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Playing Cricket, Building Borders. The Construction of an Afghan-ness in Migration

Jouer au cricket, construire des frontières. La construction d’une afghanité en migration
Jérémy Sauvineau

Résumés

L’anthropologue Fredrik Barth a montré, au cours de son travail anthropologique, que les identités ethniques ne sont jamais acquises une fois pour toutes : il postule que l’existence et la maintenance des groupes ethniques ne dépendent pas du partage d’une « culture commune ». Plutôt, il suggère de prendre pour point de départ le travail de construction de frontières ethniques dans des zones de contact. À partir d’une recherche ethnographique d’un club informel de cricket créé par des exilés Afghans vivant à Froideville (France), cet article cherche à examiner la construction d’un groupe ethnique, et / ou d’une ethnicité-frontière à travers le sport. Plus spécifiquement, cet article place la focale sur la construction de frontières sociales (le cricket est perçu comme un lieu exclusivement masculin, où la masculinité est arc-boutée sur l’excellence physique), spatiales (où un « pays perdu » est symboliquement reconstruit à travers les matchs de cricket) et temporelles.

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Introduction

  • 1 Following Jeanes et al. (2019: 79), I define informal sports as “sport participation that is self-o (...)

1Sporting practices have historically received scant attention within the field of Migration studies, a fortiori within Refugee studies—despite a recent growth in publications in parallel with the “refugee crisis” of the 2010s. However, these works tend to align with political priorities (i) by making sport a way of promoting integration (Michelini, 2023), (ii) by promoting the well-being of refugees (Spaaij et al., 2019), or (iii) by focusing on participation in sports clubs (Agergaard, 2018; Agergaard et al., 2022). In both cases, sport is used “as part of a broader and more complex set of processes designed to engage, ‘empower’, or assimilate refugees and forced migrants” (Spaaij et al., 2019: 8). This article aims to distance itself from prior research in the area. On the one hand, it studies cricket, a relatively unknown sport in France, where ethnographic research mainly focused on more popular sports, such as soccer (Bromberger, 1995; Gasparini, 2007). On the other hand, this article approaches sport from the bodily and emotional experiences asylum seekers and refugees are feeling when they are practicing cricket. These experiences are essential if we want to understand the meanings of sport and physical activity in their daily lives (Spaaij et al., 2019). Finally, the article focuses on informal sports1 (Nesse et al., 2018), which have been briefly analysed despite their common nature (Evers, 2010; Michelini, 2023). The study of those informal sports is an opportunity to investigate the ways refugees or/and asylum seekers (re)build a “culture” and a “community” on exile, or experience a sense of community and belonging “with peers similar to themselves” (Nesse et al., 2023: 13). Indeed, sport is one way of moving from “the ‘I’ to the ‘we’” (Bromberger & Lestrelin, 2008: 113).

2To understand how migrants (re)build a “community” and a “culture”, I follow Hélène Bertheleu’s constructivist approach to ethnic groupings (2019). The latter has based her research on the work of the anthropologist Fredrik Barth. Indeed, he postulated that the existence and maintenance of ethnic groups did not depend on the sharing of “a primary and definitional characteristic of ethnic group organization”, their “common cultures” (Barth, 1969: 11). Starting with this hypothesis is taking the risk of essentializing a “culture” and making it a property substantially attached to beings. Rather, Barth suggests taking as a starting point the work of creating and maintaining ethnic boundaries, which would make delimiting and maintaining differences between groups more possible. This constructivist approach studies “the social and political construction of groups through their boundaries” (Bertheleu, 2019: 59). Thus, Barth highlights the interactional nature of the construction of these ethnic identities. These identities are not the reactive results of marginal positions in a society, but rather the results of prescriptions in interethnic “contact zones” (Clifford, 1997). Put another way, these ethnic identities, or “ethnicities” only emerge in relation to otherness (ibid.: 18). Consequently, rather than speaking of “ethnicity”, Bertheleu prefers to think in terms of “border-ethnicity” (Bertheleu, 2019: 55). The expression seems to her to be a more accurate way of understanding, in situ, the emergence, the constitution, and the maintenance of “cultural” differences that make sense to people. Barth specifies that these boundaries are external—in the form of categorizations—and internal—in the form of self-attributions; Bertheleu adds that they are constructed “in the reciprocity of perceptions and representations” (ibid.: 63). However, neither Barth nor Bertheleu highlight the characteristics of these boundaries. In a study about this notion, the anthropologist Michel Agier argues that borders are consubstantial with human groups (2016 [2013]: 47). He shows how, day to day, people create, delimit, and establish borders through “border ritual” that institute “all social life in a given environment and determine a sharing and a relationship with the natural and social world that surrounds it” (2016 [2013]: 18). According to Agier, these creations, delimitations, and establishment of borders take place in space, in time, and in the social and sensitive world.

3Based on ethnographic research of an informal cricket club created by Afghan exiles living in Froideville (France), this article aims to examine the construction of an ethnic group or an “ethnicity-border” (Bertheleu, 2019) through sport. More specifically, it seeks to analyse the genesis and consolidation of ethnic boundaries in situ. How do the Afghans of Froideville construct, in “contact zones” (Clifford, 1997), social, spatial, and temporal boundaries? Do these borders enable them to build an Afghan community and identity?

4The answer to these questions will take the following argumentative path. First, I will look at the construction of social boundaries, contrasting the masculinity underlying the sporting gathering sporting events, with the desire to make boundaries approachable for the Froideville residents. Secondly, I will focus on the spatial materialization of the cricket field and the memories closely linked to cricket objects. Thus, I will show how this spatial materialization and these memories create a “lost country” (Feschet & Isnart, 2013). Finally, I will emphasize the temporal boundaries, highlighting the interweaving of different temporalities within cricket matches.

Methodology

5This study is part of a dissertation in anthropology whose aims was to document the ways in which forms of “heritage attachments’” (relating to cultural heritages) shape the mobilizations generated by contemporary migrations (Sauvineau, 2023) during the so-called “migrant crisis”. It was in this context that I identified various initiatives developed by political refugees who had recently arrived in France, such as the opening of Syrian restaurants, the creation of an informal cricket team, or Tibetan calligraphy workshops. The focus of the study illustrated how these “heritage attachments” could steer away from the difficulties caused by the exile and the asylum application.

6In order to achieve this objective, I proceeded to go to Froideville where, every weekend, about fifteen Afghan migrants would gather in a public garden to play cricket. Froideville is a town of around 35,000 inhabitants in a rural French department. Since several newspaper articles had already been dedicated to these players, I will use the anonymous name of “Froideville” to not to reveal their identities. I went to Froideville three times to take part in their matches, for a total of around 12 hours of participant observation. I instantly told the players about my study and my objective, introducing myself as a student writing a book on the sporting practices of political refugees in France. They agreed and encouraged me to take an active part in the games. Since I was expected to fully engage in the games, I could not record what was happening on the pitch in my ethnographic notebooks, but I wrote the observations down afterwards.

7Taking part in the games allowed me to get closer to the players by building up a certain “close complicity” with them (Bromberger, 1995: 5) and to experience the qualities of cricket by being part of the inter-affective experiences (Evers, 2010: 60). In fact, this close complicity established itself with my Anglo- and Francophone teammates as they taught me the basic rules and gestures of cricket. Each session gave them the opportunity to share biographical details about their own cricket learning, their past sporting experiences, and their migratory journey. Taking an active part in the games also granted me the opportunity to hear the subtle exchanges, to observe the precision of their moves, or to hear the mocking remarks between the players. However, this presence had its effects. It distorted the games due to my inexperience and ignorance of the rules. Above all, it provided a (rare) audience for the players, because very few interactions take place with the passers-by—who never stop for more than a few moments [see below].

8Throughout our interactions after the matches, I asked them how this passion began and how it was brought to France, but also about what they felt when they played cricket. The cricketers I met had already been playing cricket in Afghanistan, with their families and/or local friends. They had brought with them to France, all the experiences and meanings associated with it, such as masculinism (Agergaard, 2018). While some were able to play on a cricket field when they were younger, others were less fortunate. They had to twist everyday objects from their official uses: the street was used as a field, the tennis ball was used as a cricket ball, and so on. This resourceful and self-organised frame of mind is reused, as I will show later. A particular meaning is given to cricket, as a space of freedom from a daily life that was once affected by poverty and war, but is now affected by the absence of their families, the lack of social ties, and the traumas of migration (Evers, 2010). Yet, it is also a space where players can be in close harmony with each other: the ethnic affiliations dissipate throughout the games, just as they are every time they watch an Afghanistan national team match. Consequently, through this participant observation, issues of ethnicity, “communalisation”, and borders gradually became apparent to me.

9The cricketers I met were men in their thirties. They had been in France for less than ten years, mainly political refugees or asylum seekers. They work in low-skilled jobs such as construction work or catering. An important bias is that these participant observations were not followed up by in-depth interviews with the players, because of the lockdown during COVID-19. However, I exchanged with Suhail, one of the players, via social networks. Cricket was one of our main topics of discussion.

1. Social boundaries between closure and openness

10In his anthropological research, Agier maintains that the borders have a social dimension. He comprehends it as a “threshold” where an “instituted group” symbolically begins (2016 [2013]: 18). Automatically, the separation of groups from one another raises questions about the “relational framework represented by the border” and the recognition of self and other (ibid.). In other words, this “threshold” raises questions about the group’s relationship with its “outside”. Here, I will focus more specifically on the absence of women from these men’s gatherings. Then, I will highlight the relationships between the sportsmen and the walkers.

1.1. A masculinist universe

11Jahan was one of the first Afghans on the team to inhabit Froideville. He was the one to initiate the cricket games because, for him, it represented a way of “bringing the Afghans of Froideville together”: “When I met, on a street, someone who might be Afghan, I invited him to play cricket”. Gradually, a core of Afghan men began to play in one of the town’s largest squares. The number of cricketers varied from ten to twenty, depending on the weather conditions. The absence of women from these gatherings is not surprising given the composition of Afghan migration to France: in 2019, 94% of first-time asylum applications from Afghans were male (Ofpra: 2020, 115). One player, however, immigrated to France with his wife and children. But, neither his daughters nor his wife played cricket, only his son did. However, I did not ask them [the father and his son] why they were not playing. This is a bias in that I could not confront sporting experiences in the light of a gender perspective (Lenneis et al., 2022; Evers, 2010).

  • 2 This shows how cricket creates a temporal boundary.

12In Afghanistan, both Najib and Ahmed, two cricketers, explained that cricket remained a place and a moment composed exclusively of men, just as the sporting gatherings of exiled Pakistanis in Oslo, Norway (Walle, 2010). In Afghanistan, cricket represented a real “rite of passage” (Van Gennep, 2011 [1981]), according to Najib. Teenagers who were lucky and/or talented enough to be chosen by adults to play with them, instead of watching them, became “men” (only if they played well and won recognition from adults).2

  • 3 This meaning, imported from Afghanistan, contributes to the remoteness of women from sports fields, (...)
  • 4 In cricket, an over consists of six legal deliveries bowled from one end of a cricket field to the (...)
  • 5 The quality of the pitch was criticised by Jamil, one of the players, who deplores the almost syste (...)

13During the matches, these are essentially masculine values which are widely emphasized.3 In cricket, the bowler and the batsman are the two heroes of the moment, just as the keeper and the penalty-taker are in soccer. The pitch, on which they face each other, is the “front stage” of cricket (Goffman, 1959), where every over4 is a test. At the end of these times of uncertainty, a hierarchy emerges. In the matches I took part in, I quickly realised that the confrontation order of batsmen and bowlers was calculated. It was relative to the level of each player’s game, from most to least powerful. Abdel and I played first, i.e. the players at the lowest level: the youngest and the neophyte. The final match pitted Suhail against Nour, the two best players, against each other. When the final winner was announced, Suhail was overjoyed: he had managed to prove that he was “the man of the game” and that he was still the best. This hierarchy that emerges from the game is based primarily on the physical strength of the players, since the bowler is unable to show malice (by giving spin to the cricket ball for example): the pitch and the homemade balls are unsuitable for these sorts of tricks5 (Sauvineau, 2024).

  • 6 Thus, if gender is a factor of exclusion, it also appears that age and weight are too: nobody wants (...)

14Individual strength is exposed in another way by Suhail. He regrets the decline in his level of play, both because he plays less than he did in Afghanistan, but also because his opponents are, according to him, “useless”. He criticises both the excess weight of some of his comrades and the age of another player, because playing cricket requires fast running players and they are unable to do so (Spaaij et al., 2019): “In Afghanistan, I was captain of my team […]. Little by little I am losing out because I haven’t played much since I came to France. But the old guy here sucks”.6 The insistence on strength, the importance given to speed during sprints, and the emphasis on the dangerous nature of cricket—three main subjects of discussions during the post-match exchanges—all combine to showcase individual strength within a masculine world (Walle, 2010)—where the athletic qualities of sportsmen are positively evaluated. This is comparable to the football matches Bromberger attended: I witnessed the exhibition of masculine qualities where men “contemplate and glorify themselves, measuring their aptitudes, the object of perpetual competition” (1995: 289). During these matches, sportsmen’s masculine identities, built on each individual’s strength, are played out over and over again.

15The importance of strength is the result of a historical process from the British decolonization of the Indian Peninsula to the contemporary history of Afghanistan. In India, Arjun Appadurai noted the erosion of Victorian values in favour of more masculinist standards. He describes a sport that is “aggressive, often unfair”, “agonistic”, “part of the Indian (male) body” and “dominated by men” (2015 [1996]: 166-172). After the decolonization and balkanization of the Indian Peninsula, cricket became a way of developing national and masculine identities, both in India and Pakistan (Sengupta, 2004: 601). It was in Pakistan, where many Afghans had fled after the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, that Afghans learned to play cricket. Returning home in the 1990s and 2000s, they brought back cricket and its values with them (Agergaard et al., 2022). In the 2000s, a true passion for cricket developed in Afghanistan, with the establishment of numerous teams and the construction of stadiums; moreover, the Afghan national team participated in the World Cups and was promoted to the world’s top division. It was in this context of passion for cricket that Froideville’s cricketers grew up.

16More generally, the masculine values closely linked to cricket can also be found in other ethnographic research around the world, since cricket is systematically recognized as a place for masculine performance (Walle, 2010: 40), a fortiori for migrants. Janelle Joseph, in a study about Afro-Caribbean players who had emigrated to Canada, recounts how they enjoyed describing and showing their cricketing injuries: “Every male member […] could describe an injury, superficial scrapes as well as deep lacerations, with which he continued to play cricket as a boy […]. The dangerous situations […] also attest to their bravery, a marker of Afro- Caribbean masculinity” (2017: 91). Najib, a player from Froideville, insists that cricket is not “golf”, but a “real sport” that requires to “run fast” and, above all, that requires “strength”. Like Abbas, he points out that cricket is a “dangerous sport” where you can “die if you don’t have the right protection”: “Sometimes they hit the ball and it’s really dangerous! The ball can hit you and you can die. Among other protections, you need a helmet, but it cannot be too heavy, to be able to run freely”. Najib did not hesitate to show me the scars left on his body by his sports injuries (Sauvineau, 2024). According to Joseph, demonstrating the inherent dangerousness of cricket allows the players to evoke the seriousness of their passion, to display their bravery, but also to bolster a masculinity flayed by migration (2017: 91). More generally, the formation of a masculine identity through cricket is one of the main lessons of Joseph’s work. In Canada, she highlights the players’ machismo, the recurrence of “homophobic jokes”, the exclusion of wives and daughters from the games, insults, and so on, all central elements in the “performance of an Afro-Caribbean masculinity” that focuses on each player’s strength and roughness of words (2017: 51). It should be noted, however, that I have not witnessed any insults or nasty “homophobic jokes”: only the systematic fervour of their exchanges, numerous mockeries of the players’ levels, and a very high volume of noise, in the manner of Joseph.

  • 7 However, these masculine values, for which certain players are mocked, are sometimes put on hold. T (...)

17Ultimately, my observations show, as well as those of Joseph, Appadurai and Walle, the emphasis of a type of masculinity linked to cricket, which is that of physical excellence (Walle, 2010: 156). Physical excellence is an ideal (i) that the players strive to achieve, and (ii) from which they evaluate each other: as such, they can be placed “within a notion of competitive masculinity, where people are evaluated as more or less masculine along a continuum” (Walle, 2010: 154).7

1.2. A place to meet the people of Froideville

18Exclusion of women, as attested in the observations of Joseph and Walle, would also require further investigation to be confirmed in the case of Froideville. However, this exclusion does not mean that no one can cross this border, as I regularly did during the games I took part in. Of course, as Barth has already pointed out, ethnic borders are neither impermeable nor immutable, despite the sometimes “dichotomized” ethnic statuses (1969: 10). Indeed, to speak of a “border” or “border-space” may imply the idea of a totally closed space. While the frontier is constitutive of the human and the social (Agier, 2016 [2013]: 47), it is to be clearly distinguished from the wall. The latter represents the complete antithesis of the border, since the frontier presupposes passage while the wall presupposes the idea of exclusion (ibid.: viii).

  • 8 Thus, the first audience attending these sporting performances are mainly comrades, sometimes teamm (...)

19During each of my ethnographic inquiries in Froideville, a few people stopped for a moment on the side of the cricket field.8 They observed the unusual sight for a few minutes, before continuing their way. The interactions between the players and the people of Froideville was sporadic, and often reduced to questions out of pure curiosity such as: “What’s your game?”; “What’s it called?”; “Is it baseball?”. Cricket is a quite unknown sport for which very few people know the rules or how it is played. Thus, neither meaning nor identification can emerge: the possibility of “getting caught up in the game” is prevented (Bromberger & Lestrelin, 2008).

  • 9 In India, for example, cricket was so successful because it would give everyone the possibility of (...)

20However, the cricketers enjoy the interactions with the locals. As a result, they try to make the border surrounding the Afghan group as thin as possible to facilitate passage for others. Indeed, the Afghans of Froideville value the fact that they can exhibit a practice that sets them apart in the public space, and also value being able to play with the locals: “We’re happy to show cricket”; “We want to show cricket to those who don’t know it”; “It’s a pleasure for us to play cricket, but it’s a greater pleasure to show our country’s sport. It’s important for us”. Meeting the “French” is clearly one of the cricketers’ main objectives: “We invite the people of Froideville to come and discover our sport”; “I want to persuade the French to play cricket with us”. Indeed, for them, cricket is as much an opportunity to highlight the country of Afghanistan in a more favourable way as it is to change their cliché as “migrants”. It offers a positive vision of Afghanistan, far removed from its daily assimilation to terrorism, drug trafficking, or civil war9. In short, it is a means to turn stigmas around and to provide a more positive image of the Afghan culture (Goffman, 1963), as the players stated: “It’s good to present Afghanistan like this. It’s not all war”. This affirmation seems to highlight recognition issues.

21In an interesting re-reading of A. Van Gennep, C. Taylor and A. Honneth’s works, Jocelyn Lachance reinvented the concept of “recognition” (2020). Rather than postulating a form of recognition that is generally subtracted from its context, he proposes an alternative theorization that enables him to identify diverse modalities of recognition, the outcome of which is always uncertain. In his model, he distinguishes between two experiences: the “attempt to recognize”, where the modality of access to recognition is prescribed by the other (as in initiation rites); and the “attempt to be recognized”, which is applied to the interaction by the individual himself, forcing the potential recognizer to decide whether the chosen modality is valid. The Afghan cricketers’ attempt at recognition is situated in a tension between these two forms.

22On the one hand, they enforce recognition as they are the ones who prescribe the medium—cricket (“our sport”). During afternoons, they do not display any discretion which would generally be expected of newcomers. Instead, they play and take over an entire square, shooting the ball in the direction of other park users, loudly calling each other out in Pashto, and so on. In short, cricket is one of the rare moments when an Afghan community publicly asserts itself as such, as if they are on a quest for recognition.

  • 10 Indeed, the fact that there are many players originally from Afghanistan in the French national cri (...)

23On the other hand, the modality of access to recognition is prescribed by the locals. In the press articles devoted to them by the local and regional newspapers, the cricketers present themselves in terms of the “good refugees”. They recounted their forced departure from Afghanistan to escape the repression under the Taliban regime; they also recounted they could not return to Afghanistan due to their presence. Moreover, the cricketers emphasise the importance for the cricket field to remain open to all in order to counter the spectre of communitarianism of which they are aware: “Everyone is welcome to practice with us, or just to watch,” informs Jahan. Interestingly, the Afghans cook Afghan dishes and offer them to the journalists when they come to encounter the sportsmen. I personally was not as lucky as it seems, nor were the usual spectators, as one of them confided: “It’s the first time I’ve seen them do this. It’s not usual, it’s because you [journalist] are there”. Here, the social boundaries of the Afghan group are permeable to Froidevillians: they deliberately seek to make it easier to cross these boundaries by voluntarily inviting people—for example, by ritualizing Afghan hospitality through offered dishes, all of which participates in a dramatisation of the exemplarity of Froideville’s Afghan migrants. The aim is to present a positive picture of a country whose image has deteriorated, and to achieve this, they view cricket as a significant element.10 However, the effectiveness of this attempt to gain recognition remains limited, because very few Froidevillians stop to play cricket.

2. Froideville square, a border space?

24The Froideville square is made up of two large grass pitches roughly the size of two football fields. However, they only occupy around a third of the total space. Despite its imperfections, and even though the cricket field is normally subject to a meticulous legal framework under the Laws of cricket, the municipal square remains the only park in the urban area large enough to enjoy cricket in complete safety. De facto, it is the meeting point for cricketers. The aim of this second part is to analyse the transformation of this restrictive site into an appropriate (Afghan) space. It will focus on the spatial markings made by specific lines and objects that form a spatial boundary between the outside and the inside, between an imagined Afghanistan and France.

2.1. Spatial markings

  • 11 In cricket, a run is the unit of scoring. One run is scored when the two batters (the striker and t (...)
  • 12 It is either of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at each end of the pitch.

25Cricketers mark out the boundaries of the pitch by eye, roughly copying the distances set out in the Laws, using branches to create invisible lines to mark out the space (Ingold, 2013 [2007]: 68). They use wooden sticks that they stick in the ground, and use water bottles and tennis ball boxes to reproduce the pitch lines. These lines serve as landmarks, and are used both to properly move on the cricket field and to keep score. The pitch, precisely where the batter and bowler should face each other, is not subject to the same work, since there is now a visible path on the ground from the many batsmen’s runs11 over time. This accentuates how the area has been reappropriated by the team. In addition to these tangible traces delimiting the pitch, cricketers use various objects to play cricket (bats, balls, wickets,12 etc.), and wear clothes representing national emblems (official Afghanistan cricket team jerseys, scarves or t-shirts in the colours of the Afghan flag, and so on).

26What does this proliferation of objects entail? During a game of cricket, boundaries are tangible, because they are materialised on the ground. In an empirical test of Halbwachs’s work on African survival in South America, Bastide notes that African memories are preserved only where the group has been able to reconstitute itself as an African ethnic group; this reconstitution is directly linked to the emergence of an African village built on ancient foundations but “on another land” (1970: 85). Following Halbwachs, Bastide stresses the importance of the spatial materiality “memories cling to in order to survive” (ibid.). The arrival of a foreign group on new territory leads that group to try and recreate the abandoned homeland. Thus, he continues, collective memory can only exist “by materially recreating […] continuity and social preservation centers” (ibid: 87). It is precisely the role of these objects to serve as reminders and material tools for the reconstruction of a “lost country” (Feschet & Isnart, 2013). During the afternoons, Afghanistan is very frequently mentioned, and the ethnic affiliations fade away. More specifically, the practice of cricket is the medium for a multitude of discourses relating to Afghanistan—in connection, or not, with cricket. Methodologically, it is important to note that the interlocutors are the ones to voluntarily evoke these various nostalgic memories, and that they do not originate from the anthropologist’s questions. For example, when Nour taught me how to hold and use the bat, he talked about how and from whom he had learned; my surprised look about the tennis ball wrapped in tape replacing the cricket ball led Suhail and Najib to talk about the times they used to make homemade balls in Afghanistan. In addition, many of the comments referred to an idealised country in connection with cricket, and particularly referred to the rise of the Afghan national team.

27These men use different memories, linked to objects (bats, balls, etc.) reminiscent of the country and of cricket, to build a collective memory, which is a major support in building an Afghan group. This diasporic space, close to a “utopian homeland”, provides “a shared point of reference” (Walle, 2010: 213). Jahan mentions that when he plays cricket, he “remembers” his country, and that the game “brings back memories” that connect him to a particular atmosphere, that of Afghanistan. Other comments were also similar to Jahan’s: “When we play, we dream of being in Afghanistan”; “We feel good when we’re here playing cricket. We play cricket, we talk, we laugh, and we shout. We’re together, as if we were at home”. Cricket is described as a “homeland” that provides “dreams” and a somewhat “love of home”. Thus, this Afghan diaspora consciousness “develops relationships with their ʻroots’, their ideas of ancestry and home” (Joseph, 2017: 19).

2.2. The cricket field as a heterotopia

  • 13 The Kaaba is a stone building at the center of Islam’s most important mosque and holiest site, the (...)
  • 14 Salāt is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It is the practice of formal prayer in Islam.

28These delimitations of place are congruent with Michel Foucault’s heterotopias. Unlike utopias, heterotopias are real sites, “all the other real sites that can be found within the culture”, and are quite similar to “counter-sites” where all other real locations are represented, contested and inverted (2004 [1967]). As Foucault argues, these heterotopias juxtapose several places in a single real place. During the afternoons, a deterritorialization movement takes place, by which the players leave (temporarily and symbolically) a territory (France) because they constitute another space and another temporality [see below] (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). This movement of deterritorialization cannot, however, be separated from an “elsewhere”, i.e. a second movement of reterritorialization in a symbolically delineated Afghanistan (ibid.: 635): “we dream ourselves at home” according to Jahan, for example. The cricket field is an “elsewhere” that allows the cricketers to symbolically travel, to develop a sense of connection with an Afghan community and to restore a “homeland” (Joseph, 2017: 43). Thus, the prevailing spatiality is not the local one, but the one drawn by the material assemblage and the area’s lines. In August 2020, several players prayed on the side of the pitch during the game, facing the Kaaba.13 These final prayers took place three days after the start of Muharram, the first month of the Hegira calendar. The cricketers, one of whom was dressed in a djellaba (hardly sports attire), lent each other a prayer mat to perform the Salāt14 one after the other. In addition to the objects and the other items outlining the space and mediating the action, another main point (the Kaaba) seems to guide the action. Above this landmark and the Salāt is Allah, a non-human figure with its own ontological meaning, who is called upon.

29Thus, the cricket field is an Afghan “homespace” (Nour) that allows players to meet up and acquire a space of their own where they can socialize, have fun, speak in Pashto, build a collective memory, and so on. The materialization of the cricket field creates a boundary between the outside and the inside, between France and an imagined Afghanistan: outside of the pitch is France, the French language, its rites of interaction, its conventions, and so on; inside of the pitch is the Pashto language, Afghanistan, its national emblems (flag, etc.), and its codes. The arrangement of a space symbolizing Afghanistan, with its borders and landmarks, symbolically reconnects the exiles with their sensitive experience of the country. During the games, the square takes on a different status, becoming an Afghan enclave in the heart of Froideville, as Walle states in an ethnographic work about Pakistanis in Norway: “cricket presents a particular diasporic space through which people engage in a ‘homing desire’—where cricket symbolizes the utopian Pakistani homeland that can only be imagined” (2010: 69).

3. An interweaving of temporalities

30The second part of this study highlighted the heterotopic space represented by the cricket field, on which several places are juxtaposed. According to Foucault, heterotopia “begins to function at full capacity” when it is linked to slices in time, what he calls “heterochronies” (2004 [1967]).

31The cricket match is clearly seen as a heterochrony by cricketers. Indeed, it is experienced as offering a break from the monotony of daily life: “We’re tired from five days [of work], cricket is hard but it feels good. We can rest later”. But above all, cricket offers a break from the temporal regime of asylum application, which holds some players’ captive. Since the circular of 9/26/1991 on “the situation of asylum seekers with regard to the labour market”, the right to work for asylum seekers has been abrogated, and they are also faced with restrictions on their geographical movements (since 2015). The combination of these two measures was such that boredom and waiting had taken a huge part of their lives: Carolina Kobelinsky has shown that asylum seekers are prisoners of an interminable wait (2010). Deprived of any control over the present and the immediate future, they are prisoners of a “presentism” that encircles time and removes it from their control (ibid.: 254). Cricket opens a breach in that it establishes a clear temporal break in relation to this temporality of waiting, because it is associated, according to Suhail or Najib, with “freedom”, “pleasure” and “fun”.

32It should be noted, however, that these parts are not solely marked by oppositions between the temporality of entertainment and the temporality of the (serious) world of work, or the mortifying temporality of waiting. Rather, at least three temporal regimes are intertwined:

33(i) That of cricket (Afghans from Froideville) which does not conform to the international competition standards, but depends on the number of sportsmen present, their wishes, the physical fitness they feel, or even bad weather, and so on. For instance, the confrontations between bowlers and batsmen—a mini-game similar to penalty shoot-outs in soccer—allows one to play without running, or to “have a quick game before night” (Suhail). This temporality is also perceptible in cricket matches, which can last several hours. This could illustrate a sort of “Afghanization” of the Froideville Afghan cricket, just as the Indians “Indianized” cricket which was imported by the British Empire (Appadurai, 2015 [1996]: 144);

34(ii) The temporality of everyday life, which is rejected, but still crucial, since it bounds the different parties coming from places all around Froideville. Indeed, the players mainly have to depend on public transport to be able to gather;

35(iii) The religious temporality linked to the Hegira calendar: the reason the players performed the Salāt in the middle of the game and in their djellaba was because it was the first days of Muharram, not just August 2020. In addition to this, cricket is sometimes suspended during religious festivals such as Eid-el-Kebir. While the significance of religion in these gatherings should not be overstated, its place in the pooling processes should be emphasised. Religious temporality, and religion more broadly, play a dominant role for some immigrants, but not for all. The centrality of the Muslim religion in the afternoons should not be overemphasised. In practice, it is doubly marginalised: it is limited to particular moments only and to more or less marginal areas of the pitch, as much for safety reasons as to avoid being disturbed by the players’ words and laughter.

  • 15 As I pointed out above, cricket also represents a temporal boundary between adolescent life and man (...)

36Thus, entering this defined space leads to the experience of a rhythmic multiplicity (Baschet, 2018), where singular and heterogeneous rhythms more or less fit together. Nevertheless, as I have pointed out earlier, the “French” temporality seems to take precedence over a “pure Afghan temporality”, since these gatherings take place on weekends, and since cricketers remain reliant on public transport.15

Conclusion

  • 16 Numerous nationalistic elements are used by players during matches: Afghanistan national team jerse (...)

37In 1969, Barth showed that an ethnic identity has never been acquired once and for all. He brought to the fore that actors use ethnic identities both to categorize themselves and to categorize others “for purposes of interaction” (1969: 14). As a result of these categorizations, people come from “ethnic groups”, but not on the basis of a primary “culture”. This observation must necessarily lead anthropologists, Barth continues, to study the ethnic boundaries and the construction of (cultural) borders that define these groups. The cricketers of Froideville define themselves while constructing themselves as an Afghan group16 by building a certain number of borders in a contact zones with difference: “it is social organisation and borders that shape cultural and identity elements; migrants discover in France the feeling of constituting a new We” (Bertheleu, 2019: 17). In this study, I have documented three “border rituals”: “it is at the border that things are determined […] it is at the border that ethnic groups began to exist” (Agier, 2017).

38I began by focusing on the social boundaries that are constructed. It was through cricket that some Afghans from Froideville met. These games that bring them together reminding us that “playing a game” (or practicing a sport) produces social interaction (Huizinga, 1951 [1938]: 227). Nevertheless, this social world is the prisoner of a dialectic relationship between exclusion and openness, and between belonging and non-belonging. Indeed, cricket is seen as a place that is exclusive to men, where masculinity is centred on physical excellence (Walle, 2010). I highlighted certain masculinist practices, such as removing their t-shirts to show off their muscles (Sauvineau, 2024). However, if the boundary seems impermeable to women, it is porous for those categorized as “French”. Joseph writes that the border delimiting the cricket field “is a ludic space, a contact zone for the meeting and mingling of people” (ibid.: 49). But the desire to make the cricket field accessible to the people of Froideville is a difficult one. Indeed, very few “French” people cross these social boundaries: it is clearly too costly to do so, and new ethnographic inquiries are needed to answer this question. Another study could investigate and focus on women’s sport practices. De facto, I could compare their sporting experiences in the light of a gender perspective, although sporting practice remains largely segmented according to gender, both in the countries of origin and in the host countries (Lenneis et al., 2022).

39I then turned my attention to the spatial boundary that enables the reappropriation of the square. The outlining of the cricket field and the deployment of the cricketer’s kit represent the material supports of a memory that subsequently enable the creation of a group, as memories depend on the materiality of the world. Within this space, a “lost country” is symbolically recreated: it is a “metaphor for national, regional and village boundaries” (ibid.). This reconstruction offers a temporary pleasure, that of “believing oneself to be in Kabul city”, as Najib pointed out, but it also opens a “nostalgic risk” that should not be underestimated and should be studied in time. Indeed, the bittersweet time of nostalgia produced by cricket matches could lead cricketers to be neither here nor there.

40In the last part of my argument, I studied the temporal boundaries. Johan Huizinga defined “playing a game” as a free and pleasurable action, situated outside everyday life (1951 [1938]). More precisely, while recreating their lost homeland, the Afghan cricketers are inscribed in several temporal regimes that intertwine during the games: the temporality of everyday life; the “French” temporality that subsists acutely; the welcome time of the “breach” that opposes in every way the “presentism” (Kobelinsky, 2010: 254) of the asylum application; etc. It is within these multiple temporalities that cricketers must operate. One more time, more investigations are required because these multiple temporalities could lead cricketers to be prisoners of a dramatic ‘in-between’.

41Thus, playing cricket leads to the construction of boundaries, through which the Froideville cricketers build a porous community in a contact zone (Clifford, 1997). Similar to ethnic festivals, cricket appears to be conducive to “ritualisation […] of ethnicity, acts that mobilise public support and consolidate an identity that the environment tends to dilute” (Bertheleu, 2000: 168). In this way, cricketers build an “Afghan-ness” through a performative process of discourse and practice that can only be understood by analysing inter-ethnic relations “in the making”.

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Notes

1 Following Jeanes et al. (2019: 79), I define informal sports as “sport participation that is self-organised and not club based”.

2 This shows how cricket creates a temporal boundary.

3 This meaning, imported from Afghanistan, contributes to the remoteness of women from sports fields, as Ramon Spaaij et al. demonstrate in a literature review devoted to refugee sports practices (2019).

4 In cricket, an over consists of six legal deliveries bowled from one end of a cricket field to the player batting at the other end.

5 The quality of the pitch was criticised by Jamil, one of the players, who deplores the almost systematic “bad bounces” and would like “a real stadium”.

6 Thus, if gender is a factor of exclusion, it also appears that age and weight are too: nobody wants to be with the least good athletes, chosen last, as Suhail told me.

7 However, these masculine values, for which certain players are mocked, are sometimes put on hold. The difficulties associated with exile also make the cricket field, and only the cricket field (Walle, 2010: 194), a place of “care”, where everyone can listen to each other’s difficulties, but also comfort each other (Sauvineau, 2024). That is proof that masculinity is permeable to “unmanliness” (Walle, 2010: 175).

8 Thus, the first audience attending these sporting performances are mainly comrades, sometimes teammates, sometimes opponents.

9 In India, for example, cricket was so successful because it would give everyone the possibility of “playing with modernity” according to Appadurai: a sense of (i) power and manipulation for state actors, (ii) competence for media actors, and (iii) cultural knowledge and pleasure for the public (2015 [1995]: 173–174).

10 Indeed, the fact that there are many players originally from Afghanistan in the French national cricket team is often mentioned: it is evidence of the contributions made by the Afghan migrants.

11 In cricket, a run is the unit of scoring. One run is scored when the two batters (the striker and the non-striker) start off positioned at opposite ends of the pitch and then they each arrive safely at the other end of the pitch.

12 It is either of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at each end of the pitch.

13 The Kaaba is a stone building at the center of Islam’s most important mosque and holiest site, the Masjid al-Haram (Mecca, Saudi Arabia).

14 Salāt is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It is the practice of formal prayer in Islam.

15 As I pointed out above, cricket also represents a temporal boundary between adolescent life and manhood, when young players are selected by adults to play with them.

16 Numerous nationalistic elements are used by players during matches: Afghanistan national team jerseys, Afghan flags, Afghan colours, and so on.

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Référence électronique

Jérémy Sauvineau, « Playing Cricket, Building Borders. The Construction of an Afghan-ness in Migration »ILCEA [En ligne], 58 | 2025, mis en ligne le 12 mars 2025, consulté le 17 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ilcea/22488 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13gge

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Auteur

Jérémy Sauvineau

Docteur en Anthropologie
Chercheur associé au LIR3S (UMR 7366 CNRS)
Ingénieur de recherche
Living Lab Territorial pour la Transition Écologique
Université de Bourgogne
jeremy.sauvineau@u-bourgogne.fr

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