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Tamils' Quest for Well-Being

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Tamils' Quest for Well-Being Tamils’ Quest for Well-Being: Moving as a Success or Failure? Anne Sigfrid Grønseth ABSTRACT: During a period of about 15 years, Tamil refugees have resided in the small fishing villages along the arctic coast of northern Norway. Employing an ethnographic approach that emphasizes agency and experience in everyday life, this study describes how Tamils face a lack of crucial social and religious relationships and arenas that provide recognition and meaning to their daily lives. Not being able to give voice to their social experiences, the Tamils suffer from bodily aches and pains. As part of the Tamils’ search for recognition, community and quest for well-being, they have relo- cated to places that provide a more complete Tamil community. To assess whether the Tamils’ choice of leaving the fishing villages is a success or failure is a complex matter. Exploring the intricacies of this decision, this article discusses the links between the ‘narrative of suffering’ and the Tamils’ decision to move. KEYWORDS: embodiment, medical anthropology, Tamil refugees Introduction: Suffering as Experiences pain and illness, we study identity and soci- of Everyday Life ety. Suffering and pain are seen as part of how the body perceives and contains every- This article is based on a study of Tamil ref- day social processes, rather than the dramatic ugees who have resettled in Norway (Grøn- and traumatic experiences that have been seth 2006c). The investigation focused on highlighted in the literature on social suffer- Tamils living in a small fishing village along ing, violence and torture (Scarry 1985; Jen- the northern coast of Norway and considers kins 1994; Kleinman et al. 1997). More subtly, their experiences of pain and illness. During embodiment also refers to daily practices and the period of fieldwork and the following skills that are not activated at a level of dis- year, most of these Tamils moved to Oslo, course. Throughout childhood, socialization the capitol. Whereas their relocation to Oslo patterns for everyday practices are learnt and was not a focus of the investigation here, I embodied through, for instance, bodily imi- draw on relevant issues that elucidate how tation and experiences. As Bourdieu (1989) suffering and well-being relate to the ques- points out, this kind of learning is made pos- tion of staying or leaving. sible by the existence of structural consis- Underlying this article is an assumption tency in patterns of knowledge that are not that pain and suffering involve both experi- only mental (as Le`vi-Strauss’ [1966] struc- ence and knowledge. Being in and having tures) but also spatially embodied. pain are part of one’s body, self and per- Furthermore, when studying pain and ill- sonhood. Considering that body, person and ness, we also address questions about the self are constituted in a social process, pain creation and experience of well-being (see is therefore also social. Thus, when we study also Das 1990). The combined study of suffer- Anthropology in Action, 14, 1 & 2 (2007): 28–40 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action doi:10.3167/aia.2007.14010204 Tamils’ Quest for Well-Being AiA ing and well-being cannot be perceived as the civil war in Sri Lanka and re-established processes taking place within an individual themselves in Arctic Harbor (a pseudonym), vacuum. Who is suffering and how they suf- a fishing village along the arctic coast of Nor- fer are part of an intricate flow of power and way. The Tamil refugees came from the resistance in social relations. As Leslie Butt northern area of Jaffna, the eastern parts of (2002) points out, using the ‘suffering Batticola and Trincomalee, as well as the stranger’ as iconic figures can easily obscure Mid-Highlands surrounding Candy. Bring- the real absence of the voices of the poor ing together Tamils from various geographi- and marginalized, and their suffering on the cal areas, castes, kin-groups and political world stage. Rather than listening to their involvement added tensions to social rela- voices, their stories are used to make claims tions that were already fragmented and vul- about social justice and human rights, which nerable as a result of living in exile and are also rooted in cultural values and woven diaspora (see also Fuglerud 1999, Grønseth into global capital. Presenting the suffering 2006c). After waiting for often months and stranger to awaken an immediate and emo- sometimes years in reception centres for asy- tional involvement also runs the risk of si- lum-seekers, many of the Tamils were multaneously constructing a distance to the granted residence on humanitarian grounds pain through a focus on disaster and horrors. and moved to the northern coast of Norway, Furthermore, when the experience of suffer- where they were offered jobs in the fishing ing is used to explain structural conditions, industry. Arctic Harbor was one of several there is an increased peril that the conditions coastal fishing communities with a substan- and suffering are de-contextualized and, by tial settlement of Tamils—about 200 Tamils consequence, also reduced. By not high- with a total of approximately 2500 inhabit- lighting the dreadful tragedies of the Tamils’ ants in the period of 1999–2000. The numbers pain and instead exploring their suffering as vary with shifts in the local population and experiences contextualized in everyday life, fluctuations in the labor demand within the I reveal a range of meaning interwoven with fishing industry. Tamils’ aches and pains (see also Das 1995b). The Tamil population in Arctic Harbor Thus, this article does not explicitly contrib- was offered safety, well-paid jobs and good ute to social criticism, but seeks to bring forth housing. They were all employed as ‘cutters’ the Tamils’ stories in a way that can create in the fishing industry, a job that was usually a sense of solidarity and common humanity. viewed as a low-status job for local women. I will introduce a brief context of fieldwork The Tamils established a well-functioning lo- followed by a case study. Then I present three cal Tamil Association that arranged a variety sections, interpretations of Tamils’ suffering of activities, including sports, religious cere- and their quest for well-being. By way of monies, and a Saturday Tamil School that conclusion I return to the question of how offers culture, language and other social to understand Tamils’ choice of moving. gatherings for the children. Despite many successful aspects of their resettlement, the Tamils frequently visited the local health cen- tre for consultations about various diffuse Context of Fieldwork: Tamil Refugees aches and pains, which are the scope of in Arctic Harbor this study. Exploring Tamils’ suffering exposes how This case is based on one year of fieldwork1 their pains express embodied social experi- among Tamils who have sought refuge from ences. However, the study does not reject the 29 AiA Anne Sigfrid Grønseth idea that many Tamils’ illness and pains may roads are closed and covered by snow and be symptoms of post-traumatic stress syn- ice. There are also times when even the small drome (PTSD) related to war, ensuing losses2 aircrafts specially built for the tough climate or the Tamils’ strenuous and monotonous and short airstrips are grounded. In such pe- work at the fish plants.3 Nevertheless, the riods, people in Arctic Harbor are left rather Tamils’ experience of resettlement in Arctic isolated; this means that in emergency situa- Harbor challenged and confronted their fa- tions there is no transportation to hospital miliar and accepted social relations and iden- services. tity, which the body and self living in a new The northernmost county in Norway has and unknown social world and physical a sparse population that lives mostly in small surroundings perceived and expressed fishing villages along the coast or on the in- (Grønseth 2001, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). land plains, a region mainly populated by From national and political perspectives, the indigenous Sami, traditional reindeer the fishing communities in Finnmark the herdsmen. In spite of a general underpopula- northernmost province of Norway are re- tion and the rough climatic conditions, the garded as isolated, marginal, and dependent fishing industry is crucial for the inclusion on the whims of nature and the fishing indus- of these marginal places into the modern in- try. Nevertheless, the settlements are consid- frastructure and social welfare system of ered to be of great importance to the national Norway. economy and social structure (Brox 1987), Although the Tamil population is well in- a fact that provides arguments for national tegrated into the local (and national) econ- subsidies to the fishing industry, the estab- omy, they are socially and culturally lishment of a modern infrastructure, and a segregated. To explore the complex nexus minimum of social welfare. between their health and social life, I employ Arctic Harbor sits along a small fjord near perspectives of embodiment to focus on is- the Barents Ocean and the open sea near the sues of practical life and somatization. In re- North Pole. The buildings and houses sur- sponse to questions of change and agency, I round the interior of the fjord and are mainly suggest turning the analysis towards phe- stretched along one main road and several nomenological concepts of “self as orienting side streets. The village extends approxi- capacity” (Jackson 1989; Csordas 1990, 1994) mately three kilometers. The great flat wind- and ‘being-in-the-world’ (Merleau-Ponty swept mountains rise along the shore behind 1962). In addition, I adopt a semiotic ap- the settlements leading to the Finnmarksvidda proach (Peirce 1932; Colapietro 1989) that plateau.4 There are no trees in sight, only a allows an understanding of signs as ‘expres- few bushes firmly secured between cracks sions of the moment’.
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