Between Civil Society and the State: Bureaucratic Competence and Cultural Mediation among Muslim Undertakers in Berlin

ABSTRACT

This article explores the intercultural negotiations around the death and burial of Muslims in Germany. In particular, it examines the mediating role that Muslim undertakers play between immigrant families and the German state. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Turkish funeral homes and the Islamic funeral industry in Berlin, it argues that undertakers’ ability to navigate the regulatory structures of the German bureaucracy and the cultural expectations of their customers is a defining feature of their occupational identity and a principal source of their professional authority. As intermediaries between civil society and the state, undertakers guide families through the cultural, religious, political, and legal landscapes that structure the transitions from life to death. In burying the dead and tending to the living, they must reconcile competing sets of administrative and cultural norms surrounding death and interment. In doing so, the Muslim undertakers of Berlin preside not only over end-of-life decisions and their theological implications, but also over pedagogical moments in processes of political and cultural integration in contemporary Germany.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• undertakers and undertaking
• Islamic funerary services
• intercultural encounter
• Muslims in Germany
• Berlin
• Necropolitics

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion conference and at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association. My thanks to Matthew Berkman, Guzmán Castro, Orfeo Fioretos, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Justin Gest, Jeff Green, Matthew Handelman, Danielle Hanley, Alistair Hunter, Anne Norton, Thea Riofrancos, Eva Soom, Bob Vitalis, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and criticisms. Though I cannot acknowledge them by name, I am grateful to the undertakers quoted herein. This study would not have been possible without their candour and enthusiasm.

Notes on contributor

Osman Balkan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Notes

1.. A ‘person with a migration background’ is an official category employed by the Federal Statistics Office that includes everyone who migrated to the Federal Republic of Germany after 1949 as well as all foreigners born in Germany after 1949, and all Germans born in Germany with one parent who immigrated to Germany after 1949, or one parent who was born as a non-German citizen in Germany.