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- Convenor:
-
Jesper Bjarnesen
(The Nordic Africa Institute)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Marie Deridder
(UCLouvain)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Location:
- Facultat de Geografia i Història 402
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 24 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
By looking beyond prevailing narratives approaching displacement exclusively as a factor of vulnerability and victimization, this panel empirically explores how long-standing labor mobility dynamics in Africa both endure and are refashioned by the escalation of multiple crises.
Long Abstract:
Over the past decade, the Sahel region and several other African countries have faced a rapidly deteriorating security situation accompanied by democratic backsliding and military take-overs in the wake of mounting jihadist and/or armed insurgencies, leading to massive population displacements. As a result, these populations are facing multiple and overlapping crises. This panel explores the human consequences of the escalation of insecurity and violence, with particular attention to the diverse roles of human mobility as both a source of vulnerability and a mitigating strategy in times of crisis.
Mobility in times of crisis is often understood in binary terms of forced versus voluntary migration, which entails that other effects and dynamics of mobility are overlooked. This panel invites contributions that examine empirically how long-standing labor mobility dynamics both endure and are refashioned by the escalation of multiple crises. By looking beyond prevailing narratives approaching displacement exclusively as a factor of vulnerability and victimization, the aim is to explore how people on the move navigate uncertainty and develop strategies to cope with radical socio-political changes. Here are some of the questions that could be addressed. How people on the move plan, actualize and practice internal and transnational labor mobilities in times of crisis? What are their labor mobility-related hopes, aspirations, constraints and disillusions? What kind of (geo)political narrative do they mobilize to decrypt their contexts of labor mobility? What are the inequalities and power relations embedded in labor migration through an intersectional lens?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 24 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
This article empirically explores how Dogon guides, previously involved in Mali’s tourism industry before the crisis, have navigated through radical sociopolitical change and economic scarcity by using their tourism networks for their own mobility to cope with violence and uncertainty.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past decade, Mali has faced a complex crisis, resulting in large-scale population displacement and socio-political instability. However, before this turmoil, Mali enjoyed an international reputation for its tourism industry. Timbuktu, in northern Mali, and the Pays Dogon, in central Mali, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and were famous for e.g. their hiking, music, masks and art festivals, attracting tourists from all over the world. In the 2000s, thousands of tourists came every year, contributing to a significant financial windfall for the Malian tourism industry. Today, these historic areas are affected by conflict and insecurity, which are widely reported in the international media. Tourism has stopped, forcing Dogon guides and tourism actors to find new professional horizons. This paper empirically explores how Dogon guides previously involved in the tourism industry have navigated through this radical socio-political change and economic scarcity. It shows that many of them used their tourism networks in Mali and abroad for their own mobility to escape conflicts and cope with violence and uncertainty. While keeping their identity as Dogon guides, they also rely heavily on their livelihood strategy of pluriactivity linked to their former seasonal tourism activity. This paper highlights these types of ‘forced’ mobility often overshadowed by the humanitarian focus on internally displaced population.
Paper short abstract:
One of the most striking features of contemporary migration to Europe and elsewhere is the almost complete anonymity of its protagonists. This paper attempts to counter these tendencies by focusing on an individual narrative of migration between West Africa and Europe, dating back to the late 1980s.
Paper long abstract:
One of the most striking features of contemporary migration to Europe and elsewhere is the almost complete anonymity of its protagonists. The most immediate effect of this anonymity has been the emergence of the figure of the ‘migrant’ in public consciousness with little attention for national and personal backgrounds. A related effect of this anonymization of migration has been that, without personal identity, the individuals concerned also seem to have no history, leading to a rather de-historicized view of migration in the public debate. This paper attempts to counter these tendencies by focusing on an individual narrative of migration between West Africa and Europe, dating back to the late 1980s. On a more theoretical plane, by reflecting on an individual account this paper article reflects on the question of voice as one of the most central problems of ethnographic representation, both in migration studies and more generally.
Keywords: Anthropology, migration, dialogue, voice, listening.
Paper short abstract:
The long history of small-scale rural to rural displacements in the greater post-slavery Sahel region, will be analysed to demonstrate how different temporalities and spatial opportunities refashion the narrative of displacement as a self-chosen versus forced reality.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on a long history of small-scale rural to rural displacements in West Mali, reflecting similar dynamics in the greater Sahel region, namely displacements motivated by conflicting narratives about the legacies of (descent-based) slavery. In the post-slavery era of the 21st century, self- chosen displacements came about when (formerly) enslaved individuals and/or their families used post-abolition opportunities to carve out and establish their own constituencies, by ‘marooning’ and ‘emplacing’ themselves anew.
Currently, diasporic activism about the legacies of descent-based slavery, has sparked new forms of displacement and emplacement. When post-slavery conflicts over labour, land or marriage alliances get polarised, there is a long history of moving out of the villages in which social status limits the potential for social mobility. Such displacements usually reconfigure new forms of independence in terms of labour and property, that tend to be more difficult to refashion ‘back home’. While such refashioning does not always work out in terms of economic gains, socially speaking, the narratives of some tend to combine ideas of self-realisation and emplacement on places of arrival, notwithstanding strong elements of forced social exclusion in places of departure. Based on (a documentary movie consisting of) interviews with diaspora-based activists and those displaced due to their activism in Western Mali, the paper will demonstrate how different temporalities and spatial opportunities impact on the refashioning of the narrative of displacement as a self-chosen versus externally enforced reality and the different layers alongside this continuum.