African Migrations: Patterns and Perspectives

2. Migration as Coping with Risk and State Barriers: Malian Migrants’ Conception of Being Far from Home

2MIGRATION AS COPING WITH RISK AND STATE BARRIERS MALIAN MIGRANTS’ CONCEPTION OF BEING FAR FROM HOME ISAIE DOUGNON TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY HELENE GAGLIARDI Death, starvation, overexploitation, poverty, life sans papier, states’ barriers (arrests and imprisonment), unemployment—just to name a few—are the words most used to redefine migration in order to discourage young Malians from undertaking dangerous trips to Europe or large African cities . What, however, is the real impact of this communication strategy, even coupled with setting up the legal and physical barriers? In fact, we see that in spite of discursive campaigns against migration and smallscale rural development projects to create job opportunities, youth migration from rural and urban Mali is intensifying and the destinations are more diverse. This chapter tries to demonstrate that the policymakers’ discourse on the danger of migration is, in fact, at the core of Malian conceptions of traveling outside their community. In most West African societies , “migration” means a pilgrimage into the wilderness. How, given this grassroots’ understanding of migration, will state policies be able to stop rural and urban movement toward African and European cities? Before the colonial period, many African societies were characterized by a sharply bounded community with members living amid the environment that constituted the integral part of humans’ lived world. Any movement of individuals outside this community and environment was understood in terms of a threat or danger to their lives. This ancestral conception of traveling has been extended by the challenges of colonial and postcolonial Africa with various frontiers and border checkpoints. The most important aspect of this conception is that the returning migrant is celebrated as hero. A return to the home village means that s/he has coped with the wilderness and been victorious. The newly acquired qualities of Isaie Dougnon 36 this person, based on what s/he has learned or obtained outside, may form a cluster of values that contribute to the migrant’s overall identity. Using the definition of “migration” in several Malian national languages, I discuss the meaning of migration and migrants’ discourse about crossing borders in the colonial and postcolonial periods, as well as illustrate how current migrants’ strategies to overcome all types of barriers—even at the risk of their lives—is rooted in their very definition of migration to seek paid work or to discover the outside world. MIGRATION IN A LOCAL SENSE The one who rises sees something. The one who leaves takes and brings back something. The one who stays will get trampled. —ARAB PROVERB It is, in our days, easy to discern—through television, newspaper, or radio —the risks that characterize the lives of young African migrants. It is certainly more difficult to establish analytical categories relevant to the understanding of the essential signification of “to leave” and “to be” far from the natal village in different African societies.1 Indeed, for at least a decade, we note that the reflection concerning African migrations is limited to flourishing literature on rural and urban poverty, as well as images of drowned migrants in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The media shows dead migrants on airport runways or devoured by lions at the Mozambique –South African border. Even more captivating are the images of migrants who desperately attempt to surmount the barbed-wired walls of Ceuta and Mellina. Certain NGOs and frontier security agencies identify, on behalf of their governments, the nationalities of migrants, the route they take, their countries of transit and final destination, as well as their strategy.2 We witness in parts of West Africa (Mali, Senegal, and Guinea) a growth of co-development programs and/or of strategies of communication that work to dissuade young Africans from leaving for Europe or big African cities. These programs are often financed by developed countries, supplementing the efforts of the local national governments. Various NGOs and local leaders have organized sensitization campaigns in African villages to awaken in the heart of the youth a certain consciousness that migration is a dangerous and risky enterprise (e.g., they are exposed to horrible images of hundreds of drowned bodies in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic). We therefore witness a multitude of terms that arise in scholarly or press articles, seeking to characterize the tragedy of African migration. The most frequently used terms are “clandestine,” “expulsed,” “sans papier,” “damned of the sea,” and “kamikazees.” Despite speeches 37 Migration as Coping with Risk and State Barriers...