Marco Normativo e Institucional

Stevenson (1988) described the experience of Yemeni migrants as a ritual of passage, on the basis of Van Gennep (1909) and Victor Turner (1967 and 1969) conceptual tools. He included the departure and the time spent for the journey’s preparation as “separation”; the stay in another country (often Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf) is described as “transition”, with the related inequalities the migrant suffers in his ambiguous position; and return ceremonies as

“incorporation”. Each individual goes through the migration experience (ritual) to redefine his relationship in society. I follow the way in which Van Aken (2005) analyses the Egyptian migration process to Jordan, using Stevenson’s argument in connection to migration but changing the strength of comparison with “as if it were a ritual” instead of assuming it is one.

The ritual of passage is analysed on the one hand as a part of the emic interpretation of the

Eritrean migration process, on the other as an academic concept used to understand the change in individual and collective identity through the journey.

Both Stevenson and Van Aken worked on men migrating to earn enough to pay their dowry, celebrate their marriage and finally return to their home country with a redefined status.

The ritual is here assumed as the whole process of migrating and returning; it is the migration experience in all its phases to build up new social statuses at home. The case of people like the Eritreans is different. For people we can define as exiles or diasporic, it is the journey in itself that we may refer to as some kind of ritual, redefining the status of the individual both at home and abroad. In the light of the ritual literature (Bell 1992, Bloch 1992, Bourdieu 1990, Dirks 1991, Gellner D. 1999, Mills 2003, Turner V. 1967, 1969, Van Gennep 1909, Whitehouse 1996 etc), the journey becomes a maker of a different type of identity, with the departure from the home country as the “separation”, the encountered borders as “liminal space” or transition phase and the final integration in the diaspora and the community in Milan as “incorporation”.

The analogy of the rite of passage starts with comparing the migrant’s imagery, while preparing the journey, as part of the separation phase. In this phase, the person starts leaving behind his or her present status by imagining the future. Saad (1998) forwards an interesting issue in relation to time and place. She argues that the perception of the self in relation to the real and imagined world changes in the migrant’s mind. Migration (labour migration) stretches across time to depart from the present and to focus on the future. In the migrant’s time chart, the past coincides with the familiar and the controlled environment which is often related to a feeling of suffocation and lack of hope; the latter is completely distinct from the vision of the future as the outside world, which is instead related to an imaginary of the unknown, full of promise and apprehension.

Those Eritreans in Milan who arrived before the nineties told me that they came here with the intent of earning enough money to go back and fight for liberation. Many who have been here since the seventies say the journey had not been imagined as one-way. Most people

had the intention of returning but the historical circumstances⁷

The transition phase includes the encountered borders and the continuous change of status while finding visa permits. This limbo stage of the journey may be shorter or longer depending on the journey itself and on the speed in which one may seek and achieve integration into the existing community. For example, the newcomers are described as still in this stage of the passage to exile. Until people are integrated in the community and have shown to be capable of supporting themselves and their families, and maybe going back home to visit with tokens showing their new status, they continue to be referred to as being in this liminal stage. They are neither “at home”, nor “exiled”.

, the unforeseen difficulties they found abroad and the building of a life here, constituted them as exiles and they became part of the one million Eritreans in the world-wide scattered diaspora. The preconceptions of wealth and security abroad, and the desire to go and come back with another status, or simply another wealth, exist in people’s minds, so that disappointment is incorporated in the individual’s opinion of the self and others as failure or incapability. On the one hand, the pre-conception about the Eritrean diaspora, as the wealthy and free

“other”, and on the other hand, the collective imaginary of a promising future are part of the migrant’s separation phase; these pre-conceptions and imageries of time and space never completely leave the migrant identity, but build up throughout the passage to finally become part of the narrative of the self in Milan and when returning to Eritrea to visit family and friends.

The ceremonies marking the shift and inclusion are, in Milan and among the diaspora, celebrations like the Eritrean Festival, the National Day of Liberation, political demonstrations, religious ceremonies and national festivities. They are not ceremonies celebrating the inclusion of individuals, but keep the community united. The Eritrean newcomers who are not included in the community do attend these events, but they are

7 The liberation war lasted longer than expected and the second conflict broke out.

never actively participating or interacting with the previous generations of arrival. They are still in the shadow, not celebrating the community but hanging out among themselves.

When people go back home and then return to Milan, all the people closest to them expect them to prepare a feast with all the goods brought back from Eritrea and this is part of what may be defined as incorporation ceremonies. Even these more individualistic feasts on return are ceremonies releasing the tensions of social change, and celebrating collective incorporation into a diaspora which is constantly looking at and keeping alive the Eritrean nation and tradition.

Stevenson argues that the individual experience of migration can no longer remain in the private domain when shared by two thirds of the population. Migration, thus, becomes incorporated in the structure of society. The migration ritual, for Stevenson, not only changes the people that undergo it, but the whole society. To support his argument, he includes examples like the migrant’s detachment from the extended family, the shared identity of the returnees who during the stay abroad cease to be ‘Amran peasants and become Yemenis. Stevenson, thus, reinforces the concept of ritual as a mechanism facilitating social change and the related ceremonies releasing tensions. His description of the structural transformation brought by the migrants’ change of status in Yemeni society, can also apply to the Eritrean exiles. One fourth of the Eritrean population is abroad. The structure of the nation, therefore, had to change accordingly.