Frail Subjectivity of the Migrant: The Phantom ‘Other’ and an Emerging Self

Ethnographically exploring a handful of immigrants of Algerian origin settled in Paris, this paper through the context of football attempts to understand the gap that exists in the discourse of the migrant in matters of exploration of the self, the construction of the other and the way in which she examines the gaze of the dominant community. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted with immigrants of Algerian origin settled in Paris in June-July 2010 during the world cup football. Through the various registers of affect, belonging and aspiration there will be an attempt to examine the ways in which through media reportage primarily around football, the immigrants build an image of the other. This image is doubly removed, as it is observed to arise primarily from the prevalent French right wing media reportage on one hand and an absence of common circuit of interaction between the host and immigrant community on the other. The paper will examine fractures of interaction between communities, the white French and the Maghreb population and everyday life of the immigrant. While in the former frame, the gap is expressed in the circulation of stereotypes about the other community, in the frame of the everyday, the host community/country is limited to be a physical space that allows for the possibility of living an aspired life. As the immigrant struggles to gain a coherent realm of affect in the place of origin and the country of residence, the paper will examine the sense of the self of an immigrant as emerging. The self fighting a sense of uprooting in the current situation by dwelling on the prospects of mobility in an unforeseen future is seen to hold the immigrant in a unique temporality of absences. The notion of frail subjectivity is used to locate an idea of fluid identity of the immigrant negotiating in the current context and carrying within her a sense of holistic life to be lived in the future