Dying Abroad
The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe

An original and immersive account of how immigrant communities navigate end-of-life decisions while facing barriers to political inclusion and citizenship.

Osman Balkan (Author)

9781009288583, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 April 2023

280 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

'Dying Abroad is an exciting read! With his precise, eloquent language and observations, Osman Balkan gives us an insightful and personal account of 'death out of place'. His book provides an important window into contemporary social and political orders and the role that end-of-life practices play in the negotiation of manifold boundaries in transnational lives.' Finn Stepputat, Danish Institute for International Studies

On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in countries of settlement, sometimes in cemeteries established for religious and ethnic minorities, where available. For immigrants and their descendants, perennial questions about the meaning of home and homeland take on a particular gravitas in death. When the boundaries of a nation and its members are contested, burial decisions are political acts. Building on multi-sited fieldwork in Berlin and Istanbul – where the author worked as an undertaker – Dying Abroad offers a moving and powerful account of migrants' end-of-life dilemmas, vividly illustrating how they are connected to ongoing political struggles over the stakes of citizenship, belonging, and collective identity in contemporary Europe.

Introduction: death out of place
1. Islamic funeral funds and the moral economy of repatriation
2. Muslim undertakers and the bureaucracy of death
3. Memory and identity in minority cemeteries
4. Burial and belonging
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology: death & dying [JHBZ], Sociology [JHB], Sociology & anthropology [JH]