God will reward you: Muslim practices of caring for precarious migrants in the context of secular suspicion

Christine M Jacobsen

doi:10.1007/s11562-021-00468-0

Abstract

In recent years, Muslims have become more visibly invested in humanitarian work in France. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille, this article examines local initiatives to care for precarious others whose lives are neither materially supported nor socially recognized within the current French political regime. Engaging with critical French scholarship on humanitarianism as care for others associated with emergency, suffering and the politics of compassion, I show how food-distribution (maraudes) by Muslim-run humanitarian associations also draw from Islamic ethics of care. While social dynamics related to gender, class, race and generation structure the maraudes, the foregrounding of shared precarity, and of religious duty and piety over pity, challenges the ‘hierarchies of deservingness’ established by humanitarian border regimes. In caring for precarious others, Muslims must navigate both the secular suspicion directed towards Islam and the securitization of migration. Carrying out the religious duty of helping those in need, they are ‘laying claim to public space’ for both Muslims and precarious migrants.

Highlights

‘Bonsoir. One or two? Do you want a spoon?’ I am at the end of the table, providing sugar cubes for the coffee poured in plastic cups by Hamid, a tall man in his early thirties
Doing participant observation for my project on waiting and the temporalities of irregular migration (Jacobsen et al, 2020), I attended food distribution organized by different organizations on several occasions, sometimes participating as a volunteer, sometimes going there with my migrant interlocutors, or sometimes just observing the activities from a distance
In addition to participant observation, I base my analysis in this article on interviews and informal conversations with both organizers, volunteers and recipients, as well as on the self-presentation of the organizations on their websites and Facebook pages, and in local media

Summary

Introduction

‘Bonsoir. One or two? Do you want a spoon?’ I am at the end of the table, providing sugar cubes for the coffee poured in plastic cups by Hamid, a tall man in his early thirties. The secular problematization of Islam articulates with emotions and values, norms and obligations, mobilized by authorities around migration, which in the 2000s could be described in terms of security – internationally through the so-called war on terror – and in France related to inner city youth and urban violence, as well as a national fight against Islamist terror understood to threaten French values and norms (Fassin, 2009). Newspapers reported the perpetrator to be an irregular migrant, suffering severe mental health issues, which further energized the links drawn in public debate between Islam and irregular migration as security challenges. With this context in mind, this article discusses how people organizing and participating in food distribution present and understand the aims of the organizations. What are the ‘moral economies’ that animate and sustain food distribution and other care organized by Muslim maraudeurs? How are Islamic traditions of care negotiated in the context of ‘secular suspicion’ characterising contemporary France (Agrama, 2012a, b; Jacobsen, 2017)?

Food distribution as care for precarious lives

Caring for humanity

Care as Islamic duty and the hope of religious reward

Humanitarian selves and others