Everyday Rituals of Migration: Constructing Relatedness and Agency among Young Refugees in Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines how young unaccompanied refugees living together within the confines of an asylum centre in Denmark construct different kinds of social relations and the meanings attached to these relationships. By investigating their routinised practices of everyday life as ‘rituals’, I analyse how young refugees negotiate different kinds of relatedness that enable them to exert agency. The ethnography points to the progression and expansion of different modes of relatedness to include friendships as well as consociate relationships, both with peers with whom they create a sense of community, and with adults who help them navigate the asylum landscape. The study underscores the deeply social nature of the young refugees’ agency. I argue that in the intensity of living together they transform weak ties into strong ties, described through idioms of friendship and kinship, that express the profound meaning of these relationships in the context of the uncertainty they face.