chicago (2005), co-author of
Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and
Citizenship (2003), editor of Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians
Remaking the United States (2006), and co-editor of The Deportation
Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (2010). He
has also edited a new book on The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of
Migration, Tactics of Bordering, Duke University Press (in press, August
2017).
Alice Gerlach received her B.Sc. Arts (Social Ecology/Psychology) at
the University of Tasmania. She is working towards her collaboratively
funded ESRC-HMIP DPhil at the Centre for Criminology, University of
Oxford. Alice is a member of the Border Criminologies Group, and has a
background in the detention estate, including immigration removal cen-
tres, working as a researcher for HM Inspectorate of Prisons in the UK.
Tanya Golash-Boza is a Professor of Sociology at the University
of California, Merced. She has published five books and 35 articles
and book chapters. Her latest book Deported: Immigrant Policing,
Editor and Contributors xi

Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism (NYU 2016) was awarded the
Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award from the Latino/a
Studies Section of the American Sociological Association.
Ines Hasselberg is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for
Criminology, University of Oxford, UK. She has conducted extensive
research on deportation, punishment, prisons, family life, and migrant
surveillance. She is the author of Enduring Uncertainty. Deportation,
Punishment and Everyday Life, Berghahn (2016) and co-editor of
Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New Ethnographic Perspectives, Routledge
(2016).
Clara Lecadet is a researcher at the French National Committee for
Scientific Research and a member of the Institut Interdisciplinaire
d’Anthropologie du Contemporain at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Her research focuses on the emergence of
expelled migrants’ protest movements in Mali and other African coun-
tries, and on the various forms of organisation used by expelled migrants
during the post-deportation period. She co-edited with Michel Agier Un
monde de camps, La Découverte (2014) and is the author of the book
Le manifeste des expulsés. Errance, survie et politique au Mali, Presses
Universitaires François Rabelais (2016). She is currently working with
Jean-Frédéric de Hasque on an edited volume entitled Après les camps.
Traces, mémoires et mutations des camps de réfugiés, Acemeia, coll.
Anthropologies prospective (forthcoming).
Nassim Majidi is an Affiliate Researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre for
International Studies (CERI) and Research Associate at the African
Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the
Witwatersrand, South Africa, specialising in return migration. She
teaches a graduate course on Refugees and Migration as part of Sciences
Po Lille’s Conflict and Development Programme. Nassim is the
Co-Founder and Co-Director of Samuel Hall, a think-tank of the Global
South, where she leads evidence-based research and policy development
on migration. Her cross-cutting skills have led her to interview refugees,
migrants and returnees in border areas, conflict settings, countries of ori-
gin and transit. She has developed strategic programmes, national poli-
cies on migration, and monitoring reviews that have had a lasting impact.
Nassim was nominated in 2015 by the Norwegian Refugee Council
for the Nansen Refugee Award for her work on behalf of Afghanistan’s
xii Editor and Contributors

displaced population. Nassim holds a B.A., in Government from Cornell


University, a Summa Cum Laude Masters in International Affairs and
Development Studies, and a PhD in International Relations from
Sciences Po Paris.
Yajaira Ceciliano Navarro graduated with a master’s degree in Labour
Psychology from the University of Costa Rica. She worked at Academic
Latin American Faculty (FLACSO) in Costa Rica, from 2003–2015,
where she was involved in various Latin and Central American projects,
linked to social integration, immigration, education, youth, and gender.
She has published on gender, social dialogue, and youth. She is currently
a graduate student in Sociology at the University of California, Merced,
working on understanding labour reintegration of deportees from the
USA to nations in Latin America.
Sine Plambech is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and
formerly Research Fellow at Columbia University in New York, USA.
Recipient of the Danish Research Council’s prestigious Elite Research
Sapere Aude Award in 2016, she conducts fieldwork in Nigeria and
Thailand on the topic of human trafficking, sex work migration, and
marriage migration to the European Union.
Rebecca Powell is the Managing-Director of the Border Crossing
Observatory at Monash University in Australia. She also works as a
researcher on a number of the border crossing research projects hosted
by the Observatory. She is currently completing a PhD by publications
titled ‘I still call Australia home’: The deportation of convicted non-citizens
from Australia and the impact of policy and practice from a criminological
perspective.
Evin Rodkey is Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at Casper
College in Casper, Wyoming, USA. Prior to coming to Casper College
in 2015 he taught broadly as an adjunct instructor in the Chicago area,
where he completed a doctorate in anthropology at the University of
Illinois at Chicago.
Sarah Turnbull is a Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Law,
Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Before joining Birkbeck, she was
a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Criminology, University
of Oxford, where she undertook a study of immigration detention and
Editor and Contributors xiii

deportation in the United Kingdom. Sarah is the author of Parole in


Canada: Gender and Diversity in the Federal System, UBC Press (2016)
and has published in journals such as Punishment & Society, Criminology
& Criminal Justice, British Journal of Criminology, and Canadian
Journal of Law & Society.
Leanne Weber is Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the
School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
She researches border control using criminological and human rights
frameworks. Her books include The Routledge International Handbook
on Criminology and Human Rights, 2016 (with Fishwick and Marmo),
Policing Non-Citizens, 2013 (Routledge) and Globalization and Borders:
Death at the Global Frontier, 2011 (Palgrave, with Pickering).
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Shahram Khosravi

Throughout my fieldwork among people who have been deported to


Afghanistan, a term coming back in conversations has been bi sarneveshti,
which literally means lacking destiny, or condition of destinylessness.
The term expresses a feeling of uncertainty, suspension, and purpose-
lessness, many experience after deportation. The term “destiny” coming
from Latin is the root of the term “destination.” For many deportees the
sense of lacking destiny is intertwined with lacking destination. A feeling
of being lost is recurrent in the testimonies by deportees throughout all
chapters in this book.
This book is about what happens to people after deportation.
Deportation studies have increased drastically since the early 2000s;
almost a decade after migration had been increasingly criminalised.
Deportation studies started to grow at the same time as migration
regimes increasingly adopted an approach based on “penality,” i.e.,
physical sanctions targeting non-nationals, manifested in detention and
deportation, producing a general condition of “migrant illegality” and
“deportability” (De Genova 2002).
Although there has been a growing literature on detention and depor-
tation, academic research on what happens after deportation is scarce.

S. Khosravi (*)
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

© The Author(s) 2018 1


S. Khosravi (ed.), After Deportation, Global Ethics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57267-3_1
2 S. Khosravi

The limits of deportation studies have often coincided with the national
borders of the deporting countries. There is a risk that lack of atten-
tion towards what happens after deportation would naturalise and rein-
force the idea of nation-states,—what has been called “methodological
nationalism.” The body of literature—at least published in English—on
what happens after deportation is small but nascent (e.g., Boehm 2016;
Collyer 2012; Coutin 2016; Galvin 2015; Golash-Boza 2015; Hiemstra
2012; Schuster and Majidi 2013). This edited volume, covering geo-
graphical variety and with significant theoretical and empirical findings,
aims to contribute to this new, but growing, research field.

Spatial and Temporal Stretching of Abandonment


Natalie Peutz’s (2006) call for an anthropology of removal has been
a call for approaching deportation not as a simple and single reloca-
tion of a person from deporting country to the country of citizenship
but rather as a process that spans long periods of time and geographical
areas. Deportation involves a variety of people and institutions, depor-
tees, their families and communities (Hasselberg this volume), and a set
of economic relations (Walters 2016). Rather than a divided process in
pre- and post-deportation, we see a spatial and temporal stretching of
expulsion, from the condition of deportability in the host country to the
“estranged citizenship” in the country of origin. The experience of many
deportees is “double abandonment” (Lecadet 2013), expelled from one
country and outcast in another. Like the condition of undocumented-
ness, social abandonment after deportation produces a “certain form of
spatial and temporal distribution of possibilities” (Keshavarz 2016, p.
263). Deportation engenders an abject social status, a position in the
society, formed by practices that continue long after the forced removal.
Deportation and its outcomes, thus, stretch over several countries and
over a longer period. Financial hardship, facing discrimination in the
labour and housing market, stigmatisation, lack of access to social ser-
vices and sometimes even protection, and cultural estrangement are usual
difficulties with which deportees struggle.
The degree of success in becoming socially embedded in society after
deportation (Ruben et al. 2009) depends on intersections of several fac-
tors, such as class, gender, age, and ethnicity. Social groups who gener-
ally experience a high degree of discrimination, such as ethnic minorities
(see Khosravi 2016) and women (see de Regt and Tafesse 2015), face
1 INTRODUCTION 3

many more challenges to reach a state of embeddedness after deporta-


tion than other groups. Similarly, age is of significance as well. Younger
deportees, who have spent their formative years in the country they were
deported from, have more difficulty to establish networks and to find
their place in the society. Not unusually, those who grew up in the host
country do not even master the language, assumed to be their “mother
tongue.” Furthermore, a gap between their education prior to deporta-
tion and the education system in the country they are deported to pre-
vents them from moving forward. Likewise, skills they have obtained are
not always relevant and educational certificates, if available at all, are not
always translatable or recognised and, therefore, may not be useful after
deportation (RSN 2016).
Furthermore, as chapters in this volume show, deportation gener-
ally affects both the deportees and the receiving communities negatively.
Remittances, i.e., the source of livelihood for many poor families, vanish.
Moreover, deportees find themselves in societies that are already struggling
with high rates of unemployment, social insecurity, political instability, and,
in some cases, with internal displacement. This may have been part of the
context in which they or their family decided to leave in the first place.
Part of the condition of “estranged citizenship” is disrecognition of
deportees’ citizenship. In some cases deportees have even difficulties
to obtain ID cards in the countries they are citizens of. For instance,
the majority of young Afghans deported from European countries to
Afghanistan were born and grew up in Iran or Pakistan. Subsequently,
it is not unusual that they are denied Afghan national ID cards, para-
doxically, by the same state that let them be deported to Afghanistan as
Afghan nationals. In other cases, the authorities stamp signs on ID cards
of deportees, which consequently would lead to easily identifying them
and thereby excluding them from labour and housing markets.
Furthermore, the hyper-visibility of deportees, tattoos, foreign
clothing styles and body movements, accents, or their signed ID cards
make them easy targets of police harassment. As several of the chap-
ters in this volume show (e.g., Weber and Powell; Rodkey) deportees
are often scapegoats for worsening crime and other social problems
(see Kanstroom 2012). Deportees are a stigmatised group because they
are seen as criminal, failed in the migratory project (Plambech this vol-
ume) and “culturally contaminated” (Hasselberg this volume; RSN
2016; Schuster and Majidi 2013). Post-deportation stigma is gendered.
4 S. Khosravi

Labelling and stigmatisation of women is documented in several chap-


ters. However, men also experience a gendered stigma while unable to
be provider for their families (Golash-Boza 2013; Turnbull this volume).
With marked bodies, deportees find themselves isolated in the commu-
nity supposed to be their “home.” They hide themselves or try to pass
as non-deportees for instance by “keeping up appearances” (Gerlach this
volume). The condition of social abandonment is experienced by being
regarded as both “failed citizen” and “failed migrant” before and after
deportation.
Deportees in their country of citizenship are turned into denizens
with limited access to their citizenship rights. As several chapters in this
volume show, while stigmatised as deportee, people’s rights can be sus-
pended, rejected, delayed, and denied. They are left vulnerable not only
to the violence of the state, but also to the violence of ordinary citi-
zens. Individuals may be in even more danger after the deportation than
before, particularly in countries where seeking asylum or, as Alpes (this
volume) shows, “none-admissibility” in the Global North is itself a pun-
ishable offence. This is how the condition of post-deportation character-
ised by fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity, resembles the condition
of undocumentedness prior to the deportation.

Neoliberal Deportation
As several scholars have argued, deportation has become a crucial strat-
egy for contemporary neoliberal capitalism (Andrijasevic and Walters
2010; De Genova 2002; Golash-Boza 2015). Deportation has been inte-
grated into the neoliberal policies of social abandonment, that expose
vulnerable groups to multiple expulsions from communities, the labour
market, the housing market, the spheres of security, the health care sys-
tem, the education system, and state protection. Without reducing
deportation merely to the logic of neoliberalism, however, making visible
that deportation is an instrument of neoliberalism, provides a perspective
that helps us to clearly understand the current regime of deportation (see
Andrijasevic and Walter 2010).
As the essays in this collection show, deportation means the with-
drawal of the state, as provider of services and protection, both in the
host country and the country of citizenship, while at the same time a
moralising and “responsibilising” project aims to turn deportees into
responsible, risk-taking, entrepreneurial, and ethical subjects. One
1 INTRODUCTION 5

deportation technique is to make deportees believe that they have con-


trol over their lives before and after deportation.
The deportee is regarded simultaneously both as a child unable to
understand what is in his or her interest and as an adult responsible for
his or her deeds and choices (Khosravi 2009). The adjective “voluntary”
in relation to return/deportation shows the contradiction very well. As
Andrijasevic and Walters (2010, p. 993) show, “voluntary” seems to
designate in reality an absence of viable options rather than a deliberate
choice. This self-governing aspect of deportation is a salient feature of
neoliberalism (Golash-Boza 2015). The neoliberal moralising and edu-
cative feature of deportation can be seen in the etymology of the word
deport, derived from Old French, and have same root as deportment
meaning “to behave, to carry or conduct oneself well.” The pedagogi-
cal aspect of deportation is shown in several chapters. For instance Sine
Plambech (this volume) demonstrates how women in her field study,
in order to get financial assistance from the Assisted Voluntary Return
and Reintegration (AVRR) programme, attempt to perform “the good
deportee”, i.e., an entrepreneurial subject who is capable of self-man-
agement and self-development—the ideal neoliberal subject. Likewise,
for Dominican deportees, a letter of good conduct (carta de buena con-
ducta) is a prerequisite for gaining access to the labour market (Golash-
Boza and Ceciliano this volume).
Neoliberal economic rationalisation has become increasingly incor-
porated in deportation logic, for instance through using economic
incentives to turn a failed asylum seeker in the host country into a
prospective business owner in the country of citizenship. Moreover,
“management” of deportation has been conducted more and more
in collaboration between governments, private companies, Non-
Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and development agencies
(Collyer this volume).
The observations made in this book are in line with Golash-Boza’s
argument (2015) that the emergence of the age of deportation is a
consequence of the neoliberal cycle of global capitalism. She sees mass
deportation as a part of the policy of controlling the surplus labour,
interconnected with outsourcing, the privatisation of society, and with-
drawal of the state. The neoliberal turn goes hand in hand with a sys-
tem of global Apartheid that intends to sustain the class-based and
racialised separation between those with the right to free mobility and
those exposed to forced immobility. One function of deportation is to
6 S. Khosravi

keep two worlds separated from each other. One cosmopolitan, a world
of surplus rights of mobility, and the other one a world of checkpoints,
borders, queues, gates, detentions, and removal.
The condition of deportability renders migrant workers to be a “dis-
tinctly disposable commodity” and creates a flexible and docile labour
force (De Genova 2002). Deportation as a form of mobility control
of workers is crucial for maintaining the wage gap between the Global
North and the Global South. Deportation intends to immobilise work-
ers and thereby sustains wage differences. There is a direct link between
outsourcing to countries with low wages and restriction of mobility of
the people of those countries (Jones 2016). Deportation preserves and
reproduces social inequalities and global injustices. Deportation aims
to maintain the unequal access to resources, and thereby upholds the
unequal distribution of wealth. For example, Bangladesh, providing one
of the lowest-wage labour forces for global capitalism, with 20 million
workers in the transnational garment corporations alone, is also one of
the countries with the lowest mobility opportunities. Bangladeshi citi-
zens can only travel to 37 countries (other poor countries in the Global
South) without a visa while German passport holders can travel to more
than 170 countries without a visa.
Recently several deportation scholars have paid attention to the rela-
tionship between mass deportation and outsourcing and offshoring
(Golash-Boza 2015; Rodkey 2016). Mass deportation provides a flexible
and culturally suitable labour force that is bilingual and has the “right”
cultural capital, for transnational corporations. Rodkey (this volume)
demonstrates that deportees grown up in the USA who speak English
fluently and are familiar with American society make the optimal work-
force for American companies moving to the Dominican Republic in
search for cheap-wage labour. Deportees are spatially expelled from the
Global North, to be included in the capitalist system outsourced to the
Global South. Thus rather than merely being excluded, deportees are,
in Giorgio Agamben’s meaning, abandoned, i.e., “exposed and threat-
ened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become
undistinguished. It is literally not possible to say whether the one who
has been banned is outside or inside the juridical order” (Agamben
1998, p. 28). This is the sovereign abandonment, an inclusive exclusion.
Ethnographies in several of the chapters in this volume demonstrate this
logic of inclusive exclusion at work in deportation regimes.
1 INTRODUCTION 7

Deportees’ Time
Deportation is not only the removal of a person spatially but also tem-
porally. Many have spent a long time in the host country before being
deported. They, particularly long-term residents, have worked, built net-
works, paid taxes, and spent time to become accustomed with language
and culture. The time they invested to accumulate these forms of social
capital is lost in a large extent. As Lauran Martin (2015) puts it: depor-
tees are dispossessed of their time they had before removal. The Afghan
men in Majidi’s chapter have left behind unpaid salaries (work time) in
Iran. In Hasselberg’s chapter, young Americans have left their youth
behind and in Turnbull’s chapter, deportees have left their children. By
being spatially removed, they are also robbed of an amount of time.
The socio-political conditions of post-deportation generates its
own temporality. That many, particularly long-term residents, experi-
ence post-deportee life as exile (Coutin 2016) or diaspora (Kanstroom
2012) reveals the fact that life is experienced by deportees as fragmented,
interrupted, and scattered in the same way exile and diaspora are usu-
ally experienced in the form of a broken link between time and place.
Lacking a place, either within the family or in the society (a job, house,
one’s own family, a secure future) makes deportees experience time as
broken and the life cycle as interrupted.
One feature of becoming “estranged citizen” after deportation is a
sense of “not being in-time with others” or a sense of non-simultaneity
that emerges from the lack of “the sense that others are doing at the
same time things that are meaningfully related to your own experience”
(Boyarin 1994, p. 17). Similar to the original diasporic groups, a tactic
for deportees to resynchronise themselves is by maintaining links and
ties to the host country where they had spent a long time before depor-
tation. Through cultural ties, celebrating national festivals, practicing
the language, activating personal networks, and maintaining a transna-
tional parenting role, deportees counter the rejection they face through
deportation (Coutin 2016, p. 160). As shown in ethnographies by con-
tributors in this book deportees construct a transnational grammar of
simultaneity (see Zilberg 2004).
Lacking a place and a position easily becomes an experience of what
Victor Turner (1969) calls liminality, a transitory stage between two
social positions, between two stages of life. For deportees, liminality is
not only a stage of transition but rather of “stuckedness” (Hage 2009),
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Ayant sur ton chemin vu trop de laides choses,
Aperçu trop de cœurs pourris,
Si tu reviens avec des paupières plus closes,
Des regards plus endoloris ;

J’espère, à ton retour, qu’après ce long martyre


Tu déclineras les clameurs ;
Tu ne permettras pas que l’Europe s’en tire
Avec quelques gerbes de fleurs !

Tu diras, en rendant aux fillettes, je pense,


Les gros bouquets aux nœuds flambants :
« Je n’étais pas venu demander à la France
Des mots écrits sur des rubans. »

Je compte que ton poing fermera la fenêtre,


Que, si la foule crie en bas
Pour s’amuser encore à te faire paraître,
Krüger, tu ne paraîtras pas !

Tu diras : « Maintenant il faut que je m’en aille.


Je veux retraverser Paris
La nuit, tout seul, à pied, en rasant la muraille,
Sans musiques, sans fleurs, sans cris. »

Tu diras : « Laissez-moi. Non. Plus de Cannebière !


Assez de Gare de Lyon !
Laissez-moi maintenant rentrer dans ma tanière,
Seul et triste comme un lion !

« Des derniers coups de feu l’écho des kopjes gronde,


Le dernier long-tom a tonné…
Nous nous sommes battus pour étonner le monde.
C’est bien. Le monde est étonné. »

Cambo, 26 novembre 1901.


XI
FABRE-DES-INSECTES

Sachant que l’humble arpent d’un jardinet claustral


Contient plus de secrets qu’un mortel n’en pénètre,
Il vit seul comme un pâtre et pauvre comme un prêtre,
Et d’un grand feutre noir coiffé comme Mistral.

C’est un homme incliné, modeste et magistral,


Qui plus qu’un monde au loin cherche à ses pieds un être,
Et qui, ne regardant que ce qu’on peut connaître,
Préfère un carré d’herbe à tout le ciel astral.

Pensif, — car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes, —


Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles,
— Les sommets rêvent-ils d’être des sommités ? —

Il nous offre une vie égale aux fiers poèmes,


Et des livres qu’un jour il faudra que ceux mêmes
Feignent de découvrir, qui les ont imités.

II

Une vie admirable. Aucun homme n’a dû


Fréquenter de plus près la maternelle argile.
Son bosquet de lilas lui tient lieu d’Évangile.
D’un Fabre d’Églantine il semble descendu.

Il guette tout un jour ce qu’il n’a qu’entendu,


Il ne peut s’ennuyer, sachant par cœur Virgile.
S’il découvre un insecte éclatant et fragile,
Il lui donne le nom du fils qu’il a perdu.

Quand il rentre, le soir, avec sa découverte,


La Vérité peut-être est dans sa boîte verte,
Car du puits d’un insecte elle peut émerger.

Voilà sa vie. Elle est simple, triste, ravie.


Il n’enlève jamais son chapeau de berger.
Et ses livres se font tout seuls, avec sa vie.

III

O livres qu’on n’a pas écrits sur des pupitres !


O rustique Buffon sans manchette et sans col,
Qui, pour le replacer dans les mousses du sol,
Ressuscita l’insecte épinglé sous des vitres !

Il mit tant de rosée autour de ses chapitres


Que longtemps les pédants murmurèrent : « Vieux fol ! »
Mais l’Entomologie au soleil prit son vol
Quand Fabre, d’un brin d’herbe, eut touché ses élytres !

Et la Gloire est venue. Et la Gloire, à présent,


Essaye d’excuser son retard en disant :
« On ne me parlait pas de cet homme… » Eh ! que diantre,

Comment aurait-on pu ne pas mettre à l’index


Un homme qui jamais ne s’est mis à plat ventre
Que pour voir le combat du Grillon et du Sphex ?

IV

Penché comme l’Histoire au-dessus de deux princes,


Il a vu s’affronter ces obscurs champions,
Et le frêle vaincu ruer des arpions
Pour détourner la pointe aux trois coups sûrs et minces.

Il a, dans un jardin d’une de nos provinces,


— Tout l’univers est là, dès que nous l’épions ! —
Vu le Drame, et l’Idylle, et les deux Scorpions
Qui vont en se tenant tendrement par les pinces.

Il s’est ému de voir, sous la touffe de thym,


Ces êtres, observés à même leur destin,
Se heurter pour l’amour ou bien pour la bataille ;

Et dans ses Souvenirs nous verrons, pleins d’émoi,


Tous ces êtres garder l’importance et la taille
Que leur donna sa loupe — et plus encor sa foi !

Il a vu, du plus haut problème effleurant l’x,


Jusqu’où l’instinct triomphe et quand il capitule,
Et comment le papier, le coton et le tulle
Sont faits par la Psyché, la Guêpe et le Bombyx.
O peuple merveilleux de métal et d’onyx !
Le Grillon d’Italie est un petit Catulle.
Le Pompile attaquant tout seul la Tarentule
Est grand comme Roland ou Vercingétorix.

Tout l’univers est là… combattants, parasites…


L’un vit de ses exploits, l’autre de ses visites.
Il y a le maçon, le potier, le tailleur.

Tu ravaudes, Clotho ; Balanin, tu perfores ;


Bousier, tu suis ton nom ; toi, Cigale, ton cœur ;
Et vous, vous attendez, dans un coin, Nécrophores !

VI

De plus, il sait trouver les mots vifs et luisants


Qui peignent la cuirasse et dessinent la patte,
Et faire, d’une étude austère et délicate,
Une ardente aventure aux détails amusants.

Il sait conter. Il conte, à soixante-dix ans,


Comme devait conter l’aïeule rouergate
Que regardait filer le chat aux yeux d’agate,
Car ce savant est fils des divins paysans !

Le doux miel n’a pas fui de sa lèvre certaine.


Il peut rectifier, en passant, La Fontaine,
Mais il sait n’être pas moins bonhomme que lui…

Et quand vont sur le pré ses chers hyménoptères,


Il est de leurs duels tellement ébloui
Qu’il se fait le Dumas de ces trois mousquetaires !
VII

Donc, tout l’Insecte, avec ses métiers et ses lois,


Sa vrille ou son archet, sa truelle ou son sabre,
Fut saisi par les yeux du fin visage glabre ;
Mais nul or n’est resté des élytres aux doigts !

France, compteras-tu sur un geste suédois


Lorsqu’un auguste seuil, peut-être, se délabre ?
Tu ne peux ignorer la vieillesse de Fabre,
Et que tu n’as pas fait pour lui ce que tu dois.

C’est chez nous que, les yeux s’émoussant au mystère,


Il a passé sa vie agenouillé par terre ;
Et s’il chancelle en se relevant, c’est à nous

De lui tendre les mains et, dans l’ombre tombée,


Pendant qu’il rêve encor de quelque scarabée,
D’essuyer doucement la terre à ses genoux !

VIII
LES INSECTES LUI PARLENT

« Et nous, nous nous chargeons de ton Apothéose.


Car nous fûmes toujours tes amis les meilleurs.
Nous, Tes Insectes, ceux de Vaucluse et d’ailleurs,
Voulons tous dans ta gloire être pour quelque chose.

« La fourmilière sculpte, et la ruche compose.


Une étoile d’argent se tisse entre deux fleurs.
Tu sais que nous savons réussir des splendeurs.
Fabre, te souviens-tu de la chapelle rose ?
« Te souviens-tu qu’un jour, en haut du mont Ventoux,
Tu vis un temple obscur et bâti loin de tous
Sur lequel nous étions cent mille coccinelles ?

« La chapelle était rose et semblait en corail !


Ainsi, ta solitude aura sur son travail
Une gloire vivante et faite avec des ailes. »

Arnaga, juin 1911.


XII
LA TOUCHE

Voici l’artiste de race


Et de grâce
Qui, tel sa pomme un pommier,
Fait, quand le soleil le touche,
Du La Touche…
Et même en fit le premier.

Voici les treilles que cintre


Ce beau peintre
Au-dessus d’aimables fronts ;
Voici du rêve, et des fêtes
Plus parfaites
Que celles que nous offrons ;

Voici le rouge carrosse


Qu’il nous brosse,
Et, dans l’eau se reflétant,
La fusée ombellifère
Qu’il sait faire
Éclater sur un étang ;

Voici les globes orange


Qu’il arrange
Dans le bleu de la forêt,
Et la chandelle romaine
Qu’il emmène
Bien plus haut qu’elle n’irait ;

Voici cette fantaisie


Cramoisie,
Et, sous un ciel de linon,
Ce voluptueux royaume
Peint en chrome
Et qui portera son nom ;

Voici tous les bergamasques


Près des vasques,
Et, voici, voici, voici
Pierrot, le Singe, le Faune,
Blanc, noir, jaune,
Grimace, rire et souci ;

Voici la cage éternelle


De cette aile
Qui revient… d’où ? l’on ne sait ;
Et voici la marche rose
Où se pose
Le pied d’un vers de Musset !

Il y a, près des fontaines,


Des mitaines,
Et, sur la mousse, il y a
Des souliers dont la bouffette
Semble faite
Avec un camélia.

Il y a la fleur vermeille
Sur l’oreille,
Sur le cou le velours noir,
Et sur les dents qu’on voit luire
Le sourire
Qui n’ôte pas tout espoir.

C’est comme un anachronique


Pique-nique
Où l’on verrait Camargo
Se faire porter en chaise
Chez Thérèse
Pour souper avec Hugo.

Des sapajous peu novices


Sous leurs vices
Ont une âme qui rêva :
On sent qu’ils ont, ces macaques,
Lu Jean-Jacques
Autant que Casanova.

Le regard d’une Isabelle


Nous révèle
Que si, triste et grimaçant,
L’amoureux descend des singes,
C’est des sphinges
Que l’amoureuse descend.

Mais, plus loin, — car ce La Touche


Qui nous touche
En montrant l’arbre et le nid
Peint l’amour, de la romance
Qui commence
Jusqu’au berceau qui finit, —

Plus loin, dans des blancheurs pures


De guipures
Et de doux linge bouffant,
Un regard de jeune mère
Énumère
Les beautés d’un bel enfant.

C’est le peintre aristocrate


Dont la patte
Trouve sans avoir cherché
Et peint sous une manchette
Qui s’achète
Bien ailleurs qu’au Bon Marché.
C’est aussi l’artiste brusque
Qui s’embusque,
L’œil clair sous un chapeau mou,
Pour peindre un coin de campagne,
Une Espagne,
Ou son jardin de Saint-Cloud.

Il prend, de cet œil vorace,


La terrasse
Où s’effrite un Coysevox,
Les peupliers dans la brise,
L’eau, Venise…
Il prend tout ! une ombre, un phlox,

Le cœur d’un jour, l’âme d’une


Nuit de lune !
Et si ce peintre est charmant,
C’est qu’il a l’inquiétude
Et l’étude,
La souplesse et le tourment.

Au moment qu’il portraicture


La Nature,
Comme il peut changer encor,
Il laisse le paysage,
Ce visage,
Pour ce masque, le décor.

Alors, il peint des balustres


Et des lustres,
Et, Cazin de l’Opéra,
S’il place au coin de sa toile
Une étoile,
Zambelli la posera.

Il est certain que la Muse


Dont il use
N’est pas une virago.
Elle est blonde et sensuelle
Comme celle
De notre divin Frago.

Peins, la Touche, les attentes


Palpitantes
Et le bleu des soirs sournois ;
Que ton chimpanzé s’occupe
D’une jupe
Plus que de croquer des noix !

Fais sortir le Capripède


Du bois tiède ;
Donne à cet écornifleur
Bon goûter, bonne sieste
Et le reste,
Sous les marronniers en fleur !

Peins l’Automne ! et que Septembre


De son ambre
Charge ta palette encor !
Et qu’Octobre qui titube
T’offre un tube
Gonflé de son plus bel or !

De l’époque lourde et vile,


Tel Banville,
Allège-nous le fardeau !
Grand devoir que tu t’assignes,
Peins des cygnes,
Des bras nus et des jets d’eau !

Dans ce bassin de Versaille


Dont tressaille
Le cœur d’Henri de Régnier,
Écartant la feuille morte
Que l’eau porte,
Fais les Nymphes se baigner !
Et toujours, allégoriste
Qui n’es triste
Que sous un voile d’humour,
Fais sentir, même en tes fresques
Simiesques,
Ta tendresse pour l’amour !

Reprends pour nous le vieux thème


Du : « Je t’aime ! »
Mais en lui superposant
Les caprices virtuoses
Que tu oses
Sur les modes d’à présent !

Lorsque pour tes Cydalises


Tu stylises
L’auto qui court les chemins,
Montre sur la couverture
De fourrure
Comment se prennent deux mains !

Et que toujours on remarque,


Dans ta barque
Ou ton carrosse d’or clair,
Comment s’incline une tête
De poète
Sur une épaule de chair ;

Et que toujours, par ta grâce,


Lorsque passe
La berline ou le bateau,
On entende au loin l’haleine
De Verlaine
Dans la flûte de Watteau !

Cambo, 12 mai 1908.


XIII
A SARAH

En ce temps sans beauté, seule encor tu nous restes,


Sachant descendre, pâle, un grand escalier clair,
Ceindre un bandeau, porter un lys, brandir un fer,
Reine de l’attitude et Princesse des gestes.

En ce temps sans folie, ardente, tu protestes !


Tu dis des vers. Tu meurs d’amour. Ton vol se perd.
Tu tends des bras de rêve, et puis des bras de chair.
Et, quand Phèdre paraît, nous sommes tous incestes.

Avide de souffrir, tu t’ajoutas des cœurs ;


Nous avons vu couler — car ils coulent, tes pleurs ! —
Toutes les larmes de nos âmes sur tes joues.

Mais aussi tu sais bien, Sarah, que quelquefois


Tu sens furtivement se poser, quand tu joues,
Les lèvres de Shakspeare aux bagues de tes doigts.

9 décembre 1896.
XIV
LE VERGER

Pour mon ami Coquelin et la Maison des


Comédiens.

Quel est ce grand verger où le Cid se promène


Et se chauffe au soleil en chevrotant des vers ?
Où, moins impatient de la sottise humaine
Depuis qu’il voit blanchir le front de Célimène,
Alceste, à son habit, met des feuillages verts ?…
Quel est ce grand verger où le Cid se promène ?

Ses lointains sont dorés de gloire qui s’envole ;


Ses passants sont rasés comme de vieux marquis.
Quel est ce Parc, Théâtre, où ta grande âme folle
— Ta grande âme qui fait semblant d’être frivole !… —
Se mêle au souffle frais d’un paysage exquis,
Sous un ciel tout doré de gloire qui s’envole ?

Des vieilles qui n’ont l’air que d’être un peu grimées


Cueillent la fleur où luit l’insecte smaragdin.
Plus de sombre avenir ! de chambres enfumées !
Et de tous les côtés c’est le côté Jardin !
Et l’on voit doucement marcher sous les ramées
Des vieilles qui n’ont l’air que d’être un peu grimées.

Un vieux châle est drapé d’un geste de princesse ;


La main de Hernani boutonne un vieux carrick ;
On se jette des noms à la tête, sans cesse :
L’un entendit Rachel et l’autre Frédérick !
Et, les arbres du bois devenant un public,
Un vieux châle est drapé d’un geste de princesse !

La tristesse s’en va comme un rideau qu’on lève.


Ah ! ne vous doit-on pas verser du rêve un peu,
Vous qui fûtes longtemps les échansons du rêve,
Et, charmeurs de nos soirs, quand votre soir s’achève,
Ne doit-on pas, pour vous, mettre la rampe au bleu ?…
La tristesse s’en va comme un rideau qu’on lève !

Quel est ce grand jardin plein de songe bleuâtre


Et de comédiens, comme un parc de Watteau ?
Où Mascarille, errant sans masque et sans couteau,
Croit remettre un instant sa cape de théâtre
Lorsque l’ombre des pins vient rayer son manteau ?…
Quel est ce grand jardin plein de songe bleuâtre ?

Quel est ce beau verger que protège un Molière,


Tout pensif de sentir l’amour profond du sol
Envelopper son marbre avec les bras du lierre,
Tout souriant de voir Elmire et Doña Sol
Causer, sous les berceaux, de façon familière ?
Quel est ce beau verger que protège un Molière ?…

Ah ! la treille au mouvant feston


N’est plus un décor adventice !
Le pâté n’est plus en carton
Qu’il faut que Gringoire engloutisse !
Le Malheur signe un armistice ;
Léandre devient châtelain ;
Scapin dort ; Buridan ratisse…
C’est le verger de Coquelin.

Le Traître caresse un mouton ;


L’Amoureux, humant un calice,
N’a plus sa voix de mirliton,
Mais garde encor l’œil en coulisse !
L’Étoile voit avec délice
Celle du ciel crépusculin

You might also like