African Migrations

Description

African populations in motion

Spurred by major changes in the world economy and in local ecology, the contemporary migration of Africans, both within the continent and to various destinations in Europe and North America, has seriously affected thousands of lives and livelihoods. The contributors to this volume, reflecting a variety of disciplinary perspectives, examine the causes and consequences of this new migration. The essays cover topics such as rural-urban migration into African cities, transnational migration, and the experience of immigrants abroad, as well as the issues surrounding migrant identity and how Africans re-create community and strive to maintain ethnic, gender, national, and religious ties to their former homes.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: African Patterns of Migration in a Global Era: New Perspectives
Abdoulaye Kane and Todd H. Leedy

Part I. Psychological, Socio-cultural and Political Dimensions of African Migration
1. Overcoming the Economistic Fallacy: Social Determinants of Voluntary Migration from the Sahel to the Congo Basin Bruce Whitehouse
2. Migration as Coping with Risk: African Migrants' Conception of Being far from Home and States' Policy of Barriers Isaie Dougnon
3. Navigating Diaspora: The Precarious Depths of the Italian Immigration Crisis Donald Carter
4. Historic Changes Underway in African Migration Policies: From Muddling Through to Organized Brain Circulation Rubin Patterson

Part II. Translocal and Transnational Connections: Between Belonging and Exclusion
5. Belonging amidst Shifting Sands: Insertion, Self-exclusion, and the Remaking of African Urbanism Loren Landau
6. Securing Wealth, Managing Social Relations: Rural-urban Migration and the Moral Politics of Reciprocity, Gender, and Belonging in Neoliberal Tanzania Hansjoerg Dilger
7. Voluntary and Involuntary Homebodies: Adaptations and Lived Experiences of Hausa Left Behind in Niamey, Niger Scott Youngstedt
8. Strangers are like the Mist: Language in the Push and Pull of the African Diaspora Paul Stoller
9. Towards a Christian Disneyland? Negotiating Space and Identity in the New African Religious Diaspora Afe Adogame
10. Somali Assistance Networks: the Social Dynamics of Sending Remittances Cindy Horst

Part III. Feminization of Migration and the Appearance of Diasporic Identities
11. The Feminization of Asylum Migration from Africa: Problems and Perspectives Jane Freedman
12. Migration as Factor of Cultural Change Abroad and at Home: Senegalese Female Hair Braiders in the United States Cheikh Anta Babou
13. What the General of Amadou Bamba saw in New York City: Gendered Displays of Devotion among Migrants of the Senegalese Murid Tariqa Beth A. Buggenhagen
14. Towards Understanding a Culture of Migration among 'Elite' African Youth: Educational Capital and the Future of the Igbo Diaspora Rachel R. Reynolds

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• África
• General officer
• Globalization
• Politics
• History of Africa
• Anthropology
• General
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 18 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253005830
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AFRICAN MIGRATIONS
AFRICAN MIGRATIONS
Patterns and Perspectives
EDITED BY Abdoulaye Kane AND Todd H. Leedy
This book is a publication of
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
African migrations : patterns and perspectives / edited by Abdoulaye Kane and Todd H. Leedy.
p. cm.
Includes index. ISBN 978-0-253-00308-9 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00576-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00583-0 (ebook) 1. Africans- Migrations. 2. African diaspora. 3. Africa-Emigration and immigration. I. Kane, Abdoulaye. II. Leedy, Todd H. (Todd Holzgrefe)
DT16.5.A345 2012
304.8096-dc23 2012005743
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
For those on the move, and for those left behind
There s a place where I ve been told Every street is paved with gold And it s just across the borderline And when it s time to take your turn Here s one lesson that you must learn You could lose more than you ll ever hope to find
When you reach the broken promised land And every dream slips through your hands Then you ll know that it s too late to change your mind Cause you ve paid the price to come so far Just to wind up where you are And you re still just across the borderline
-Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, and James Dickinson, Across the Borderline (1982)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
African Patterns of Migration in a Global Era: New Perspectives Abdoulaye Kane and Todd H. Leedy
P ART 1. P SYCHOLOGICAL , S OCIOCULTURAL, AND P OLITICAL D IMENSIONS OF A FRICAN M IGRATION
1. Overcoming the Economistic Fallacy: Social Determinants of Voluntary Migration from the Sahel to the Congo Basin
Bruce Whitehouse
2. Migration as Coping with Risk and State Barriers: Malian Migrants Conception of Being Far from Home
Isaie Dougnon
3. Navigating Diaspora: The Precarious Depths of the Italian Immigration Crisis
Donald Carter
4. Historic Changes Underway in African Migration Policies: From Muddling Through to Organized Brain Circulation
Rubin Patterson
P ART 2. T RANSLOCAL AND T RANSNATIONAL C ONNECTIONS : B ETWEEN B ELONGING AND E XCLUSION
5. Belonging amidst Shifting Sands: Insertion, Self-Exclusion, and the Remaking of African Urbanism
Loren B. Landau
6. Securing Wealth, Ordering Social Relations: Kinship, Morality, and the Configuration of Subjectivity and Belonging across the Rural-Urban Divide
Hansj rg Dilger
7. Voluntary and Involuntary Homebodies: Adaptations and Lived Experiences of Hausa Left Behind in Niamey, Niger
Scott M. Youngstedt
8. Strangers Are Like the Mist: Language in the Push and Pull of the African Diaspora
Paul Stoller
9. Toward a Christian Disneyland? Negotiating Space and Identity in the New African Religious Diaspora
Afe Adogame
10. International Aid to Refugees in Kenya: The Neglected Role of the Somali Diaspora
Cindy Horst
P ART 3. F EMINIZATION OF M IGRATION AND THE A PPEARANCE OF D IASPORIC I DENTITIES
11. The Feminization of Asylum Migration from Africa: Problems and Perspectives
Jane Freedman
12. Migration as a Factor of Cultural Change Abroad and at Home: Senegalese Female Hair Braiders in the United States
Cheikh Anta Babou
13. What the General of Amadou Bamba Saw in New York City: Gendered Displays of Devotion among Migrants of the Senegalese Murid Tariqa
Beth A. Buggenhagen
14. Toward Understanding a Culture of Migration among Elite African Youth: Educational Capital and the Future of the Igbo Diaspora
Rachel R. Reynolds
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume emerged from a conversation on a plane to the annual African Studies Association meeting in 2004. Like many projects of this sort, the gestation period has been long but made bearable by the patience of our contributors and support of our colleagues. The editors wish to thank the staff of the Center for African Studies at University of Florida-in particular Leonardo Villalon, Corinna Greene, and Ikeade Akinyemi-for their continued assistance in all phases of this project. We would also like to thank the staff at Indiana University Press and the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions and guidance solidified this collection.
Primary financial support for the project was provided by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center program, with additional resources from the following University of Florida entities: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost, the International Center, the Office of Research, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, and the Department of Anthropology.
AFRICAN MIGRATIONS
INTRODUCTION
AFRICAN PATTERNS OF MIGRATION IN A GLOBAL ERA
NEW PERSPECTIVES
ABDOULAYE KANE AND TODD H. LEEDY
MOBILITY AS PHENOMENON IN AFRICA
Migration within countries, between countries and between continents, is a central characteristic of the twenty-first century. Castles and Miller (2003) have characterized the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries as the age of migration, referring to population movements across national, regional, and continental borders. Our goal in this volume is to assess the part that Africa and Africans play in this process of human mobility provoked by economic, social, and political forces operating at different yet interconnected levels-local, national, and global.
The various approaches to the study of African migrations necessitate a multidisciplinary approach. The multiple destinations of African migrants and the translocal/transnational connections established between the departed and those left behind compelled us to solicit contributions focused on domestic (rural to urban and, increasingly, urban to rural), regional, and intercontinental migration patterns. The multidisciplinary approach and domestic/regional/intercontinental scope allow these chapters to speak with each other in ways that set this volume apart from previous edited works on the subject (Amin 1974; Manuh 2005; Diop 2008).
There is no better indicator of the level of despair among Africans today than the exponentially growing numbers trying to exit at all costs for a better life elsewhere in urban Africa or Western countries. Since the early 1980s, Africans, particularly the youth, have been voting with their feet. If the wave of democratization that swept Africa in the early 1990s created a sense that political participation would lead to better governance and economic prosperity, then the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, and C te d Ivoire have consumed much of this hope. Migration has become-in both in urban and rural areas-an integral part of the community fabric, making it difficult to understand certain phenomena without taking into account the constant flows between rural villages and their satellites in African cities or abroad. The example of a marriage taking place at a local mosque in Freetown with the groom in London and the bride in Maryland highlights how African mobility connects the local and the global in unexpected ways (D Alisera 2004).
The patterns of African migration are evolving in response to changing economic and political realities on both ends of migratory routes. Besides the cosmogonies of displacement and resettlement very common among certain ethnic groups, and the mobility associated with the livelihoods of pastoralist, trading, and fishing communities, colonial rule triggered the movement of most African people (Amin 1974; Curtin 1995; Ferguson 1999; Piot 1999). Colonial capital created sites of raw material production for European industries that attracted rural labor migrants. During the colonial period, both rural-rural and rural-urban migrations in Africa were predominantly male and oftentimes seasonal. If most of the labor migration involved short distances, there were also growing numbers crossing territorial borders and staying longer periods-such as the case of Malian and Burkinabe migrants to the cocoa plantations in C te d Ivoire.
Postcolonial migrations have been overwhelmingly oriented toward urban centers. Rural exodus is a common denominator in the way African capital cities grew rapidly during the three decades following African independences. The movements from countryside to city no longer entailed only labor migration by young men; it included women traveling independently or joining their husbands in the city (Lambert 2002; Ferguson 1999). The reconstitution of rural families and the subsequent birth of second and third generations in the city promoted permanent migration. Migrations to neighboring countries in West Africa-where C te d Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal have become popular destinations of intra-regional migration-have substantial economic, and even political, impact. At the same time, long-distance intra-African m