Reconfiguring migration: an introduction

Mobility patterns in Africa are changing. They never were fixed, but they have been embedded for centuries in the policy regimes regulating local, regional and global economies. However, currently, the intersection of global politics of securitization and African everyday politics governed by inequality, disenchantment, survival and aspiration has accelerated changes. This themed section is concerned with the social effects of these changes as Africans struggle to attain their goals, whether they are migrants or not.

Contemporary figures of success mesh not only with the desire for elsewhere but also with deferral and obstacles requiring creativity and resources, and with the experience of disappointment. An analysis of the emotive and moral dimensions of migratory pathways is therefore of paramount importance. It is clear from the transformations in African mobilities that both migratory practices and regimes of mobility are awash with feelings ranging from fear to moral commitment. Among migrants, the fear of being symbolically stuck and hindered in using physical mobility as a springboard for upward social mobility is common (Hage and Papadopoulos 2004: 112), as is the sense of moral commitment to ensure a better future, whether this is inscribed in a narrow set of intergenerational relationships or in the broader social dynamics of patron–client relations in contemporary Africa (Cole 2011). In countries where migrants live for shorter or longer periods of time, the whole spectrum of attitudes towards them, whether antagonistic or not, has come to rest on their division into categories of legitimate residents and irregular migrants. In some segments of the local population, fear and animosity govern this division; in others, it is driven by humanitarianism and a sense of moral commitment to people in need (Watters 2007; Willen 2015). These divergent feelings compel us to look at moral economies on different scales, broadly understood as 'the economy of moral values and norms of a given group in a given time' (Fassin 2005: 365), and the ways in which they intersect. They underscore the plurality of moral economies at each level, reflecting the vernacular discursive frames surrounding local debates and practices (Willen 2015: 71–2). It is thus important to unpack the theoretical underpinnings of moral economies at the intersection of global and national scales, and at the micro-scale of family relations.

The intersection of several regimes of mobility accentuates the discursive frames at the macro-level and demonstrates how political and humanitarian concerns are gradually obscured. Didier Fassin has pointed out that the contemporary regime of mobility in Europe involves a restructuring of humanitarian principles towards the conferring of legitimacy on the suffering body while rejecting any safeguarding of the threatened body (Fassin 2005: 371). Although his argument refers to asylum seekers and the fact that their ability to obtain protection is increasingly guided by a display of sympathy rather than by the moral obligation to protect human rights, it is of relevance for all migrants. Indeed, sympathy comes in measured quantities and is ever more medicalized. Intangible ways of suffering – such as experiencing aggravated poverty, lack of security and protection, and lack of opportunity during and after conflict, or even without conflict – rarely bring about sympathy but rather a belief that many asylum seekers are economic migrants trying to cheat their way into Europe (Watters 2007: 413). As a result, it has become more difficult for asylum seekers to be recognized as deserving protection. Migrants who are perceived to be 'economic' migrants are increasingly considered to be criminals and therefore undeserving subjects.

This distinction between deserving and undeserving subjects is an interesting one and it merits scrutiny according to a moral economy perspective. A first step is to revisit E. P. Thompson's analysis of the poor during the spontaneous riots over food prices in eighteenth-century Britain. Thompson concluded that, because of a shared set of societal values sketching out what was considered legitimate and illegitimate behaviour, the poor were able to influence the price setting of food through the occasional riot for a considerable time. Thus, they were able to safeguard access to affordable food as long as their actions against food sellers who transgressed the norms of fair trade were...