A Moving Heart: Querying a Singular Problem of ‘Immobility’ in Afghan Migration to the UK

Abstract

This article offers a single case study of everyday suffering (khapgan—Pakhto; “feeling down”) experienced by one Afghan migrant in the United Kingdom, Zmarai. Single cases may destabilize categories of the political as conventionally institutionalized in relation to Afghan migrants according to such concepts as diaspora, citizenship, refugees, trauma, and culture, etc. Drawing theorizations of the way affects are key to a political economy's analysis of migrant labor (‘a moving heart’), the study moves away from political or psychological categories centered on the trauma of war and displacement, toward the unfulfilled promises of progress and liberty experienced less exceptionally within the family economy under transnational migration. This points to the salience of hope, and its loss, in the ways individuals assume, challenge, and reshape their load of cultural control and economic obligations—and raises questions around the problem of what, in a field of multiple interrelated mobilities, appears not to move.

Keywords:

• affect
• Pakhtuns
• remittance economy
• subjectivity
• trauma

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the Community-University Partnership Programme at the University of Brighton for awarding me a research sabbatical, during which I wrote this article. I also thank my Afghan interlocutors and friends in the United Kingdom and Peshawar for their support and interest in this work. I have presented versions of this article at the University of Sussex, University of Brighton and the 111th AAA Annual Meeting 2012. Thanks to the editor and to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. My deepest thanks to ‘Zmarai’ for allowing me to tell his story.

Notes

All names are pseudonyms.

Zmarai frequently used proverbs, for emphasis and illustration. In Pakhtun tribal society proverbs are highly valued rhetorical tools for expressing identity, and negotiating interpersonal politics, prestige, and moral authority in everyday life (see Bartlotti and Khattak 2006). I found this communicative style common in my fieldwork. This indicates its role in ways Pakhtuns preserve identity, tribal hierarchies, and adapt to the demands of globalization and migration in diasporic locations.

Pakistan is the largest host country for Afghan refugees, hosting more than three million. Peshawar, capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, records more than 60% (Government of Pakistan and UNHCR 2005). Over 56,000 Afghans reside in the United Kingdom (Office National Statistics 2011). Many claimed protection under the “open-door” asylum policy during the Taliban regime (1994–2001). Afghans estimate around 300 Afghans in Brighton (population 250,000), including around 40 families, a number not captured in official Census data. They comprise a Pakhtun majority, typifying ethnic compositions in Afghanistan. Zmarai belongs to a subtribe of the Ghilzai Pakhtuns, known for their extensive global business interests, political ‘neutrality,’ and cultural conservatism. Originating predominantly from South-East Afghanistan, the appellation Pakhtun (versus Pashtun, Pukhtun or Pushtun) preferred by Ghilzai Pakhtuns reflects regional differences in pronunciation.

This suggests a role for khapgan in the resignification of beliefs about ghosts (peyran) in the neo-liberal context.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nichola Khan

NICHOLA KHAN is Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research and writing focuses on violence, war, and migration, with emphasis on ways people across the Afghan diaspora, as well as ethnic communities in Pakistan, are affected by these processes and forces.