Paper short abstract:

Depuis des siècles Al Azhar accueille les étudiants qui traversent l'Afrique pour venir au Caire. Si les routes du savoir existent toujours, les projets des étudiants évoluent. Nous nous intéresserons aux registres imaginaires convoqués par ces étudiants face à ces nouvelles situations migratoires.

Paper long abstract:

Dans un contexte géopolitique de fermeture des frontières au Nord comme au Sud incitant les migrants à multiplier et prolonger leurs étapes dans les pays du monde arabe et à redéfinir leurs projets migratoires, de nouveaux acteurs émergent, comme les acteurs religieux qui accompagnent ces mouvements. Si nous observons une intensification et une réorientation des migrations africaines, nous avons également remarqué que les organisations religieuses ou d'origine confessionnelle se renforcent, voire trouvent un second souffle en se positionnant elles-aussi sur ces mêmes routes. D'autres encore, comme les universités islamiques, sur les chemins du savoir depuis des siècles, continuent d'accueillir les étudiants africains. Dans la migration, les déplacements et les passages de frontières ne sont pas seulement liés la migration économique mais aussi à des projets personnels, des désirs de rencontre, des parcours religieux… Articulés à des mondes imaginés, les déplacements dans l'espace sont aussi des franchissements de démarcations culturelles qu'il convient d'explorer encore davantage (Anderson, 1983). Notre communication s'attachera à une communauté de circonstance, les étudiants Azharis, étudiants à l'université Al Azhar au Caire . L'université Al Azhar accueille depuis des siècles des étudiants africains, mais depuis une vingtaine d'année les projets de ces étudiants ont changé et certains s'installent de plus en plus longtemps au Caire. Nous nous attacherons à comprendre leurs parcours migratoires mais aussi à interroger les imaginaires développés en migration. Quels sont les registres imaginaires convoqués par les migrants africains de l'Université Al Azhar au Caire ?

Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with young migrants from Burkina Faso and Senegal having pursued higher education programs in countries of the Middle East.It highlights their strategies to to capitalize on their religious expertise and find employment and social recognition in the local labor market.

Paper long abstract:

Due to a combination of structural adjustment policies, the crisis of African universities and the hardening of western migratory policies, the Islamic universities set up in the Arab world have attracted a large number of West-African students expecting social advancement upon return. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork among young migrants from Burkina Faso and Senegal having pursued higher education programs in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. It describes the longer term strategies of both postgraduate students who returned home after finishing their theological studies and those who remain in the country where they studied. It highlights the obstacles encountered by the first generations of Arabic-speaking African students to capitalize their religious expertise and to find a lucrative job in the local labor market and a social recognition. It emphasizes the opportunities for the following generations to turn into entrepreneurs in transnational trade.

Paper short abstract:

This paper traces connections between religion and mobility in Africa. It highlights how pilgrimage emerges as a strategy for cross-border movements, to satisfy dreams, urges to travel and explore remote spaces

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores connections between religion and cross-border movements in African settings. In the Dogon village of Songho, Mali, multiple social implications unfold from the experience of pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). The individual trajectories reveal connections between pilgrimage, adventure and migration. This paper is based on an ethnographic study in Songho, where Islam has been adopted as the only authorized religion since the 1930s. The narratives of hajj shed light on the connection between religion, mobility, pilgrimage and changing social relations within the community (age groups' power relations, social change, desires, imaginaries, dreams and intergenerational conflicts). Men and women from this community have been crossing different countries "on foot", from town to town in order to accomplish their duty of hajj, which in some cases took longer than a decade. Diseases, marriages, divorces and emerging jobs became part of the pilgrims' experience. Pilgrimage illustrates the society's extraversion, which is evident in recent local strategies of development such as promoting Songho as a tourist destination, the society's openness to learning, especially in relation to Islam as well as the growing seasonal migration.

Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to engage in the policy discourse of the contexts that should shape the design and implementation of a continental, pan-African framework on free movement of persons.

Paper long abstract:

A fundamental corollary of deeper regional integration is the ability of citizens to move freely across national boundaries. The extent to which national elites have managed to relax, or completely eliminate, rigid visa and border requirements, speak to the commitment and seriousness of creating an effective transnational community. This realisation has shaped, and continues to shape, regional integration efforts across the globe. In the African context, while some Regional Economic Communities (RECs) such as ECOWAS, EAC and SADC allow some form of free movement of persons, there is no definitive continental framework. At the core of this paper is an attempt to engage in a policy discourse of the possibility of such framework. The African Union's (AU) role to coordinate, monitor and evaluate policies of the RECs is central to achieving this objective. This paper will dissect the policy contexts that should shape the design and implementation of a continental framework on free movement of persons.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I illustrate how the government can influence its diaspora across boarders regarding 'belonging' and how this shapes the sense of identification of the diaspora with its home country. This is shown on the case of Eritrea.

Paper long abstract:

Eritrea constitutes a special case of how governmental bodies act transnationally and affect their diaspora due to particularly strong state-diaspora relations - different scholars even call it 'enforced transnationalism'. This example shows that 'the state' must not be neglected in transnationalism research. First, this paper demonstrates the important role of the state within the transnationalism debate based on the Eritrean example. By adding the state dimension, I aim to illustrate the diaspora and the state as interdepend players in a transnational space. The way these interactions take place is a focus of this study. Second, this paper contains deliberations on transnational citizenship.

Bringing the two subjects together will show how the state shapes sense of identity and belonging as well as the debate on citizenship abroad. The overarching goal of this paper is to show how the Eritrean state affects exile Eritreans' identity and the identification with - respectively the notion of - their home country.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on transnational mobility between Europe and Western Africa, with particular focus on Moroccan men, who arrived in Spain as irregular migrants in the 1990s and on the new European nomads ("housetruckers") who engage in a mobile life between Europe, Morocco and other parts of Western Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The global economic recession beginning in 2008, together with increasingly restrictive migration and border policy in the EU, have had far-reaching consequences to the patterns and the cultural logic of transnational mobility Between Europe and Western Africa. It has become increasingly difficult to conseptualise some of these the newly emergent mobile lifestyles in the conventional analytic terminology of migration and mobility studies. Our aim is to demonstrate this by offering ethnographic insights into the transnational movement of popular class (sha´bi) Moroccan men, who arrived in Spain as irregular migrants in the 1990s, and new European nomads who engage in a mobile life between Europe, Morocco and other parts of Western Africa. The subjects described in this paper create distinctively fleeting trans- and multi-national attachements that are played out during "temporary rests". Both the Moroccans with EU passports and the Westerners engage in a shared lifestyle on the road and exchange experience, information and solidarity. These mobile lifestyles arise out of global modernity which promotes, enables and generates an escape to an alternative modus vivendi and experimentation with new communal relations.

Paper short abstract:

We intend here to present and analyze individual trajectories of capeverdean migration, particularly between 1950-1970, and propose a rereading of this migratory experience made (2003-2004) by these migrants and their descendants

Paper long abstract:

In the analysis of Cape Verdean migration towards the African continent, studies in social sciences are still scarce. In most proposed studies, researchers who have studied these migrations, worked with an idea of massive forced and homogeneous migration, using the concept of space linked to a territorial base. Individual trajectories of migration will be analyze, particularly between 1950-1970. During the communication, I'll problematize the meanings that the Cape Verdean immigrants give to the places and concept of space and tima on the island of Sao Tome.

Besides a brief presentation toponômica, I'll develop the issue of division of the spaces on the island, as they were limited by the colonial system, and work with the notion of dynamic space, trying to overcome his more classic acceptance and taking into consideration the aspects of flexibility , fluidity, perception of cape verdean and their sense of belonging or not to these spaces. Finally, we show how immigrants have appropriated different notions of time-creating spaces and time references and perception of the place of destination to live a common migration experience.