Já não vale a pena ir para lá: The changing discourse on migration to South Africa by Mozambicans (original) (raw)
Related papers
Já Não Vale a Pena Ir Para Lá1: The Changing Discourse on Migration to South Africa by Mozambicans
Southern Journal for Contemporary History, 2022
Even though for decades poems and songs criticised Mozambicans’ migratory work in South Africa, many young people from southern Mozambique still saw the work on plantations, mines and other paid occupations in South Africa as a way to be freed from the heavy burdens of marrying and raising a family and at the same time as a chance to accumulate wealth. However, in recent years the “fears” conveyed in poetry, songs, and other literary forms have gained prominence. Many Mozambicans with work experience in South Africa now point out that, “it is no longer worth going there”. By discouraging other Mozambicans from considering South Africa the “golden metropolis”, they adopt a discursive shift that is partly the result of new conjunctures, both in Mozambique and South Africa. This article aims to show that some poets and musicians have appropriated and reinterpreted the migratory work of Mozambicans in South Africa, emphasising more the negative aspects, thus contradicting the contemporary hegemonic discourse which saw migratory work in South Africa as the salvation for young and adult men. I examine, in particular, the works of José João Craveirinha. I argue that his position on migratory work is an extension of his anti-colonial struggle, which started in the 1950s. I also look at other songs by different authors who interpret migratory work based on their colonial and postcolonial experiences. I highlight that, in recent years, these critical voices tend to be taken up by people with or without experience of migratory work in South Africa to discourage further migration. Finally, I point out the poet’s and the musicians’ silences regarding Mozambican women’s migratory work in South Africa and simultaneously emphasise that women have always been discouraged from migrating. The poet and the musicians only had eyes for the local South African prostitutes who enticed Mozambican men, gave them venereal diseases and made them forget their wives and families in Mozambique. Keywords: migratory work, Mozambique, South Africa, Craveirinha, musicians
Journal of Lusophone Studies
This study forges a tryptic partnership between the notions of Mamiwata, migrations, and miscegenation to examine selected works by Mia Couto, José Eduardo Agualusa, and Germano Almeida. Considering miscegenation as the point of convergence for the legacy of Portuguese colonialism, the three writers share the varied responses of their respective nation to cultural contact with Portugal. The intersection between transculturation and miscegenation evokes the negotiation of a new identity where the colonized supersedes the dominating effects of colonialism. The fluidity of the sea and the image of the water spirit thus converge into a phenomenon of shifting, migratory identities.
(Im)mobilities and migration in the work of César Mba Abogo and Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 2019
Many literary texts written by authors of African origin in the Spanish language engage with the experience of migration and of living in a European society that marginalizes and homogenizes migrants as the ‘African Other.’ Rather than reproduce stereotypical images of African migrants, these texts challenge a biased debate on migration to Europe, offering an alternative vision of a complex phenomenon. In these texts, migrants are individuals whose mobility is restricted because they are subjected to processes of Othering, which confine them to the margins of Spanish society, raising issues of mobility in/justice and forced im/mobilities related to hegemonic power relations, coloniality, and race. Privileging the perspective of African migrant subjects in creating new imaginaries of migration to Europe, this article examines the mobilities paradigm in the context of transnational migration in a postcolonial era and discusses the potential of literary texts to unsilence ‘immobile voices.’ Through this lens, I offer readings of César Mba Abogo’s El Porteador de Marlow: Canción negra sin color (2007) and Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo’s El Metro (2007), grounding my scholarship in Equatoguinean literature and contemporary hispanophone African literature.
Migration and the Politics of Comfort in Priscilia Manjo's Snare and No Violet Bulawayo's We Need New Names, 2019
Migration is one of the concepts in literature that suffers from the notion of homogeneity of motif and consequence. People do not only migrate to better themselves nowadays nor are the problems they encounter limited to the acquisition of documents. Using New Historicism and post coloniality, this paper examines the changes in trends of migration, entry/exit complexities and what it takes to be comfortable in a world replete with an undertone of racism and the possibility of xenophobic encounters in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names and Priscilia M. Manjoh's Snare. In trying to portray societies that push and pull migrants out and in respectively, the reader is left with the impression that it is in the interest of the migrants to understand the politics of coexistence particularly in the host country prior to taking the decision to migrate because of the socio-cultural, economic and psychological implications involved that are usually overlooked. The paper rounds off with the thought that a comprehensive understanding on the impact of migration will tremendously dwindle the rate of migration in the continent.
Postcolonial Portuguese Migration to Angola
2018
The Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series covers three important aspects of the migration process: firstly, the determinants, dynamics and characteristics of international migration. Secondly, the continuing attachment of many contemporary migrants to their places of origin, signified by the word 'diaspora', and thirdly the attempt, by contrast, to belong and gain acceptance in places of settlement, signified by the word 'citizenship'. The series publishes work that shows engagement with and a lively appreciation of the wider social and political issues that are influenced by international migration and encourages a comparative perspective. vii This book draws on the support from many persons in Luanda. I owe a great and profound gratitude to my three excellent female research assistants, who provided me with invaluable contacts and many insights. Academic colleagues and friends at Universidade Agostinho Neto as well as friends outside the academic circles offered me great hospitality and shared their visions about how to navigate life in contemporary Luanda. I also want to thank my Angolan and Portuguese interviewees who patiently answered my many questions during conversations that sometimes lasted for many hours. I would have liked to mention all of you by name, but the obscure workings of the Angolan party-state and the long history of widespread state control and repression made me decide to preserve the anonymity of everyone who resides in Angola. During my research visits in Luanda I was accompanied by Pétur Skúlason Waldorff, Reykjavík University, and his collegiality and kindness made my work much more easy and fun. At the initial stages of fieldwork, Erika Eckeskog and Lena Sundh at the Swedish Embassy in Luanda opened up for important contacts. I wrote the main part of the book during the last months of 2016, when I was a visiting research fellow at the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford, and I want to thank colleagues and staff at IMI for providing such a great environment for concentrated writing. I finalized the text during a stay at The Swedish Institute in Athen's guest house in Kavala, and also here I encountered many nice people and a fantastic environment.
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo. Paradigms of Migration: The Flight and the Fall
Le Simplegadi
This essay analyses paradigms of migration in We Need New Names (2013) by NoViolet Bulawayo (b. 1981, Zimbabwe), a recent example of new African (or 'Afropolitan'?) literature. A teenager idealises migration to the United States as a flight to emancipation, if compared to internal flows of forcedly removed people, or unsuccessful flows to South Africa, or even to Britain. As a counterpoint, a downfall follows the flight. The first American experience is a snowfall, then stumbling on the English Language is compared to a fall; physical as well as psychic downfalls send illegal migrants into the invisibility of undesirable jobs and into lying (Mehta 2016) but also into a mental condition. This final outcome of migration has been approached with the tools of ethno-psychiatry (Beneduce 2016-2018) and the recently published short story about migration by Maaza Mengiste, "This is What the Journey Does" (2018).
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2017
This article develops a transatlantic approach to the colonial and postcolonial uses of the term sertão [backlands] in Angola, Brazil, and Mozambique through the works of Mia Couto and Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, especially in their readings of João Guimarães Rosa. By focusing on their fictional and essayistic work, I analyze how they explore social and environmental dimensions of different sertões in order to negotiate the multiplicity of meanings the term has acquired in both continents.Resumen Este artículo toma un acercamiento transatlántico a los usos coloniales y poscoloniales del término "sertão" (lugar desierto) en Angola, Brasil y Mozambique por medio del análisis de las obras de Mia Couto y Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, particularmente en cuanto a sus lecturas de João Guimarães Rosa. Al abordar sus ensayos y ficción, analizo cómo exploran las dimensiones sociales y ambientales de distintos sertões para negociar la multiplicidad de significados que el término ha ...