Framing: Metaphors of Integration
Ours is an era in which varied forms of human mobilityâacross towns, countries and political bordersâare redefining the meanings of home, community and belonging. Across the world, public and scholarly debates continue over the nature of the societies such movements are generating. With the official âdeathâ of multiculturalism and the rise of populist parties in Europe and North America, the language of old-school assimilation has resurfaced as a mobilising principle for some. In practice this has translated into renewed and sometimes violent nativism, not just in Europe and North America, but across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Global campaigns to promote the rights of refugees and migrants in the Middle East, Africa and the âWestâ are the political counterweight to such hostile exclusion. Philosophical discussions over the rights of others are the scholarly adjunct to such tensions and campaigns. Perhaps never have the echoes of Kant, Rawls, Arendt, Walzer, Appiah and Derrida (among others) rung so loudly across the public sphere.
But beyond political imperatives and debates, people are moving and fashioning novel forms of membership in sites around the world. The resultsâsome enduring, some as fluid as the populations creating themâare the product of individual and collective priorities and their engendered practices. In some instances, these patterns conform closely to the incremental processes of integration and assimilation described by much contemporary integration scholarship. Yet across, Africa economic precarity, varied forms of mobility and socio-political allegiances, and frail or fragmented formal institutions mean that the individual and collective relations people forge are unlikely to follow these familiar scripts. This book documents, describes, and begins to theorise these dynamic and often poorly understood forms of membership and the practical and ethical foundations on which they rest.
Read individually or as a set of interlinked conversations, the bookâs chapters analyse the multiple ways migrants in Africa contribute to processes of social change within the places in which they reside, those they move through andâalbeit to a lesser extentâthose which they have left but to which many remain closely connected through material exchange and imagination. Our hope is that the following pages will contribute to and challenge scholarly debates within human geography, sociology and ancillary fields over the nature of migrant integration; debates largely shaped by research in the worldâs wealthy regions. The volumeâs empirical accounts introduce novel case studies from across Africa while marshalling these examples to question the concepts, actors and social trajectories dominant in the contemporary literature. The result is a book bringing together a diverse set of scholars, perspectives and case studies in ways that draw renewed attention to migration into and within Africa and to the socio-political consequences of these movements. But the lessons here should not be for Africa or Africanists alone. Indeed, many of the factors that define African socio-economic lifeâheightening diversity, weakening states, precarious work, translocalism and mobilityâare increasingly hallmarks of countries and communities worldwide. One need not embrace the Comaroffsâ (2012) assertion that Africa represents the future of global capitalism to recognise the potentially narrowing distinctions between Africa and the wealthy West. Moreover, given current global concerns with migration out of the continent, this book serves as a reminder that millions of peopleâs lives across the continent are shaped by aspirations and interactions that are more decidedly local.
Our approach stems from a primary concern with human agency and values that are often simultaneously exercised and enacted on multiple scales and across multiple sites. Rather than approach human migration primarily as outcomes of broader structural forces, we draw attention to migrants, hosts, politicians and others as active, strategic and tactical actors at play within structural constraints and opportunities. Whether Burundians in Tanzania or Nigerian pastors in Johannesburg, everyoneâmigrants, hosts, officialsâis working toward individual or collective ends. In many instances this may be only to create opportunities to move again or help others to stay put. The dynamic socialities and political configurations they help generate are consequencesâwhether as the primary objective or by-productâof their varied actions, and reactions to them. These forms may not fit neatly with our normative aspirations. Indeed, they may be just as likely to reinforce patterns of patriarchy and social marginalisation as they are to challenge them. Some will be illegal, morally dubious and physically precarious. Some others may embrace norms of rights and tolerance, while others reject the moral and political foundations of space-based political community. Yet as scholars our work is not to celebrate the universal power of the subaltern or blindly condemn the constraints imposed by capitalism or the coercive state, but rather to document and theorise these outcomes and their determinants. These tasks are at the centre of our analysis.
The authorsâ empirical accounts evoke the forge as a dual metaphor. Many discuss how human mobility engenders socio-political interactionsâsome highly localised, others spread across great distancesâthat form and reshape the meaning and boundaries of community. For them, forging emphasises the transformation of existing material into new, potentially unrecognizable forms that nonetheless build on past histories. Unlike stitching the social fabric of a cultural tapestry, something forged can (within limits and with energy) be melted down again, welded to something else or broken apart. In its second sense, the forge draws attention to processes of dissimulation, fraud, reinvention, re-presentation and other forms of fakery and fabrication that are so often central to migrantsâ experiences and strategies. Drawing attention to the macro and micro practices of representation, invisibility and performance, we offer insights into forms of recognition, of coming to know or understand the âotherâ while remaking oneself.
Throughout this text the authors point to a broad range of factors that confront, avert, or potentially circumvent varied forms of regulation and solidarity. These include multiple modes of affective connection: religious and political diasporas to micro, street or household level relationships. Some of these ties are a response to economic precarity; others are forms of social discipline and disconnection. Yet all ultimately rely on building mutually understoodâif delimitedârules of engagement premised on bases of inherited or emergent ethics (see Ye 2016). In recounting these, the authors speak to questions of space and scale. Some reference global trends and processes while others focus on regional, national, municipal or even neighbourhood dynamics. As the more micro speaks to spaces far away, we add to our understanding of the networked society and the archipelagos forged by people and processes.
Filling Empirical and Conceptual Gaps
This volume begins to address two related weaknesses in the existing literature. First, there is the paucity of empirical research into the settlement of migrants within African countries and communities. While the extent of African migration is relatively modest by global standardsâless than ten per cent of the worldâs international migrants are African bornâmore than half of those Africans who do move do so within the continent. South of the Sahara, only about a quarter of international migrants leave the continent.1 These numbers pale in comparison to the millions moving within their countries. Considering the significant ethnic, linguistic, climactic and political boundaries within many African states, these combined movements suggest we should be seeing a continent increasingly characterised by people apparently âout of place.â Yet despite this oddity, intracontinental migration remains remarkably poorly researched. Indeed, with the exception of research on displacement or other forms of âforced migrationâ, research on African international migration is skewed towards those leaving Africa (Flahaux and de Haas 2016; Bakewell and de Haas 2007). Where mobility within the continent is discussed, it is often considered in terms of material drivers and consequences (economic and health status, demands for services, promoting trade) with little concern for its socio-political consequences. When it comes to researching the actors and processes associated with migrant integration within contemporary African communities, there is precious little work, some driven by this volumeâs contributors (Whitehouse 2012 is one notable exception; for comparison with other regions, see, Gagnon and Khoudour-CastĂ©ras 2012; de Haas 2008).
Second, the frailty of empirical research from Africa (and other regions of the developing world) has reinforced more fundamental, conceptual shortcomings in the literature that tend to universalise the American and European processes of immigrant integration. The results are forms that often replicate a kind of âmethodological nationalismâ (Glick Schiller 2009). This is not only in the scale of the communities which they consider, but in their emphasis on state law and formal institutions. As such, the literature often remains concerned with legal status and citizenship, accessing rights to state resources or labour markets. Elsewhere scholars explore socio-cultural integration where people are enabled to be accepted and part of the society through policies of non-discrimination, anti-racism and social inclusion (Portes 2007; Schneider and Crul 2012; Sadiq 2009). This results in large volumes of ...