From Muhājir to Āwāra: Figures of Migration and Exile Among Afghans

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines how self-designation among Afghan refugees and migrants is evolving. While terms such as muhājir, “refugee,” with a religious connotation, panāhenda, “refugee,” and mosāfer, “traveller,” were used by Afghans in the 1980s and 1990s, they no longer have the favour of younger people who might have grown up in Iran or Pakistan and often aspire to try their chance in the West. New generations tend to describe their situation with words such as āwāra, sargardān, dar-ba-dar, which generally convey the idea of “wandering,” “vagrancy,” “homelessness,” “lack of purpose.” This evolving terminology suggest that exile has lost the religious and political significance it might have had during the anti-Soviet jihad, on the one hand. It also can be interpreted as a quest for meaning in life, an assertion of agency in an effort to define their place in this world, on the other hand. Social media and blogs run by Afghans evoke an ontology of displacement and mobility, which ultimately elicits a form of cosmopolitanism from bellow and resonates with the social, political and economic unpredictability in Afghanistan.