Bridging African Studies and Mobility Studies - Considerations on Transdisciplinarity and Positionality (original) (raw)
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The book is meant to shed new light on migratory processes pertinent to Sub-Saharan Africa. It starts out from the position that contemporary migratory movements can only be assessed by employing an appropriate theoretical framework which helps with conceptualizing both localised strategies of migrants, i.e. their modes of adaptation, economic and social integration into host societies and the way they maintain relationships back home, across places and nations, i.e. translocal aspects of their mobility in terms of networking, communication or economic as well as cultural transfers. It this respect, the book contributes to the current debate on processes and effects of worldwide mobility, addressing causes and effects and the various aspects of a 'culture of migration' relevant for the African continent. Additionally, the book tries to go beyond the usual structural discussions and reflections on mobility and migration by looking at actual migrant practices, their social creativity, the employment of flexible responses to often restrictive governmental policies. Finally, the volume also discusses the often neglected issue of (involuntary) immobility, as well as the significance of borders, in both limiting mobility and in creating new 'borderline' strategies, to employ a notion by Ines Kohl with regard to migrants' transnational strategies. The book addresses a wide readership in Human Sciences, especially from African Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, and Political Sciences.
Africa Are We There Yet Taking African Mobilities Seriously Concluding Remarks
Adopting an African-focused perspective in the analysis of African experiences of mobility enables us to confront the limits imposed by a historicist-induced articulation of African experiences of mobility. Th is article off ers some concluding remarks to a section on African mobilities and attempts a critical analysis of how an African-based perspective of mobility serves to decenter or provincialize the Western-centric discourses of mobility. Th is undertaking is important in the attempts to fashion African modes of thought that serve as a counternarrative to European thought and to subvert the misrepresentations of im/mobilities of Africa and things African.
Mobility, Transnationalism and Contemporary African Societies , 2010
The book is meant to shed new light on migratory processes pertinent to Sub-Saharan Africa. It starts out from the position that contemporary migratory movements can only be assessed by employing an appropriate theoretical framework which helps with conceptualising both localised strategies of migrants, i.e. their modes of adaptation, economic and social integration into host societies and the way they maintain relationships back home, across places and nations, i.e. translocal aspects of their mobility in terms of networking, communication or economic as well as cultural transfers. It this respect, the book contributes to the current debate on processes and effects of worldwide mobility, addressing causes and effects and the various aspects of a “culture of migration” relevant for the African continent. Additionally, the book tries to go beyond the usual structural discussions and reflections on mobility and migration by looking at actual migrant practices, their social creativity, the employment of flexible responses to often restrictive governmental policies. Finally, the volume also discusses the often neglected issue of (involuntary) immobility, as well as the significance of borders, in both limiting mobility and in creating new “borderline” strategies, to employ a notion by Ines Kohl with regard to migrants’ transnational strategies. The book addresses a wide readership in Human Sciences; especially from African Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, and Political Sciences.
Fiction and reality of mobility in Africa
Citizenship Studies, 2013
This article draws on rich ethnographies and ethnographic fiction depicting mobile Africans and their relationships to the places and people they encounter to argue that mobility is more appropriately studied as an emotional, relational and social phenomenon as reflected in the complexities, contradictions and messiness of the everyday realities of encounters informed by physical and social mobility. The current dominant approach to studying and relating to mobile Africans is problematic. Nationals, citizens and locals in communities targeted by African mobility are instinctively expected to close ranks and fight off the influx of barbarians who do not quite belong and must be 'exorcised' so that 'insiders' do not lose out to this particular breed of 'strangers', 'outsiders' or 'demons', perceived to bode little but inconvenience and savagery. If and when allowed in, emphasis is on the needs, priorities and convenience of their reluctant hosts, who tend to go for the wealthy, the highly professionally skilled, the culturally bleached and Hottentot Venuses of the academy, even at the risk of accusations of capital flight and brain drain. The article demonstrates how to marry ethnography and fiction to study African mobility not only as a 'collection of logical bones and flesh' but also as 'emotional beings'. It calls for conceptual flexibility and ethnographic empirical substantiation, and challenges social scientists to look beyond academic sources for ethnographies and accounts of how a deep, flexible and nuanced understanding of mobility and interconnections in Africa play out in different communities, states and regions of a world permanently on the move.
In Africa, debates on the development of migration policies and borders are at the core of many studies. Over the past two decades, the transformation of mobility regimes, the strengthening of borders and the emergence of multiple actors in migration "management" have been addressed mainly through the process of externalisation of borders and the role played by actors of the international migration government. Without questioning the asymmetric and postcolonial dimensions of African-European state relations, this topical collection aims to take a different and innovative look at the historical, social and political trajectories of African states and societies in the government of mobility. It thus aims to interrogate the ways in which a wide variety of actors, both state and non-state, invest, contest and reuse the socio-political spaces of migration government through their practices, discourses or mobilities. Résumé En Afrique, les débats portant sur la fabrique des politiques migratoires et des frontières sont au coeur de nombreux travaux. Depuis une vingtaine d'années, la transformation des régimes de mobilité, le renforcement des frontières et l'apparition de multiples acteurs « gestionnaires » de la migration restent majoritairement abordés sous l'angle prépondérant du processus d'externalisation des frontières et du rôle qu'y tiennent les acteurs du gouvernement international des migrations. Sans vouloir remettre en cause la dimension asymétrique et postcoloniale des relations qui unissent les États africains aux États européens, ce dossier thématique souhaite surtout porter un regard différent et neuf sur les trajectoires historiques, sociales et politiques propres aux États africains et à leurs sociétés dans le gouvernement des mobilités. Il souhaite ainsi questionner la manière dont une large diversité d'acteurs et d'actrices étatiques ou non, investissent, contestent, réutilisent par leurs pratiques, leurs discours ou leurs mobilités, les espaces sociopolitiques du gouvernement des migrations.
Which Mobilities for (Which) Africa? Beyond Banal Mobilities
When scholars say they are talking about mobility, often they are talking about the car or other motor vehicles. They are talking not about mobility as such but transport. Historians who say they study histories of mobility are in essence merely historians of technology. The list of books by western scholars on the car, roads, trains, and railroads, space travel, and more recently the air transport is long. Indeed, those who claim (or are claimed by others) to be scholars of mobility in Africa are merely extending this rather narrow framing of mobility to Africa. Since the technologies of transport they deal with were almost always introduced from the West by outsiders, they end up “transport-ing” imperial history into Africanist studies, though the desire to escape such histories gene ated African studies to start with.
Forging African Communities: Mobility, Integration and Belonging
Forging African Communities: Mobility, Integration and Belonging , 2018
This book draws renewed attention to migration into and within Africa, and to the socio-political consequences of these movements. In doing so, it complements vibrant scholarly and political discussions of migrant integration globally with innovative, interdisciplinary perspectives focused on migration within Africa. It sheds new light on how human mobility redefines the meaning of home, community, citizenship and belonging. The authors ask how people’s movements within the continent are forging novel forms of membership while catalysing social change within the communities and countries to which they move and which they have left behind. Original case studies from across Africa question the concepts, actors, and social trajectories dominant in the contemporary literature. Moreover, it speaks to and challenges sociological debates over the nature of migrant integration, debates largely shaped by research in the world’s wealthy regions. The text, in part or as a whole, will appeal to students and scholars of migration, development, urban and rural transformation, African studies and displacement.
Spaces in Movement. New Perspectives on Migration in African Settings
Migration in Africa has gained a new impetus in recent years through the expansion of destinations away from local urban centers and regional economic hubs into far-off places beyond the African continent. In the same vein, mobility within Africa itself, in its various forms, has also started to receive more attention. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop new ways of looking at this phenomenon. While African mobility outside of the continent has been a central concern in academic studies, the focus in this book, is on opportunities, challenges posed by internal migration and the workings of migration in general in African settings today. With this contribution, the editors strive to fill some of the gaps about the question of mobility within the African context. Addressing issues specific to people’s mobility and their influence on religion, economy, politics, traditions, societies on shifting grounds, gender relations, and cultural interactions, this volume is an attem...
Mobility and Belonging in West Africa by Carola Lentz
2014
Good monographs about African politics have become increasingly rare in the last twenty years as political scientists have turned their interest in comparative studies toward the use of the Afro-Barometer survey or various data sets measuring democratisation or governance. While this trend toward mainstreaming the study of African politics in the comparative politics field is welcome, it also
Africans on the go to make do: making local sense of global developments
Labor History, 2017
Mobility has been a central aspect of African studies. Research on spatial mobility has focused predominantly on economic patterns, whether they be labour migration, pastoralist movements or the rural flight for urban jobs. Africa was and is on the move, but patterns are changing. This aspect of mobile transformation is the subject of the edited volumes Mobile Africa: Changing