Waiting as a site of subject formation: examining collective prayers by Ethiopian asylum seekers in Germany

Abstract

In this article I look at collective payers by Ethiopian asylum seekers to explore how religious narratives are mobilized to deal with temporal angst in the context of waiting. I posit that waiting is a site of multifaceted struggles in which subjectivities are constituted, in response to both the violence waiting imposes and the anticipated freedom it carries with it. Asylum seekers confront life in waiting in various ways until they attain what they wait for and ‘settle’ in the host country. To settle is imagined as living in Europe as independent and self-reliant workers who could generate their own income which is contingent on waiting for the acceptance of their applications for asylum. Whether people attain what they wait for or not, their subjectivities are formed through a certain idea of themselves, an understanding of their situation and their practices, all of which are located within histories and structures of power relations. My analysis draws on ethnographic data generated from fieldwork conducted in 2016–2017 among Oromo asylum seekers in the city of Nuremberg, Germany.

Dans cet article je regarde les prières collectives des demandeurs d’asile éthiopiens pour explorer en quoi les récits religieux sont mobilisés pour traiter l’angoisse temporelle dans le contexte de l’attente. J’avance que l’attente est un lieu de luttes à multiples facettes dans lesquelles les subjectivités sont constituées, en réponse aussi bien à la violence imposée par l’attente et l’anticipation de liberté qu’elle apporte. Les demandeurs d’asile font face à la vie en attendant de différentes façons jusqu’à ce qu’ils atteignent ce qu’ils attendent et ‘s’installent’ dans le pays d’accueil. L’installation est imaginé comme vivre en Europe en tant que travailleur indépendant et autonome pouvant générer leur propre revenu ce qui dépend de l’attente pour l’acceptation de leurs demandes d’asile. Que les personnes obtiennent ou non ce pour quoi elles attendant, leurs subjectivités sont formées à travers une certaine idée qu’elles ont d’elles-mêmes, la compréhension qu’elles ont de leur situation et de leurs pratiques, choses qui se situent toutes au cœur d’histoires et de structures de relations de pouvoir. Mon analyse s’appuie sur des données ethnographiques générées par un travail sur le terrain mené en 2016–2017 parmi les demandeurs d’asile Oromo dans la ville de Nuremberg, en Allemagne.

Keywords:

• waiting
• subjectivities
• collective prayers
• Oromo
• asylum seekers
• temporal angst
• Ethiopia

Mots clés:

• attente
• subjectivités
• prières collectives
• Oromo
• demandeurs d’asile
• angoisse temporelle
• Ethiopie

Notes

1 For details on how the German asylum process works, see https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/EN/Publikationen/Broschueren/das-deutsche-asylverfahren.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

2 The Oromo are the largest ethnic group who live in Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa. The majority live in the Oromia regional State of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. They are followers of various religions like Christianity (Ethiopian Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Catholic), Islam, and Waqqeeffana, the indigenous belief which has Waaqa (the creator) and other benevolent spirits at the centre.

3 A detailed multi-sited ethnography looking at Ethiopian female domestic workers was conducted by Nicoué (2018). Without necessarily reducing the middle east as a stepping stone towards Europe, Nicoue traces the trajectories of migration of these female migrants some of whom I encountered at the fellowship.

4 This seems to go well with Benedict Andersen’s allusions in his book on imagined communities (1983).

5 Mains (2007) describes how urban youth in Ethiopia try to tackle a temporal problem by finding a spatial solution, which is waiting for migration within or outside the country. Mains challenges the imposition of models like capitalism and neoliberalism as the sole explanatory factors to the economic condition of a specific area. He states that the youth are looking for options to migrate to tackle economic problems.

6 I discuss the protests in detail, also in relation to prayer as a site of political pronouncement, in Debele (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.