Stuck in the 'game': The multiplicities and subjectivities of Afghan 'irregular' migration journeys to Europe


Baran (Abu) Fakhri, Simon Fraser University

The ‘game’ has become a common term among migrant communities from the Middle East to describe their attempts to cross borders ‘illegally’ in their migration journeys to Western Europe. The ‘game’ experience and practices are subject to borders, terrains and landscapes, possible modes of mobility, and different roles of people (smugglers and migrants) involved. In this paper, I take the case of ‘irregular’ Afghan migrants and look into what constitutes and reinforces their precarity in their ‘irregular’ migration journeys to Europe, and how they experience and navigate through their ‘illegality’ and perilous ‘game’ attempts. This paper draws on my ethnographic research among Afghan migrants who lived and worked in Istanbul, Turkey, and were attempting or already attempted the ‘game’ during the time of the research (May 2022 – January 2023). I used different qualitative methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and digital ethnography to follow them in their journeys. My research focuses on those vignettes from khod-andaz (meaning self-launched in Farsi) ‘game(s).’ In such ‘game’ attempts, migrants prepare and take their long, risky and fragmented journeys mostly on their own with little or from smugglers or their associates. A growing scholarship explores the ‘game’ through the Balkans or the “Balkan route.” This line of work finds the ‘game’ as spatial tactics enacted by migrants where they actively “reinvent” the routes in response to the changing borderscapes (Minca and Collins, 2021; Augustová, 2023). I am in conversation with these works on the ‘irregular’ migration in Europe in understanding the ‘game’ as the geographies of (border) control and counter-geographies enacted by migrants. In my research, I extend the scope of the research on the ‘game’ in three major ways: first, including those stages, spaces, and practices of the ‘game’ before reaching the ‘Balkan route;’ second, attending the heterogeneity of ethnic and social lines where different social groups—here Afghans—have different migratory experiences and trajectories; and third, how various modes of the ‘game’ with new or pre-established routers, hubs, or practices, make the ‘game’ experience different. I link the ‘game’ to migration governance and border regimes en route or what the pertinent scholarship describes as “governing through mobility” (Tazzioli, 2020). However, I show what unique, ‘game’ subjectivities are formed throughout the journey. I take Martina Tazzioli’s (2019) concept of “multiplicity” in understanding temporary, mobile, non-homogenous formations of migrants that act collectively and have unique subjectivities with moral and political claims. I follow my participants describing their lives and journeys as “wherever we go, they get entrapped,” pointing to a juxtaposition of spatial and social (im)mobility or restricted mobility. Their ‘game’ subjectivities consist of compound temporal expulsion and prolonged uncertainty. This is also about the iterative nature of the ‘game’ with high pushback, detention, or deportation chances. This makes the ‘game’ where they can get “stuck in mobility” and anticipate back to square one after each attempt. Nonetheless, their narratives highlight diverse and ambivalent experiences of time and hope in the course of the ‘game.’ To them, the ‘game’ can also be imbued with certain narratives of self, life, and political and moral claims. Blurring the boundaries of agency and control, to these migrants, the ‘game’ is not completely selected out of necessity, but can be an extension of their project of the self, showing their self-resilience and self-investment. It is where they show care for their bodies, can express their capacity to survive or save themselves from social and spatial immobility, uncertainty, and prolonged waiting that entraps them in their migration journeys. My ethnographic research also shows how the ‘game’ is a space where these migrants form networks of trust and solidarity, reform and strengthen their national, ethnic, and gender identities through the course of preparing for, attempting the ‘game,’ and failed attempts (pushbacks). It is as well where national, ethnic, and racial tensions can resurface, diverge and lead to conflict. My research contributes to this literature by pushing further the understanding of this specific mode of ‘irregular’ migration, which can give new insights into the complex nature of the ‘irregular’ migration experience, migration governance and border control.

This paper will be presented at the following session: