African Migrations: Patterns and Perspectives

Introduction: African Patterns of Migration in a Global Era: New Perspectives

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, So- Introduction 2 malia, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, and Côte 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 Côte 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 Côte 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 migration brought West African diamond traders to Central Africa (Bredeloup 2007). Meanwhile, South Africa had long attracted labor migrants, but the end of the apartheid system made the country a desirable destination for longdistance intra-African migrants from outside the region, including West and East Africans. From the 1950s through the 1980s, migration to Europe followed the historical connections between colonial powers and their former colonies. Francophone Africans largely migrated to France and Belgium while the Anglophones headed to Britain. However, with the tightening of immi- 3 Introduction gration laws in France and Britain at the end of the...