Doing Barzakh, Making Boza

Abstract

As growing numbers of migrants wait in Morocco to continue their journeys northwards, the social consequences of this time spent ‘en route’ should be further considered. This time spent waiting fosters new claims to belonging and political identity as would-be migrants to Europe become immigrants to Morocco. This article recounts ethnographically how forms of community emerge amongst im/migrants in Tangier through forms of shared difference and labours. In these borderlands, immigrants use terms such as ‘making boza’ and ‘crossing al-barzakh’ to describe the temporal stance of waiting. In Islam, al-barzakh refers to the firmament separating life and death. This article brings these concepts into discussion with anthropological conceptualisations of liminality to query how forms of being-in-common emerge alongside promises of inclusion and threats of exclusion.