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T HE ME N
Det l ef Ml l er - Mahn
Transnational spaces and migrant networks:
A case study of Egyptians in Paris
T
he term transnational space is ambigous, since it
implies distinctness from the term national with-
out being able to dispense with it. It denotes phenomena
of global interconnectedness in the intermediate space
between the local and the global. These phenomena do
not occur worldwide, but only between particular actors
who maintain close relationships over long distances
and across borders. Thus, the notion of transnationality
attempts to avoid the ubiquity of the current discourse on
globalization, which often has become rather uncritical
in the way it subsumes a diversity of processes and rela-
tionships only because they involve some kind of border
crossing. Hannerz (1996, p. 6) writes in the introduction
to Transnational connections:
The term transnational is in a way more humble
and often a more adequate label for phenomena
which can be of quite variable scale and distribu-
tion, even when they do share the characteristic of
not being contained within a state. (...) In the trans-
national arena, the actors may now be individuals,
groups, movements, business enterprises, and in no
small part it is the diversity of organization that we
need to consider.
In recent years migration research has begun to focus more
on circular processes and interaction between the area of
origin and the area of destination of migrants, on the move-
ment of people back and forth between different places,
and on cross-border relations in transnational spaces (see
for example: Oltmer 2001, Tacke 2000, Weikppel 2005).
The concept of transnational social space uses space as a
metaphor for social networks, following Bourdieu (1985).
Consequently, transnational social space is regarded as
a reference structure for social positionings beyond the
context of nation state and national society (Pries 1998).
The basis for this is a relativistic understanding of space
(Lw 2001), which is opposed to the idea of container
spaces such as nation states or other territorial units.
This relativistic understanding has sparked off the cur-
rent debate on the limits of the concept of transnational
space. Bommes (2002, p. 93 ff.) argues that the concept
leads into a dead end, because the nation state which is
rejected as a frame of reference is brought back in through
the back door and given a place as a structure-forming
category in the conceptual basis. This is clearly not the
right way to overcome the habit of thinking in container
spaces. Instead, what is needed is a focusing of migration
research on processes of network building.
This is not a new idea, yet it presented a challenge for
geographical migration research to decouple society and
space epistemologically (for example: Brkner 2000,
Costanzo 1999, Goeke 2004, Hillmann 2001). Extensive
empirical studies show the importance of networks for
the phenomenon of cross-border migration movements.
Networks obviously play a central role in overcoming dis-
tances and the structuring of those intermediate spaces
that are created as a result of migration. Transnationality
is manifested in these intermediate spaces, where social,
cultural and economic developments in the various cur-
rent and previous places of residence of the members of a
migrant network are linked together.
Against this backdrop, three groups of questions arise
which will be discussed in this article in the light of an
empirical case study of Egyptian migrants in Paris. The
frst group of questions relates to the conditions which
give rise to transnational networks and keep them alive:
What connections are there between social relations and
economic interests in the constitution of networks, and
how important are they for their stabilization, reproduction
and transformation? The concept of transnational space
assumes a central position in the second group of questi-
ons. Using concrete examples we will show that it can be
understood as a social construction, as an intermediate
and transitory space which changes in the course of the
careers of the migrants. Thirdly and fnally there is the
question of interaction and interrelations between proces-
ses in the areas of origin and the areas of destination of the
migrants: What transfers take place or what infuences are
exerted through transnational networks? To what extent do
migrants act as brokers of globalization?
The case study presented here is based on parallel feld-
work carried out in two places which are related to each
other through a concrete migrant network: in the village of
Sibrbay in Egypt from 1992 onwards, and during repeated
visits to a group of migrants from this village in Paris from
1995 onwards (cf. Mller-Mahn 2000, 2002).
Conditions for the constitution of a
transnational network
Labour migration in Egypt has a long tradition. However,
there was no signifcant migration of Egyptians to Paris
until the 1980s, when temporary labour migration to the
Arab oil-producing countries declined as a result of eco-
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nomic and political developments in the Near East. Europe
as a new migration destination presented conditions quite
different from those in the Arabian pensinsular: The
migration of workers to Arab countries was legal and tem-
porary, and did not go beyond the Arab-Islamic linguisitic
and cultural area. But moving to Europe is more diffcult
and requires a much greater ability to adapt. In reaction to
these new conditions, new migration patterns have been
set up, characterized by networks with relatively exclusive
access. This explains why most Egyptian migrants living
in France come from a restricted number of villages and
towns in the central Nile Delta. One of these places is the
village of Sibrbay, a large community of approximately
20,000 inhabitants. There are about three to four hun-
dred men (or even considerably more, according to some
sources) from this village currently living in Paris.
The frst migrant from Sibrbay came to Paris in the 1950s
as the domestic servant of a French family returning from
Egypt. He married a French woman and fnally became
a French citizen, but maintained regular contact with his
family in Egypt. Two decades later he was the contact
address for some young relatives from his home village
who were seeking alternatives to the Arab countries, the
normal destination for migrant workers at that time. The
success of this frst pioneer is signifcantly linked with
the emergence of the migrant network, as the example of
one of these migrants from the pioneer generation shows.
At the end of the 1970s he interrupted his studies to make
a journey to Europe where he found a job in a large paint-
ing and decorating company in Paris. After four years he
married a French woman, which enabled him to obtain
frst a residence permit and then French nationality. From
this secure position he rose in the course of the years to
become a partner in the painting and decorating company.
He succeeded in considerably expanding the business, not
least due to the fact that he preferred to employ workers
from his own village in Egypt, who, as irregular immi-
grants, were prepared to work for low wages. The frst
immigrants he helped to enter the country and to fnd
work at the beginning of the 1980s were two of his broth-
ers and a cousin, who found employment in the expand-
ing company together with an increasing number of men
from Sibrbay. After a few years the two brothers obtained
French nationality, while the cousin returned to Sibrbay,
where he opened a travel agency specializing in transfer
journeys to Europe.
The ways and means of entering Europe are not spatially
fxed, but on the contrary need to be extremely varied and
capable of reacting fexibly to the changing restrictions,
risks and opportunities. Personal contacts between the
home village and Paris are decisive factors, as seen in the
above example of the successful entrepreneur. The way
entry into the country is organized shows a wide range of
variations, even in the small sample of ninety-two men
from Sibrbay included in a survey carried out in 1998

(cf
Mller-Mahn 2000). The path to Europe can be referred
to as a social migration corridor, because it is not spa-
tially fxed but depends essentially on social access to the
migrant group. These days, entry to Europe is a question of
price, since for relatively safe and easy access sums of over
5,000 EUR have to be paid, which an Egyptian villager
cannot afford without selling his land or taking an advance
from a friend or relative who already lives in France. The
young men are prepared to face considerable obstacles and
even to risk their lives, as shown by the experiences of
those who have failed in their attempts to cross the external
European borders or before reaching them. Some of these
men, who may already have attempted and failed the jour-
ney several times, have run up such high debts to pay for it
that they will try again and again, in desperation, because
they know that there is no alternative if they are ever to pay
back the money they have borrowed. This would be impos-
sible with the low wages paid in Egypt. The people with the
best chances of arriving safely in France and surviving the
frst few months there are those who can rely on assistance
from their fellow countrymen. The percentage of failed
entry attempts or of deportations is hard to estimate. For
migrants from Sibrbay, entry into Europe seems to have
become more calculable in the second half of the 1990s.
The reason for this is that with the development of a social
network and the establishment of the group in Paris there
is now suffcient capital to provide relatively safe ways
of entering the country for men and recently also some
women (!) coming from Sibrbay.
Transnational relations and social space
between Sibrbay and Paris
The frst point of contact for many newcomers is a big
block of fats in one of the northern arrondissements of
Paris which belongs to an Algerian immigrant. Between
fve and seven fats in this house are used by people arriv-
ing from Sibrbay, so that there is a constant change of ten-
ants. The distribution of the addresses in Paris given by the
respondents in the survey shows a clear concentration in
those districts with the highest Maghrebi population. This
concentration must also be interpreted as indicating that
the migrants attach great importance to closeness, since
they are dependent on contacts and the possibility of regu-
lar meetings for solving their daily problems in a foreign
country. The knowledge of addresses and the capability to
establish and maintain contacts clearly are preconditions
for the migrant network (Tacke 2000).
For the migrants the time immediately following their
arrival is the hardest. They need to stay in Paris for at
least one or two years in order to be able to pay back their
debts, but since they do not yet know their way around and
do not speak French they run a high risk, as sans-papiers,
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of being caught by the police and deported. They suffer
from cultural uneasiness and miss their families in Egypt.
A large part of their time is spent sitting at home with other
Egyptians, and all their social contacts, visits and phone
calls are restricted to their fellow countrymen. Visiting
each other, cooking together, watching Egyptian videos
and making phone calls help them to reproduce the feeling
of life in Sibrbay.
Many newcomers react to the confrontation with a foreign
world by a deep religiosity. The mosque becomes the most
important meeting place outside the home. The mosque is
also an authoritative institution for the sans-papiers, who
are unable to call upon the services provided by the state.
In this context an imam from Sibrbay plays an important
role for migrants from his village, because he is the only
commonly recognized authority. He acts as mediator in
conficts, which usually concern wages and fnancial mat-
ters. He also organizes medical care for the sick and col-
lects contributions for a solidarity fund to help anybody
who is in need.
The sans-papiers live in a permanent state of insecurity.
It therefore stands to reason that after one or two years the
primary aim of many migrants is obtaining a residence
permit, as soon as they have paid back the debts they
incurred to fnance their entry into the country. Possess-
ing valid documents authorizing their stay is an essential
condition for obtaining better paid employment. For this, it
is necessary to have achieved integration in the host coun-
try, which does not primarily refer to French society as
a whole but to the hybrid society of the Maghrebi-Muslim
immigrants in the suburbs of the city. Integration in France
is mainly characterized by the desire for security. Many
migrants achieve this within a few years, while a few still
have no valid documents after twenty years. To obtain a
residence permit there are basically two alternatives. The
frst consists in taking advantage of one of the campaigns
for the legalization of irregular immigrants, of which
there have been several in France and some neighbouring
countries in recent years. During the last campaign of this
kind in Italy, many sans-papiers crossed the border from
France in order to obtain fctitious certifcates of work
and thus to become offcially registered. The second way
to obtain a residence permit is to marry a French citizen.
The majority of willing candidates are divorced women of
Arab origin, usually from Morocco or Algeria, frequently
with children. Contacts are arranged through the mosque
or by acquaintances. The Egyptian men usually regard
these marriages with Maghrebi women as temporary
marriages, especially if they already have a wife and
children in Egypt.
Integration depends essentially on the employment situa-
tion. Around 90% of the men from Sibrbay living in Paris
work as painters or own their own painting and decorat-
ing business. Their success is the result of a hierarchical
organization that is fexible and able to adapt to the market
conditions. At the top are some of the men who immi-
grated at the beginning of the 1980s, who have obtained
French nationality and who own small independent busi-
nesses (patrons). Their labour costs are low because
they employ illegal workers, and therefore they can offer
unbeatable prices. These low labour costs are dependent
on having a reservoir of migrants without documents
seeking jobs. The informal middlemen and sub-contrac-
tors (muqawilln) play a key role in this organization. They
seek out workers among the sans-papiers on behalf of the
patrons. Due to their personal contacts they tend to pick
fellow countrymen from Sibrbay. The middlemen usually
have a residence permit and a work permit, and some even
have French nationality. They use mobile phones to keep
in touch constantly with the patrons and with the sans-
papiers (who are employed only on a daily basis), moving
all over the city from one building site to another, check-
ing that orders are executed correctly, and providing more
materials where necessary. The French clients are both
private individuals and public institutions.
The relations of trust based on the common origin of the
different actors in this scenario is important in the com-
bination of legal and illegal activities, for the relations
between employer and employee cannot in this case be
regulated by contract. Through low wages, high fexibility
and the relatively low-risk combination of legal economic
activities on the part of the patrons and the lucrative under-
ground economy of the muqawilln and sans-papiers, the
immigrants from Sibrbay have succeeded in the past two
decades in establishing themselves in a service sector
which was previously controlled by immigrants from the
Maghreb. If the migrant workers succeed in obtaining per-
mission to remain in France, they are in a position to rise
in the hierarchy and to become a muqawil or patron. Their
relations with other migrant workers from their home vil-
lage are then characterized by increasing detachment,
due to their more diverse social contacts; yet maintaining
contact with the incoming sans-papiers continues to be
important, above all for economic reasons.
Many who have made it this far fnd that as their income
and standard of living rise, their original plans to return to
Egypt gradually recede into the background. Anyone who
can afford it travels back and forth between the two places,
following the seasons. The migrants live in an intermediate
space which links elements from Sibrbay and Paris. This
space is transnational both in the sense that both places are
regularly present in the daily practices of the migrants, at
least symbolically, and in the sense that the actors strive to
maintain and create social relations in and between both
places, even at the expense of much time and capital. These
transnational relations bridge not only the spatial distance
but also the social and economic differences between the
two places. As one of the respondents in the survey put it:
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Paris is the place where I work, Sibrbay is the place where
I live. The migrants need the idea of being present in
both places, because only in this way can they utilize their
complementarity in the acquisition of fnancial and social
capital. The hard years as sans-papiers are easier to bear
so long as there is a prospect of subsequently being able to
live in the home village as a respected and wealthy man.
However, as the stay grows longer the transnational rela-
tions change in different ways for different individuals.
The intention of returning to Egypt plays a central role,
but one which may at frst appear paradoxical. When they
frst arrive, the sans-papiers are sure that they want to stay
in France only as long as it takes to earn enough money to
be able to build a house or start a business back home in
Egypt. But in fact, after obtaining a residence permit and
improving their fnancial situation, which makes travel to
Egypt much easier for them, many migrants fnd that the
desire to return home becomes more diffuse.
One explanation for this is the restricted opportunities
for communication and interaction over a great distance
and above all across borders. For all those involved, and
especially for the women and children who have stayed at
home, the long years of separation and the estrangement
this entails become a permanent mental strain which is
worst on occasions at which the presence of all family
members is required, such as at funerals. For the migrants,
physical participation in the social life of their home vil-
lage becomes possible again only after obtaining a French
residence permit. In addition, their relationship with the
host society also changes in the course of their stay. A
number of young men from Sibrbay who came to Paris
in the mid 1990s, have by now reduced what were origi-
nally very close contacts with their village community, no
longer live with the other Egyptians, and see themselves
today as Beur, as a part of the mixed Arab-French culture.
But for most of the migrants, Sibrbay and Paris remain the
two fxed points in their world.
Taking the time dimension into account, the transnational
space may not only be seen as an intermediate space, but
for the migrants it also stands for a phase in the reorienta-
tion of their plans for the future. It is, in a way, a transit
between Egypt and France.
Transnational migrant networks as
brokers of globalization?
The enormous increase in the level of migration from
developing countries to industrial countries must be seen
in the context of globalization and the unequal distribution
of wealth (Stalker 2000), but this alone does not constitute
an adequate explanation for the formation of specifc trans-
national migrant networks such as the one described in
this case study. The interrelations, the transfer of fnancial
resources and the accumulation of social capital within the
transnational network therefore deserve special attention
in empirical research (cf. Sciortino 2004). In Sibrbay the
migrants play an ambivalent role in the development of
their home village in this respect.
Originally, almost all migrants from Sibrbay came to
France with the declared aim of earning money for the
purpose of improving their living conditions or starting
a family in Egypt, i.e. buying a plot of land in their home
village, building a house, and paying for wedding celebra-
tions. As their stay grew longer, however, many changed
their plans. On the one hand they spent many years work-
ing to realize their ambition, sent money home regularly,
and were able to carry out at least a part of their intentions.
But on the other hand the original motives for seeking
work abroad were gradually displaced by other ambitions
in the course of the integration process, leading to discard-
ing of the original aims.
The money sent home by migrant workers from the oil-
producing countries and from France created a building
boom in Sibrbay and caused the village to grow dramati-
cally. As a result of this extremely speculative activity,
the prices of land for building have risen enormously and
indiscriminately. The most coveted locations along the
road to Tanta, the next big city, sell these days for up to
the equivalent of 150 EUR square metre, an exorbitantly
high price by Egyptian standards. Due to new legislation
introduced in the mid 1990s, new buildings may only
be erected within municipal boundaries, with the result
that more and more old houses are being pulled down
and replaced by new multi-storey buildings of concrete
post-and-beam construction. Representative town houses,
with balconies, decorated entrances and marble steps are
external signs of the wealth aquired abroad and new social
prestige in what is still a rural area.
Another consequence of the increased fow of capital from
abroad is the cost of wedding receptions which has risen
enormously since the beginning of the 1990s. Several
young migrants reported that they had to spend all they
had on presents for the bride and her family, for furniture
and equipment for the house and as a result were forced
to extend their stay abroad in order to earn more money.
The expensive wedding receptions of migrants from
France in Sibrbay are frequently held in a rented hall in
the neigbouring city of Tanta, not at home as used to be
customary. They are deliberate displays of success, wealth
and cosmopolitanism, with a white dress for the bride, a
wedding cake and a video flm team.
The higher prices mean that non-migrants fnd it hard to
keep up in the competition for building plots, houses and
prestigious celebrations and so they are tempted to try
and fnd work abroad, at least for a few years. Thus, the
transnational relations within the migrant network help
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to create a greater willingness to migrate in Sibrbay,
indirectly through the reinforcement of socio-economical
disparities in the home village, and directly through the
passing on of information, the example given by successful
homecomers, personal support and invitations.
An important factor in the communication of external
impulses in the context of globalization is the invest-
ment activity of migrants and homecomers in Sibrbay.
Although investments in the creation of new sources of
income are clearly lower than the consumptive forms of
capital spending that we have mentioned, they have trig-
gered remarkable developments since the mid 1990s. The
two most frequent forms of investment are opening up
shops and the acquisition of private minibuses to run local
transport services. Investments have also been made in
other forms of business, such as small manufacturing busi-
nesses producing shoes or furniture, a private school with
its own kindergarten, a bakery, several telephone offces,
an Internet caf, and, as Sibrbays own special trademark,
painting and decorating businesses.
Conclusion
Transnational migrant networks are not just a product of
globalization, but they have gained new qualities in a con-
text of increasing global interconnectedness. The present
case study has shown that the internal structures of the
network are of considerable importance for the dynamics
and control of migration processes between Sibrbay and
Paris. The physical movement of migrants is only one
aspect albeit an important one of the relations between
these two places. The internal dynamics of the network
are refected in the social construction of transnational
space as an intermediate and from an individuals point
of view transitory phenomenon.
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Prof. Dr. Detlef Mller-Mahn, chair of Population and
Social Geography, University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Contact: MuellerMahn@uni-bayreuth.de
URL: http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/
sozialgeographie/index.html