Diverse interpretations of normal

Normal within anomaly

The self-description of “not being normal” or lacking the normal can tell what those who desire it see as the inside from which they have been excluded.

Hollis made efforts to construct a normal life for their children. This offers a perspective on how normal can be created within a situation which the person understands as abnormal.

Hollis lived in Marenburg with their spouse and children. They had a long history of seeking asylum. Finally, the family had received legal status based on individual grounds just before we met for the interview. I drove to the family home together with a person who supported Hollis and the family. I was not the first person to interview them. Hollis had a strong will to disclose what a country with a humane façade may do with migrants. Hollis had published the history of the family to bring attention to their case and the consequences of immigration politics. The interview took place in the family kitchen. Small children ran in and out. We spoke a mix of English, their mother language, and the local language.

After a negative decision for the first asylum process, the family saw no possibilities of returning to their country of origin. They decided to leave the reception facility and move to Marenburg. They subleased an apartment through acquaintances who were unaware of the children.

While the father occasionally worked outside the house, the mother stayed at home. The parents kept the children inside and quiet as to not call attention to their existence in the neighbourhood. The mother sometimes took the children to a low-threshold service for migrants. In this drop-in service, other visitors recommended the family to contact Migrant Solidarity.

(Field notes from an interview with Hollis, 2014)

Throughout the interviews, normal included a mindset without fear. For Hollis and Salem, fear related to a threat of deportation:

Hollis repeatedly described situations of fear. The fear of possible de-portation shaped their everyday experience: keeping children at the family home, having to run away from civil servants due to fear of de-portation, and having the courage to fake “being an asylum seeker” to get help for a hurt son.

(Field notes from the interview with Hollis, 2014)

Everyday bordering affected several areas of their everyday lives. Hollis’

description about hiding their children, keeping them silent, and stressing to them to not play loud at home had a very specific character of living in a situation of war and crisis. This may not be everyday practice in all families, but scholars quote past experiences of hiding migrants (Lind 2020, 121) and second-hand descriptions of hiding families (Sager 2011, 166).

Hollis dedicated themselves to construct a normal life for their children.

The drive for living as normally as possible had shaped their life in irregularity, as their descriptions about providing certain conditions for their children show:

Supporters sometimes took the children out to play to reduce the stress and to provide a bit of “normality”. The family regularly received food from the organization to guarantee meals. Hollis described it as their vocation to cook nice meals on a low budget, to let the children feel joy and love through the meals. This extended to imitating expensive pastry the kids wanted to try after seeing it in the bakery window. Coo-king was a central theme during the interview: it provided income, and through income independency. Food was a strong link to a “normal”

life. Hollis shared details about their intentions to find money for tren-dy shoes for the child who clearly wanted them, since “everyone else”

had them and the children should not feel them different from others.

(Field notes from the interview with Hollis, 2014)

In this quote, normal is an opposite of lacking certain material possibilities.

The produced normal includes high-quality meals as an opposite of one-sided dishes. In his ethnographic work, Jacob Lind (2020, 194–95) describes

parenting as an irregularized migrant as sacrifices. Hollis worked hard to facilitate their children having an experience of a childhood without concerns.

The family even hid the fact of irregularity from all but the eldest child, who had understood the situation from discussions between adults. Lind (2020, 98–99) refers to this as a strategy of protecting the children from the hardship through silence around the irregularity. The construction of the normal in this case has similarities to maintenance of everyday life during conflicts (Allen 2008; Buch Segal 2015; Das 2007; Kelly 2008).

Hollis intended to construct a normal childhood for their children through cooking and baking as a means of income but also through tastes. The intentions to reproduce normal within the experienced abnormal has been analysed in terms of agency (Kallio, Meier, and Häkli 2020; Thorshaug and Brun 2019). Food rituals may contribute to the creation of a habitual and habitable space of a new home where normal life is to unfold (Rabikowska 2010). The practices of food and meals may embody continuity for members of a translocal family to navigate multiple localities by making them palatable (Bankovska and Siim 2018). Others, who received donations, also mentioned their lack of power to choose the ingredients, emphasizing subjective tastes, and the importance of practising different eating cultures. The narrative of food as stability, an expression of love, and intentions to create normal express an ability to maintain a meaningful existence while living on the brink of losing even the little the family had, which Kirsi Pauliina Kallio and others (2020) would call “radical hope”. They argue that resilient presence may reveal dominant power relations or make them inoperative. In this case, the dissociation from the facts of the anticipated future relates to the children rather than their parents, who remained alert for the insecurity of their stay in Marenburg.

Food was generally an important factor when irregularized migrants talked about their everyday life. One aspect was receiving it: sandwiches at the drop-ins were “no solution”. The food bags at Café Frontera were at the same time a luxury (including organic meals to warm up) but also a factor for a diet that was not decided by the person receiving the food. Robin and Hollis spoke about the meals, diet, and food with a mixture of gratitude and a wish for dignity (see also Vandevoordt 2019a). Robin often lamented the

inability to use unfamiliar vegetables. Robin emphasized their gratitude to receive donations, but also mentioned several times the lack of power to decide. I interpret that the necessary material aid in this narrative may reproduce feelings of indignity as an opposite to the desired normal, which Hollis managed to create for the children within the experienced abnormal.

Life on hold as obstacle of normality

The relation between expected normal and experiences of abnormal manifests when migrants refer to their hopes and dreams about their expected, regularized future. I analyse normal as an aspiration, since consequently all interviewees name it as a desire, which relates to their expectation of their own future after irregularity. The desire is at the same time a representation of the abnormal, as it is a description of what is considered normal. The aspiration includes experiences of waiting. Robin, whose participation within society had been complicated for extended periods due to their lack of residence status, complained about the waste of time:

Robin has access to language courses and takes it very seriously to be able to study for a profession. “I need to learn more [local language] to be able to study. I could maybe go back to the university, but it would be a very hard way. On the other hand, I could study a more practical profession related to my earlier studies to be able to earn my salary faster. I don’t know yet, but I need to learn more [language] and I can consider my options for a little more time. But I have wasted so many years in not being able to learn a profession.”

(Field notes from an informal discussion, 2016)

Robin stressed loss of time as personal factor, but also as a loss for the society. If a person cannot learn the language and study for years (see also Bloch, Sigona, and Zetter 2014), it leads to the situation of waiting instead of studying for the future to be able to contribute to society later, when the situation would in the end be legalized. This perspective includes the idea of being able to legalize one’s stay at some point in time. The younger the interviewee, the more desire they expressed for access to education (see also

Bloch, Sigona, and Zetter 2014). This education meant three different things in particular: learning the local language and/or English; learning a profession, which could guarantee work in Marenburg; or studying for (recognition of) a profession that one had studied earlier. People who had experiences of work in their country of origin reported that their knowledge and skills did not count. The individual actions consisted of adapting: learning the language, seeking for ways to get a formal education – or just leaving it and accepting that the future work would be something else than one’s profession. Possibly the strongest expressions of personal losses were related to perspectives of family life. For Salem but also for others I interviewed, the irregularity could hinder altogether having the family they desired. For migrants with already existing but separated families, the aspired normal represented a constructed idea of what could be if the family were together (see also Elliot 2016).

Experienced temporal limbo (Coutin 2005b) is discussed in a variety of studies in fields close to this research. Migrants feel that they lack access to “real” (quoted in Sigvardsdotter 2012, 129) or “proper life”, which keeps people from doing “things which … are essential to human beings” (quoted in Bloch, Sigona, and Zetter 2014, 72). This would include a life “without someone having to ‘take charge of you’” (quoted in Van Nieuwenhuyze 2009, 124).

Migrants have a desire, an aspiration, but the irregularity hindered it; they experience detachment from the dimension of the future (Fontanari 2017, 43). Khosravi (2019) argues that the unclear time perspective beyond one’s control is a strategy of temporal bordering. Control over time – mechanisms which slow down and disrupt migrants’ autonomous temporalities – is increasingly discussed in terms of technologies of governing (Griffiths 2014;

Tazzioli 2018; Tsianos, Hess, and Karakayali 2009). For most interviewees, the abnormal waiting would end through status mobility, which emphasized the character of experienced borders. According to the interviewees, the bordering could end through political decisions (e.g. amnesty, the right to work regardless of status, the right to gain a residence permit through any work) or changes in administrative practices (e.g. reconsideration of their asylum case or personal circumstances).

This normal was not only a desired condition during the irregularity, but also the biggest relief for those whom I interviewed after they had regularized their stay, as Denver described:

I found the contact to Denver through a social worker I interviewed at an organization I was not observing. The social worker called the in-terviewee to ask if Denver would be willing to participate in a research project. Denver had received a residence permit somewhat earlier. We met in a restaurant in the city centre. We spoke the local language and I recorded the interview.

Denver was a young person who came to the city to live with their fa-mily. All their siblings were already living there. Since Denver was not a minor anymore, the decision for an application for a residence permit based on family ties came back negative. Out of a fear of deportation, Denver left the family home and found a place to stay through the family network. The father was somewhat involved in a religious com-munity, and through these contacts people organized a support group.

Supporters helped Denver to find an apartment outside the city. They told Denver to be careful and to avoid contact with officials, meaning not moving much outside to avoid attention.³⁶

After legalizing their stay, Denver spoke about the convenience of

“being normal” and “living a normal life again”.

(Field notes from an interview with Denver, 2014)

Contrasting the irregular past to a regular present, the factors of normal consist of an absence of fear, being able to live with or close to the family, and being able to work and study. Still, Denver desired a normal life:

Although Denver constantly refers to the current situation as an opposi-te to their experiences of irregularity, the waiting has not ended. During the interview, “normal” instead still appears as a perspective, since not

36 Denver was taking walks outside alone at night time, which could call more attention to them than during the day (see also Sager 2018).

all the necessary bureaucratic work has ended yet for the family to live completely on their own.

(Field notes from an interview with Denver, 2014)

If irregularized migrants aspire to normality as an exit of difficulties in everyday lives, obstacles of the participation, and the personal future, after regularization the frustrations instead have an administrative character.

The temporalities, experiences of waiting, and “life on hold” are not only related to migrant irregularity. This shift was also familiar to representatives of organizations, many of whom refer to certain frustrations which do not end with regularized status but change their form. Indeed, scholars refer to temporalities in the form of different processes of waiting throughout the migratory process, from the countries of origin and external borders (R. Andersson 2014) to reception facilities (Thorshaug and Brun 2019) and even conditions after legalizing the stay (Fontanari 2017). Könönen (2014) additionally relates the frustration of waiting to residence permit bureaucracy and the labour market. In terms of normality as an opposite of “stuckedness”

(R. Andersson 2014), the aspired normal is revealed as a possibility to control one’s biographical temporal orientation.

“A normal person like you”

Another aspect of the desired normal related to the norms in Marenburg.

Repeatedly, migrants referred to me as an example of a normal person, like Hollis did:

To Hollis, fear was the opposite of “being a normal person, like you”, as they described.

(Field notes from the interview with Hollis, 2014)

During the fieldwork, for a long time I regarded normal as an aspiration towards regularity, but the frequent references to my normality made me question this. As much as it bothered me during the research, migrants referred to me as an example of the normal they were trying to reach. I was not at home in Stockholm or Hamburg. My way to Germany had started

through a holiday resort close to Hamburg, where I had underpaid work serving wealthy German tourists. Later I financed my studies with care work.

In Stockholm, I had less experience of the city than many people I met and struggled more with language than in other places. So, which “normal like me”, and how to reach it?

Robin’s recurrent comments about “normal like you” related to my appearance as phenotypically Nordic. Migrants referred to their “colour”, “skin”, “hair”, “being black”, or being opposite from a “white person like you”. Among others, Robin pointed out that even they would not need to fear controls due to their status, they were targets of different controls. Indeed, during my 2.5 years of fieldwork, I walked twice through an alleged racialized control at the metro station without any attention to my person. My “whiteness” appeared as a feature of belonging to the nation – and consequently – a group of citizens of Marenburg.

In narrations, language skill compensated for obstacles of colour. Marenburg is a city where tourists and highly skilled workers are welcomed in different languages, but others are expected to learn one of the official ones. Migrants had different capacities for learning them but also different recourses for being able to gain this knowledge. For those who spoke the local language relatively fluently, it became a capacity which opened doors. In informal discussions with Lampedusa in Hamburg activists, I often heard a history of a friend who escaped a control at the metro through their fluent German. Other people of colour had been controlled for their documents, but the friend got through due to their skill to convince the police. “They speak like a Marenburger”, one Lampedusa activist told, laughing. The fluency in the local dialect was presented as a factor that portrays established status but also as a factor of belonging.

The requirement for native language skills was manifest even between migrants and their supporters. I followed Lampedusa in Hamburg and supporters to see a play at Thalia Theater on 9.2.2014. Elfriede Jelinek’s piece, which had earlier been played as “Die Schutzbefohlenen” (“The Wards”) (Niess 2018, 262), was now announced in the Lessingtage theatre festival program under the name “Lampedusa in St Pauli” (Thalia Theater 2014). The chosen title caused irritation among the group members and they wanted to be present, since “Lampedusa in St Pauli” would not represent the group (Field notes from the supporter meeting, 9.2.2014). The participation was

highly demonstrative. We arrived in a group with signs. After having seen the piece, many for the first time, members of the group reacted differently.

Some found it entertaining, while others accused it of misrepresenting the group and obscuring their political work. The division between “those who took the Duldung”³⁷ or the “Lampedusa in St.-Pauli” and the rest manifested at the theatre. I had been present at the supporters´ meetings, seen the program, and listened to the introduction at the theatre. However, I only later apprehended that the piece was not written originally about or for the group (Thalia Theater 2014); this could implicate that not all the members of Lampedusa in Hamburg knew that either.

After the piece, I followed three working groups, two of them pre-an-nounced, one spontaneously arranged for the Lampedusa in Hamburg speakers to have their platform…

In one of the working groups, the Lampedusa in Hamburg speakers presented their perspective. I wondered how calm they were now, con-sidering the anger after the play. A speaker opened the floor, but an elderly person soon interrupted the speaker:

“Excuse me, why don’t you speak German?”

The tone revealed the question to instead be a demand. This prompt-ed critical voices, since the requirement to speak one language in the country had a history far from neutral. The debate got heated. One supporter asked about the expectation: if the speakers are on the way for the group around the clock, when should they learn the language?

I was among those who expressed critical voices.

After the working group ended, someone addressed me to explain that the elderly person “did not mean it like that”. They had a personal com-mitment to teach German to migrants, and had dedicated their time to do it with those migrants who had a connection to the St Pauli Church.

(Field notes from Thalia Theater, 9.2.2014)

37 Duldung refers to Residence Act, § 60 and 60a (Ger.), being a temporary suspension of deportation, which is not a residence permit but a permit for tolerated stay.

I was aware of the debate around the monolinguist society and the nationalism in Germany and remembered painfully my first years and the constant demand to resolve situations far beyond my language skills. Why should the speakers be able to present their political thesis and discuss issues of misrepresentation, depoliticization, embodied consequences of the migration regime, and German legislation in German?

Fluency seemed to give an impression of having been living in the city for a longer period, but it also revealed a sign of commitment to the city – or a lack of it, as in the case where the speaker was challenged for their use of English. The voluntary German teacher indeed worked in facilitating

Fluency seemed to give an impression of having been living in the city for a longer period, but it also revealed a sign of commitment to the city – or a lack of it, as in the case where the speaker was challenged for their use of English. The voluntary German teacher indeed worked in facilitating

In document In search of a normal life : an ethnography of migrant irregularity in Northern Europe (sivua 121-138)