'Your Papers or Your Life': The Significance of Documents in the Life Experiences of African Refugees in Israel

Abstract

The article focuses on the role of id papers in the lives of African refugees on their way to and in Israel. In the article, I discuss the way in which documents both encapsulate the past and relations and therefore enable one's future, as much as they monitor and control the everyday lives of displaced persons. I therefore wish to examine the complex relationships between persons, documents and institutions, and the way power is manifested through them. In the article I thus show how refugees are not only helpless, but to an extent also ones who can together with others shape and change the face of their present and future.