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DYING ABROAD
The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe. (Forthcoming with Cambridge University Press)
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KEYWORDS
Migration
Belonging
Inclusion/Exclusion
Diasporas
Burial Practices
Dying Abroad is the first book to explore in detail how minoritized communities in Europe navigate end-of-life decisions in countries where they face structural barriers to political inclusion—a phenomenon I call “death out of place.” It argues that states, families, and religious communities all have a vested interest in the fate of dead bodies— including where and how they are disposed of and memorialized— and demonstrates that the seemingly quotidian practices attending the death, burial, and repatriation of racial and religious minorities are structured by deeper political and existential questions about the meaning of citizenship, belonging, and home in an increasingly transnational world. At a time when a growing chorus of European politicians lambast the “failures of multiculturalism” and call for the fortification of national borders, Dying Abroad illustrates how posthumous practices anchor minority claims for political inclusion while simultaneously challenging hegemonic ideas about the boundaries of nation-states and the place of immigrants within them.
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UNWANTED BODIES
Violence, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Memory (work in progress)
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KEYWORDS
Political Violence
Collective Memory
Identity
Public Mourning
Social Boundaries
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TRANSNATIONAL AFTERLIVES OF EUROPEAN MUSLIMS
Forthcoming in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
Co-authored with Yumna Masarwa
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KEYWORDS
Muslims
Race/Ethnicity
Inclusion/Exclusion
Identity; Burial
France
Germany
This article draws on ethnographic research conducted in Marseilles, France (Masarwa) and Berlin, Germany (Balkan), which included participant observation with Muslim death-care workers (undertakers and corpse washers) and interviews with first- and second-generation immigrant families, consular officials, and representatives of Islamic civil society associations and funeral funds offering postmortem services. Through these interviews as well as close readings of primary source materials like burial laws, insurance contracts, and advertisements for Islamic funerary services, we gained insight into the actors, networks, institutions, and legal structures that determine the movement of dead bodies within and across international borders. We also began to apprehend the significance that individuals from different backgrounds attribute to the location of burial and the different reasons motivating their decisions to repatriate or bury locally.
Although we conducted our fieldwork separately in two distinct urban settings, we discovered significant points of convergence in our interlocutors’ reflections upon end-of-life decisions and their sociocultural and political implications. Our findings contribute to a growing body of transdisciplinary scholarship that takes death as a productive, generative starting point and sees in postmortem rituals and practices a useful window into sovereignty, borders, citizenship, gender, and world making. By illustrating what might be understood as the “push” and “pull” factors that determine the afterlives of European Muslims, this article complements existing work on death in (post)migratory settings. Acknowledging the great diversity of migratory trajectories around the world, we see important commonalities in what Yasmin Gunaratnam has called “transnational dying,” that shed light on the complexities and contradictions of political membership, identity, and belonging in the 21st century.
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THE CEMETERY OF TRAITORS
In Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory: Democracy, Violence, Resistance. Ed. Banu Bargu. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Pgs. 232 – 252.
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KEYWORDS
Turkey
July 15 Coup
Political Violence
Public Rituals
Martyrdom
Karabekir had the dubious honour of being the first inhabitant of the ‘Cemetery of Traitors’ (Hainler Mezarlığı), a burial ground established by Turkish authorities to house the remains of putschists killed during their attempt to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a failed military coup on 15 July 2016, which led to the imposition of a two-year state of emergency and the arrest and/or dismissal of an unprecedented number of civil servants, teachers, academics and journalists in Turkey. The cemetery was the brainchild of Istanbul’s then mayor, Kadir Topbaş, who unveiled his plans at a massive public rally held in the name of safeguarding democracy on 19 July 2016. ‘I ordered a place to be reserved and to call it the Cemetery of Traitors,’ he told the flag-waving crowd that had gathered in Taksim Square. ‘ Those who pass by should curse them! They cannot escape hell but we must also make them suffer in their graves!
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NOT IN MY GRAVEYARD
In The Democratic Arts of Mourning: Political Theory and Loss. Eds. David McIvor and Alexander Hirsch. Lexington Press, 2019: Pgs. 83 – 101.
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KEYWORDS
Boston Marathon Bombing
Terrorism
Citizenship
Memory
Burial Controversies
Nobody knew what would happen with Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body, but the protestors were incensed about the possibility that it might be interred in the Boston area. Many brandished American flags and signs with messages like “Bury the garbage in the landfill,” and “Boston Strong.” A middle-aged man in a red WrestleMania XVI T-shirt held a placard with a graphic image of Tsnarnaev’s battered corpse that read, “Wrap his body in pigskin and dump it in the ocean—even that is too good for the shithead.” Other protestors carried signs stating, “It’s a disgrace to our military,” and “Bury this terrorist on U.S. soil and we will unbury him—American Justice.”
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THE ISLAMIC DEATHSCAPES OF GERMANY
In Project on Middle East Political Science. Vol 32 (2018): Pgs. 39 – 43.
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KEYWORDS
Germany
Islamic Cemeteries Commemorative Practices
Material Culture
Diasporas
Urban Space
In attempting to understand why Islamic symbols have provoked backlash in various European countries, scholars have often focused on conflicts involving female headscarves or the construction of mosques. In this memo, I’d like to draw attention to a somewhat neglected site of public Islam that is, nonetheless, highly consequential for European Muslims: the cemetery...
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CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE POLITICS OF MOURNING
In Contemporary French Civilization. Vol. 41, No. 2 (2016): Pgs. 253 – 271.
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KEYWORDS
France
Israel
Charlie Hebdo
Terrorism
Political Mourning
Inclusion/Exclusion
Speaking at Boisseau’s funeral, Minister of Labor François Rebsamen acknowledged that the victims “did not [all] have the same notoriety” nor “receive the same media coverage.” He insisted, however, that “there is no hierarchy when it comes to suffering or tributes.” All of the victims would be equally “mourned by the Republic,” he continued, “because the Republic forgets nothing, forgets no one. The Republic does not distinguish between its children. She has only one child: the French people.”
Contrary to Rebsamen’s claims, this article contends that the Republic does in fact distinguish between its citizens and shows how the creation of a hierarchy of French subjects is predicated upon differential practices of mourning...
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BETWEEN CIVIL SOCIETY AND STATE
In Journal of Intercultural Studies. Vol. 37, No. 2 (2016): Pgs. 147 – 161.
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KEYWORDS
Muslims in Germany
Cultural Mediation
Undertakers
Islamic Funerary Services
Integration
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BURIAL AND BELONGING
In Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. Vol 15, No. 1 (2015): Pgs. 120 – 134.
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KEYWORDS
Germany
Islam
Immigration
Inclusion/Exclusion
Belonging
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UNTIL DEATH DO US DEPART
In Muslims in the UK and Europe. Ed. Yasir Suleiman. Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pgs. 19 – 28.
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KEYWORDS
Germany
Turkey
Muslims
Transnational Funerals
Long Distance Nationalism
Repartiation
This paper considers the phenomenon of repatriation for burial, a practice that is common amongst the Turkish diaspora in Germany. It focuses on two funeral funds administered by the largest and most established Turkish Islamic associations in Europe, Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği (The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, hereafter DITIB) and Islamisch Gemeinschaft Milli G.rüş (Islamic Community Milli Görüş, hereafter IGMG). I contend that the funds encourage a form of necropatriotism by providing material incentives for the repatriation of dead bodies to Turkey. Although they do not explicitly require that their members be repatriated for burial, an overwhelming majority of fund members (upwards of ninety to ninety-five percent) choose to do so. Due to space constraints, this paper does not address the complex constellation of reasons that compel people to partake in this transnational ritual. Instead, it focuses on the institutional dimension of funeral provision amongst the Turkish community in order to highlight the structural parameters that shape and constrain individual actions and end-of-life decisions. In contrast to accounts that read repatriation as a reflection of migrants’ low level of integration in their country of residence or as a sign of nostalgia for their homeland, I argue that institutionalized incentive structures and economic calculations play a considerable role in determining where dead migrants will be buried.
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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD
In Theory & Event. Vol. 22, No. 4 (2019): Pgs. 1125 – 1127.
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KEYWORDS
Violence
Sovereignty
Necropolitics
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DISORDER AT THE BORDER
Europe’s “Migrant Crisis” in Comparative Perspective” (Editor’s Introduction)
In Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. Vol. 15, No. 1 (2016): Pgs. 118 – 120.
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KEYWORDS
European Union
Borders, Migration
The Politics of Crisis
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ISLAM AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE
Memory, Aesthetics, Art
In Review of Middle East Studies. Vol. 49, No. 2 (2015): Pgs. 200 – 202.
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KEYWORDS
Islam
Culture
Aesthetics
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