Cemeteries as Translocal Contact Zones: Navigating Regulations, Unwritten Rules and Divergent Expectations in Luxembourg-City

Abstract

Migration, intercultural encounters and integration do not cease with death, but are taken with the deceased into cemetery grounds. This chapter explores the translocal dimension of cemeteries, where diverse expectations and practices are confronted by, engage with and respond to regulations and unwritten rules of this particular public space. This chapter looks at migrants who wish to be buried or have buried close kin or friends in Luxembourg, a small country in Northwestern Europe. Disposition of the dead in the host country instead of post-mortal repatriation is often seen as sign of integration or belonging. However, this choice must be understood in the context of a set of constraints that can be experienced in a variety of ways. Examining three contested issues at cemeteries (burial practices, cemetery and grave design, and grave perpetuity), we show how both the regulations and unwritten rules of cemeteries are negotiated and challenged by individual migrants and migrant communities, highlighting different practices of lived citizenship. Based on participant experiences and narratives, we argue for the necessity of valuing and managing cemeteries, less as bounded spaces that can foster integration during life and after, but as permeable and transformative contact zones in which translocal citizenship can be enacted.