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ABSTRACT
Based on fieldwork among Somali men and women in Somaliland, Turkey and Italy, this article examines the interaction between two ways in which identity is created. On the one hand, there are the conclusive IDentities that clan structures within Somaliland attempt to create based on geneology, as well as those that immigration officials attempt to establish for border-crossers through ‘credible’ documents or the registration of fingerprints. On the other hand, social identities are shown as being always in the making. The article discusses the ways in which these two processes are articulated with one another and how such ID/identity are negotiated by exploring the ability of European documents to open up social opportunities back in Somaliland, as well as how little, if anything, Somali documentation is worth for official purposes in Europe. These aspects reflect the ambiguous ‘make-believe’ of European refugee documentation and fingerprinting itself.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 E.g. ID documents giving permission for temporary or permanent residence.
2 Throughout this article, IDentity is defined as a form of registration through the use of biometric technologies in Italy and through clan affiliations in Somaliland. This form of IDentity is considered unmistakeably as an unambiguous marker of an individual's’ character. Identity, on the other hand, is characterized as an outcome of social processes and as something that is experienced, lived and changeable (see the introduction to this special issue).
3 The Dublin Regulation refers to a European asylum system where the asylum seekers’ country of first entry is responsible for handling the asylum request.
4 In 2003, the Dublin 2 Regulation was implemented, and in 2013 the Dublin 3 Regulation was approved.
5 As a burden-sharing mechanism, the same agenda proposed schemes to relocate refugees from Italy and Greece to the rest of Europe. This relocation scheme is only valid for nationalities with a more than 75 percent asylum acceptance rate within Europe and furthermore focuses on deportation for those with no rights to asylum (European Commission Citation2015, December).
6 The majority of the Somali men with whom I conducted fieldwork found it very difficult to find work and complained that the jobs were most often given to Italians.
7 In this article, qurbajoog is defined as a very diverse group of people. Despite the often positive connotations of the diaspora, as illuminated throughout this article, some are classified as dhaqan celis [tradition/culture return], referring to those sent to Somaliland by their families in Europe to learn their culture, religion and tradition. Some of them are described as qofkaa waa la soo muday, meaning people who had been injected. ‘Injected’ referred to what, in the Somali context, was there odd and indolent behavior.