| Description |
The proposed project intends to research deportation and "voluntary" return migration from Germany to Pakistan. The project focusses on the "political economy of emotions" in return migration, understood as the production, exchange and circulation of emotions in the entangled relations, experiences, obligations and expectations between (return) migrants, their kin, local and transnational contexts, as well as governmental and non-governmental institutions. While in recent years Germany became a significant destination for Pakistani migrants, deportations and assisted "voluntary" return have become more and more important in consequence of increasingly rigid politics of asylum. This project is based on the assumption that migration is never a purely "rational" phenomenon, solely based on “interests”, but that migration is strongly liked with emotions. This applies especially for return migration. The project thus intends to complement the growing body of anthropological research on deportation that to date focusses largely on Africa and Latin America.Research starts with investigating the complex and often confusing situation in Germany regarding deportation and assisted "voluntary" return. Subsequently we will focus on emotions linked with the motivations, expectations and experiences of return, working with both Pakistani migrants in Germany who face their return and with returnees back in Pakistan. The project will research the societal consequences and effects of deportation and/or "voluntary" return in Pakistan by analyzing the social environment of the returnees (i.e. their family, kin networks, peer groups, the village or urban neighborhood, and social networks), its economic and (local) political structures, as well as the emotions produced and circulated in this context as they are linked with reciprocal obligations and expectations.In addition to the ethnography of return to Pakistan, this project intends to develop a theoretical and methodological contribution on the role of emotions in the context of return migration and deportation and thus to offer contribution to the "anthropology of removal" (N. Peutz).
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