"Material Survival Strategies": Protective Dress Practices Among Young Afghan Migrants in Sweden
Illustration by Linnea Puranen
A ”god man” (better translated in English as custodian/trustee) is a municipality-administered Swedish position with the assignment to help an individual with daily tasks that the individual for some reason has trouble performing themselves. The tasks can, for example, include managing the individual's property, paying bills and accompanying them to meetings with authorities. In 2017, the position of “god man” was held by 150,000 individuals; the criteria for a “client” is often sickness and/or mental illness but it can also be holding the status of unaccompanied minor migrant. This is how my boyfriend's mother came to work as a “god man” for three unaccompanied Afghan male minor migrants in Stockholm. Through her work I became acquainted with the three young men and their circle of friends, who I noticed all dressed quite similarly. As a former fashion student, I believe in clothes' ability to tell stories beyond their physical materiality and to enable explorations of issues such as migration, identity, and nationality. I therefore decided to combine my new acquaintances’ fashion sense with the ideas I had been introduced to in my education in fashion studies. This resulted in my master’s thesis for which I interviewed ten unaccompanied Afghan male minor migrants awaiting permanent residence in Sweden about their thoughts on clothes, how they liked to dress, and their material and diasporic identities. It is with this research in mind that I share this article.
For context, to be an unaccompanied Afghan minor migrant in Sweden is precarious. Sweden is a country with a complicated self-image. On one hand, Sweden is a pioneering country with a history of social progression in areas like feminism, environment, and refugee politics, and from a European perspective, Sweden received a large number of refugees during the Refugee Crisis of 2015 (where unaccompanied Afghan minors were one of the largest groups reaching the country). [1] However, in 2017, Sweden basically closed its borders and asylum laws have been tightened little by little since then. Meanwhile, the “Afghan question” is a divisive issue in Sweden on both political and societal levels, and there is an ongoing debate on Afghans’ status as migrants/refugees. [2] Accordingly, Afghani unaccompanied minors and migrants in Sweden are often subjected to racism and there is a high frequency of mental illness among this group. [3]
Illustration by Linnea Puranen
“During the European Refugee Crises in 2015, clothing became a material asset donated to the cause by the masses in Europe, though it became evident that many migrants did not want to be “[…] marked and identified as needy, by wearing second-hand goods.””
In light of this, the young men that I interviewed shared their personal struggles as well as triumphs. They told me how they were affected by their situation as migrants in daily life in Sweden, but more importantly (from my perspective), about the process of picking what to wear each morning. They all told me that they never wore (nor would they even think of wearing) the traditional male Afghan garment pirahan tomban in public. The pirahan tomban is a loose-fitting pant and shirt which are often made from linen, wool, or lightweight cotton in matching, neutral colors. The participants told me that they wanted to fit in in Sweden, and that the wearing of the pirahan tomban could prevent that, sending out “incorrect” signals and, in the worst-case scenario, exposing them to unwanted comments and glances. As this quote from one of the participants illustrates:
“If you wear Afghan clothes, my culture's clothes, and you wear them in the subway, people will say: what are you wearing? Such weird clothes! You don’t fit in here; you look a little strange. You don’t know for sure, but someone might say that. Like for example if I wore Afghan clothes in the subway and some might come to me and say something like: this doesn’t suit you, or that looks a bit weird, or take off your clothes. It’s still my culture's clothes and I like my clothes, but even if I like them and will never throw them away, I just think that you need to follow the rules in this country on how to dress.”
Throughout the interview process, the concept of negative versus positive visibility connected to clothes became a key theme. To understand this issue I discovered the concept of visible migrants, established by the philosophy scholar Haideh Moghissi. The idea applies to migrants in diasporic Muslim communities in the West feeling, or indeed being, extra visible due to their sartorial practices in public. Their visibility may be emphasized by their use of ethnic/non-European dress, on top of the possibility that they have a different skin color than the majority of the people in the country they live in. [4] These circumstances make them visible and, due to prejudice and racism towards many diasporic Muslim groups in the West, this visibility often defaults to negative stereotypes. In the case of my participants their wish was to fit in, and since they did not want to be visible as migrants, they chose to not wear the pirahan tomban. Instead, it became more and more evident that they had altered their dress in Sweden, but that they also had their own clothing strategies. These quotes from two of the participants exemplifies this process:
“[…] It’s like I said, it depends on which country you live in, that’s the most important. You need to take the culture in that land that you are living in, in this land. [---] I´m thinking like this, the culture that is in Sweden, I take that one! Because I live in Sweden, so I need to take this culture. It is Sweden that has taken me in. You know, we started from zero in Sweden, we could not talk, we could do nothing. I’m thinking about the day we came; we came from zero, really like zero. We were so happy that we could come.”
“I think it’s important for me to do the same as the other adolescents that I see. So, if I do wrong, maybe I shouldn’t do that, and I want to do the right thing. So, I try to do like the others. Like the people in school and my friends.”
Illustration by Linnea Puranen
Heike Jenss and Viola Hofmann write in the anthology Fashion and Materiality: Cultural Practices in Global Contexts (2020) about the connection between migration and different aspects of materiality. During the European Refugee Crises in 2015, clothing became a material asset donated to the cause by the masses in Europe, though it became evident that many migrants did not want to be “[…] marked and identified as needy, by wearing second-hand goods.” [5] This quote from Jenss and Hofmann felt especially relevant with regard to the young Afghan males that I interviewed. One thing that several of them told me was that in their current Swedish context they preferred to buy and wear branded clothes, mostly from well-known European brands such as Versace, Gucci, Armani, and Louis Vuitton. They told me that they liked to wear branded clothes to feel good about themselves and to get girls to like them. Branded clothes were also described as a measurement of being visible to others and connoting positive rather than negative things. The aspect of wearing branded clothing that seemed to be the most important was that the clothes showed “wealth,” as they expressed it:
“Well, in Sweden you want to wear expensive clothes. Mostly you want clothes to get girls, you know. Like, nice clothes, expensive clothes to show that you are wealthy.”
The “wealth” aspect of branded clothes as a fashion item has a long history and can be linked to a complex system of symbols through which fashion brands aspire for connotations of distinction, exclusivity, craftsmanship, and finery. As the fashion scholar Paula von Wachenfeldt writes, in buying an Hermès bag, “the consumer is thus carrying a bag loaded with symbols of power, beauty, elegance and manners.” [6]
Trying to fit into Swedish clothing norms can be a struggle in itself. Sweden is known internationally for its “Scandi-chic” fashion, recognizable as a practical style with muted colours (mostly black) and androgynous silhouettes. This is of course not a national uniform worn by every Swede, but I believe it to be a tricky fashion to adopt as a newcomer since the clothing choices are limited and the codes are hard to read. It's an easy fashion in theory but, as a born-and-raised Swede, I would argue that the clothes’ subtlety matches the general Swedish ambiance (which basically means that you need to read between the lines). Adopting this style as a migrant searching for a (clothing) identity is a challenge. A branded garment by, for example, Fendi, as these young men seem to prefer, makes them more visible than they would have been in plain black clothes. This could be seen as a paradox since they do want to fit in. However, dressing in branded clothes makes them visible but with a more explicit message, namely: I have money, I am successful. For them, this is a positive type of visibility. As migrants awaiting a decision on permanent residence they are hardly successful from an economic perspective, but the possibility of being a Swedish citizen opened up the prospect of both economic wealth and security as a citizen. As a result, I started viewing their dress preferences as a sort of material survival strategy. Emphasizing the complex links between this material survival strategy and the Swedish (fashion) norm was this quote from one of the participants:
“If you hang out with Swedes, those who are my Swedish friends, they have regular clothes, no brands, nothing. They can buy branded clothes, they have money, they have everything, they can buy it. But when you hang out with Afghans, they always wear branded clothes, it’s weird because they don’t have any money, they don’t work, but it’s just the way it is.”
This participant told me that his Swedish friends did not wear, and were not as dependent on, branded clothes as his Afghan friends. To have a wealthy appearance was both important and self-evident for his Afghan friends, contrary to the Swedes who did not place the same importance on wearing branded clothes. Since this was a general statement, it was hard to analyse it from a macro perspective. However, what makes these Swedish friends different from the young Afghan men I interviewed was that they know the Swedish codes and are in a stable situation, as in they possess citizenship. They probably also have a place to call home and possibly a more stable economy than the young Afghan men. Therefore, these Swedish friends were probably not dependent on the material survival strategy of branded clothes. The participants, on the other hand, could neither govern their final asylum decision nor their biological traits such as skin color and overall appearance that made them visible as Afghans; what they could somewhat govern in their situation was how they dressed, which gave them some way of influencing how other people saw them and how they felt about themselves. Dressing in branded clothes was therefore both enabling a sort of escapism from their (not self-selected) identities and visibility as migrants as well as a fast-forward look into their future. A conclusion was therefore that branded clothes worked as a sort of material survival strategy for these young men which enabled them to create a persona of their “choice” through committing to a lifestyle that incorporated values that made them seen as they wanted to be seen. This material survival strategy both enhanced their vulnerability as migrants but at the same time their agency as creators of their own personas. By wearing branded clothes, they were visual on their own terms here and now and as an embodiment of their possible future as successful and accepted citizens.
It’s important to highlight the equal importance of diasporic and migrational identities as both agentic and wounded and traumatized. Subsequently, there both is and is not an antagonism between the Afghan, the diasporic, and the adopted (westernized) identity. In line with the comprehensive trademarks of diasporic communities as dual and hybrid, the identity formation for the participants will always be hybrid and in a constant state of production and becoming.
Note: All the participants still live in Sweden, waiting for a decision on permanent residence. I have chosen to not use their names in this article to keep them anonymous.
Notes
[1] In 2015 23.480 unaccompanied minors arrived from Afghanistan to Sweden. Migrationsverket. “Asylsökande till Sverige under 2000–2019.” Accessed 17-03-2020. https://www.migrationsverket.se/download/18.4a5a58d51602d141cf41003/1580829370314/Asyls%C3%B6kande%20till% 20Sverige%202000-2019.pdf.
[2] I have chosen to call the young Afghan males migrants instead of refugees due to the complex discussion surrounding their status. By calling them migrants I do not imply either their voluntary and/or forced motives for leaving Afghanistan.
[3] Tänk Till Talkshow. “Asap Rocky och Hat mot Afghaner.” Utbildnings Radion. 2020. Accessed: 17-05-2020. https://urplay.se/program/215925-tank-till-talkshow-asap-rocky-och-hat-mot-afghaner
[4] Moghissi, Haideh. “The `Muslim´ Diaspora and Research on Gender: Promises and Perils.” In Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home, edited by Vijay Agnew, p. 258. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
[5] Fashion and Materiality Cultural Practices in Global Contexts, edited by Heike Jenss, and Viola Hoffman, p. 235-236. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.
[6] von Wachenfeldt, Paula. “The Myth of Luxury in a Fashion World.” Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, Volume 5, Number 3, (2018): p. 316.
