Historically, migration has been taking place since time immemorial. It has accelerated through colonialism, expanding global economies, the rise of capitalism and the strong desire for cheap labour particularly in the nineteenth century. European migration to the Americas since 1492 has often dominated the migration narratives, ânoted as an important part of world historyâ (McKeown 2004: 155). Migration narratives in other parts of the world, for example, Asia and Africa, are largely documented in the context of what became known as the Atlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and indentured migration to various British colonies in the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean (McKeown 2004: 155â160).
However, recently there has been excavatory research engaged with historical migrations in the Indian Ocean region (McKeown 2004: 155â160; Machado 2014). This is not only long overdue in punctuating the dominant narratives of European migration to the Americas but significant as women were an integral part of mobility in the Indian Ocean region. Africa has witnessed both internal and transoceanic migrations over centuries. Colonisation and the trans-Atlantic slave trade led to migrations of Europeans (French, English, Italians and Germans), Asians (Chinese and Indians) and Arabs to the continent. Internal migration in Africa was largely due to internecine warfare, search for new land and livelihoods, and natural disasters. Historical migrations in the Indian Ocean region, with particular reference to Asian free and indentured labour , have largely been narrated from the vantage of male migrants. This male-centred perspective has mostly ignored womenâs voices and migration experiences. Of late there has been a concerted effort to capture these (Nagar 1998; Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2014; Hiralal 2014, 2016). This collection, particularly the chapters by Hiralal and Bouchoucha, engages with some of these challenges that surround this particular field of scholarship. Some of these include reappraising historiography and theoretical frameworks, the critique of colonial archives, a new criticism of the impact and rationale of colonialism, and deepening the criticism of womenâs experiences in the context of decision-making, household strategies, agency and identity, to name a few. Recently there have been publications by descendants of indentured and free South Asian migration that are seeking to explore their ârootsâ and lineage (Park 2008; Hiralal and Rawjee 2011; Bahadur 2014). For many it is a personal journey of identity challenges and lost family histories. In Coolie Woman (2014), Bahadur demonstrates that the story of indentured women is a lost history within a lost history. It has now become the responsibility of progeny and post-colonial scholars to decolonise colonial narratives of indenture. David Dabydeen, quoted in Bahadur, succinctly captures this trend:
The ancestors curl and dry to scrolls of parchmentThey lie like textsWaiting to be written by the childrenFor whom they hacked and ploughed and savedTo send to faraway schools (Coolie Odyssey, in Bahadur 2014: 17)
This new research adds to the existing scholarship on historical migrations of Italian, Finnish, Irish, Chinese and Dutch women immigrants to the Americas. It locates their narratives within the mainstream discourses on gender and global migrations. It also allows the problematisation of womenâs migrations in the context of race, gender, class, ethnicity and language, thereby highlighting the complexity and nuances of their migration experiences in different times, spaces and geographical settings. Whilst there is a significant body of research on historical migrations of European women to the Americas, there is still a huge gap of knowledge on South Asian women immigrants to Africa. Thus research on historical migrations to Africa (within the Indian Ocean region) and within Africa is not only essential but also compelling.
The second half of the nineteenth century saw a gradual increase of global female migration. Female migration increased steadily in Africa up from 43% in 1960 to 48% in 2000 (International Migration Report 2015). This phenomenon, also known as âthe feminisation of migrationâ, has generated debates by scholars and policy makers to make gender an important inclusive category of analysis. In recent years feminist scholars have sought to provide new approaches and theoretical frameworks to contemporary migrations which have challenged traditional theories that have sought to portray migrants through conventional economistic models responding to macro-level socio-economic changes (Palmary et al. 2010; Kihato 2004; Geiger 1990). Feminist studies over the past decade have shown ways in which gender intersects with race, class and identity to illuminate a wide range of womenâs experiences in the migration process. In Africa, African women are engaged in both national (urban-rural-circular migration) and international migration. Internal migration is most noticeable in student and independent female migration. In 2010, female migrants in South Africa constituted 42.7% of the total migrant stock, up from 37.3% in 1990 (International Migration Report 2015). Political instability in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria and Burundi, and high levels of unemployment and poverty across the continent, has led to many African women seeking sustainable livelihoods and political stability, particularly in South Africa. Recently there has also been a trend of young females migrating independently to fulfil educational needs and not necessarily to join a family member or a husband (Isike and Isike 2012). Student mobility thus provides scholars with new perspectives on gendered migrations in the context of agency and identity. For example, in 1994 there were 12,557 international students registered at South Africaâs 23 public universities; by 2006 it had increased to nearly 54,000 (MacGregor, University World News, 9 December 2007). Recent studies by Tsega (2010) and Jamie (2013) have documented the rise of Ethiopian women immigrants to Sudan. The above studies are significant because they highlight the need to interrogate the challenges and constraints African women immigrants face within the continent.
In the migration process issues of agency must be understood and explicated. Butler and Spivak (2007) have argued that the very conditions of migrants result in empowerment rather than acquiescence. âWe understand the jettisoned life, the life both expelled and contained, as saturated with power precisely at the moment in which it is deprived of citizenshipâ (Butler and Spivak 2007: 40). John Arthur, in his study African Women Immigrants in the United States: Crossing Transnational Borders (2009), berates the stereotype that African women are dependent and passive migrants, and depicts them as independent social actors.
Hiralal focuses on the historical aspects of migration engaging in a comparative study of South Asian immigrants (Indian and Chinese) to Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Male-centred migration is interrogated to highlight more complex factors that restricted womenâs decision to migrate. Ibtihel Bouchoucha and Fatima Ait Ben Lmadani provide perspectives from North Africa. Bouchoucha provides an interesting account of womenâs migration in Tunisia. This chapter highlights the multiple challenges women endure and how they negotiate between tradition and modernity. Lmadani locates her discussion in the complexity of intra-African migration, with particular reference to Senegalese women migrating to Morocco, a marginalised group in migration discourse. Tinashe Chimbidzikai, Pragna Rugunanan, Ria Smit, Marnie Shaffer and Sarah Matsha...