Paper short abstract:

This paper examines emic understandings and enactments of l'aventure (adventure) among West African labour migrants in urban Ghana to shed light on how temporalities of imagination intersect with migratory trajectories in conditions of socioeconomic precarity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper expands on the emic category of l'aventure (adventure) to examine how temporalities of imagination intersect with the life trajectories of a group of West African labour migrants in urban Ghana. Designating a perilous path of social becoming by way of individual outward movement, the migrants' enactments of l'aventure relate to an imaginary practice that casts uncertainty as a resource to be explored, endured and exploited for aspirational self-making. Driven by expectations about possible future outcomes of their journeys, these imaginaries, far from being idealised fantasies, are drawn on as a measure for evaluating present experiences, actions and hardships. Folding together the actual and possible of migratory mobility in conditions of socioeconomic precarity, the imaginative affordances of l'aventure shape feelings of frustration with a perceived lack of personal progress, and they support the moral capacity to persevere in spite of economic predicaments, often for many years on end. The focus on the temporal horizons opened up through imaginative practice, I suggest, highlights the importance of moral positions and affective dispositions for understanding negotiations of migratory success and failure. Conversely, attention to how migrants position themselves at the juncture of imagined futures and strictures of the present offers a nuanced reflection on the anthropological implications of the link between experience, imagination and time.