Kohlhagen (2004) Legal Order in a Context of Illegality : Experiences of African Migrants in Germany

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Legal Order in a Context of Illegality : Experiences of African Migrants in Germany

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CONTRIBUTORS:

Author:

Kohlhagen, Dominik (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I))

CONFERENCE TITLE:

AAA Annual Meeting (2004) San Francisco

CONF. LOCATION:

San Francisco

YEAR:

2004

PUB TYPE:

Conference Paper

SUBJECT(S):

None

DISCIPLINE:

Anthropology/Archaeology

HTTP:

http://culturalheritageinternational.org/forums/view.php?site=anthrocommons&bn=anthrocommons_section34&key=1100304659

LANGUAGE:

English

PUB ID:

103-412-446 (Last edited on 2005/02/15 20:58:30 US/Mountain)

SPONSOR(S):

ABSTRACT:

Confronting the contradictory and openly discriminating migration rules of most industrialized countries, many migrants from the southern hemisphere have to develop strategies and stratagems in order to ensure their legal survival. Assuming that their experience of “illegality” has generally not been voluntarily chosen, this paper raises the question as to what can be considered as “law” and “legal order” in an environment in which trespassing and instrumentalisation of rules are lived as a necessity.

The paper intends to apprehend the legal phenomenon from an anthropological perspective, focusing on what is perceived as sanctioned obligations (either towards state law or towards other social actors). Fieldwork carried out in Europe and Africa explores the social relations of 4 migrants from Central Cameroon living in Berlin and having faced different situations of illegality with regard to state law. Trying to identify the “legal” within their social interactions, the paper aims to analyze their involvement in hierarchies and obligations of the African homeland and to question the importance of local communitarian ties, as well as links with their family and with migrant networks spread all over Europe.

German state law, thus appearing as being only part of a much broader range of legal ties, shall be questioned from this pluralistic perspective. How does its way to define obligations and status affect the migrants’ perceptions of order and hierarchies? Does the experience of rejection and exclusion by state law reinforce the legal involvement within other social fields? Does the development of communitarian “law” constitute an answer – or even an alternative – to inappropriate public policies?

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