The name is absent

21

one’s subject position¹⁹) or shaping emergent subjectivity in response to particular
societal and, arguably, basic human conditions (Kleinman & Fitz-Henry 2OO7)²⁰. Let us
consider this phenomenon further.

Numerous autobiographical works by African migrants to Europe describe a
common experience of disengaging or somehow circumnavigating the toxic contexts in
which they found themselves immersed upon arriving at their European destinations (see
for example Aidoo 1977; Bâ 1986; Bugul 1991). These travelers, separated from their
homes, struggled with a common desire to reconcile their histories and dreams and to
position their lives safely and comfortably within the reality they came to inhabit. The
narratives of my undocumented migrant consultants in Athens (African and otherwise)
approximate this experience of coping with a difficult location, except they would deny
having arrived at the endpoint of their journey. This is an important distinction. While
the autobiographical works detail strategies employed by the authors to make life more
ComfortableZbearable, my consultants were instead trying to make life easier so as to
create a capacity for further travel (or escape, as many put it). As one migrant told me,

I knew it would be difficult once I realized what had happened, but I expected to
find passage from here eventually. The problems I have now are worse than I had
in Senegal. The things I have to do to survive, the way I live, I don’t want to talk
about. I don’t know myself anymore, but I’m fighting. Life will become easier
once I move on.

¹⁹ Veena Das’s exploration of subjectivity in relation to violence and witnessing was instructive in
exploring this phenomenon (2000). Where this work differs from hers is in her use of the “violence”
category which I wish to escape, or at least reorient to reflect a more complex reality (the need to do so is
also hinted by Das 2000:222).

²⁰ Although Kleinman and Fitz-Henry do not discuss this phenomenon directly, they do however explore a
conceptual framework of an understanding of human subjectivity in response to change and experience.

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