Ritual Space and Religion
Young West African Muslims in Berlin, Germany
In:
Refugees and Religion
Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories
Bloomsbury, 2021
S. 160-176
This contribution examines the case of young Muslims from West Africa who found themselves in Berlin after the collapse of the Libyan state in 2011. Migrant workers in Libya before the crisis, many of them were trapped and forced to cross the Mediterranean Sea and take refuge in Europe. Once in their new sociopolitical environment, what ritual spaces were available to them? How did they use those spaces? What space-making strategies did they resort to? I will address these questions paying attention to the ways in which these young people become part of Berlin, and make space for themselves. The paper discusses in particular the African Mosque initiative which provided an “African space” and helped West Africans face the challenges of marginalization, exclusion, and securitization policies. As I argue, space becomes here both a social and political resource, especially when my interlocutors are caught between migration policies and Muslim communal politics. The paper is based on a fieldwork I have been conducted in Berlin since 2014.