Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the Republic of Guinea's government cast labor migrants as anti-national traitors and the antithesis of an emerging construction of ideal socialist citizenship. In doing so, it points to migrants as key figures in debates surrounding belonging both abroad and at home.

Paper long abstract:

After gaining independence in 1958, the government of the Republic of Guinea put into place an ambitious plan to remake its national economy based upon the principles of self-sufficiency and the ideology of African Socialism. This paper explores how seasonal labor migrants became "troublesome" figures in the state construction of a socialist economy and national identity. Labor migration, most notably emanating in the mountainous Futa Jallon region of Guinea, had a deep history in pre-colonial and colonial Senegambia, stretching back to the region's increasing integration into the Atlantic economy in the early 19th century. After independence, however, the ruling party of Guinea, the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), cast these migrants as neo-colonial traitors to their nation, more interested in working for profit in the peanut fields of Senegal and docks in Dakar than laboring to build their home country. Through a series of border raids, arrests, and show trials, labor migrants became key figures against which the PDG constructed their vision of an ideal Guinean citizen. Using a combination of state media and internal security reports, this paper illuminates the unique case of the marginalization of migrants not in their host countries, but rather in their homes. In doing so, it demonstrates that migrants were interstitial figures in post-colonial West Africa, marginalized and home and abroad yet central to state and popular articulations of citizenship and belonging.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation sheds light on the expulsions and attacks of Dahomeyans in Côte d'Ivoire in 1958. Using associative archives from the Ivorian scout movement, I question the making of the contours of the new Nation-State.

Paper long abstract:

The recent conflicts in Côte d'Ivoire shed light on a historically rooted issue, that of autochthony. As underlined by Jean Pierre Dozon in 2000, we may trace this back from the 1930s, as Ivoirians natives were feeling pushed aside from power positions by the administrative colonial federal authority for the benefit of Senegalese and Dahomeyans. Two decades later, as the colony was reaching autonomy, attacks were launched against Dahomeyans working in Abidjan in 1958. It notably affected the nascent Ivoirian scouting movement, led by Christian Dahomeyans and Togolese.

This intervention will focus on the archives of this event. As State archives remains difficult to access in Côte d'Ivoire, apparently genuine archives may inform us about the violent making of a thoroughly delineated nation: that of a self-proclaimed benevolent, apolitical and peaceful organization, but also an imperial youth movement, i. e. the scouting movement of the Eclaireurs de France in Côte d'Ivoire.

This presentation will contrast interviews (conducted in Côte d'Ivoire in 2016), blacked out private archives from a former French Scout chief (collected in France) and administrative archives of the movement (collected both in France and Senegal). Following the archives "along the archival grain" (Stoler, 2009), I wish first to inquiry how the expulsions were dealt and acknowledged by the Ivoirian Scouts, as the movement was reasserting its identity as a federal and francophile movement. Secondly, I wish to question the way these West-African origins were recollected and reminisced (or, more precisely, obliviated) in the immediate aftermath, as the territorial autonomy was chosen in 1960.

Paper short abstract:

The paper propose critical view on the foreign assistance and involvement in planning in cote d'Ivoire and the Ivorian leadership perception of the time , 1960-1963.

Paper long abstract:

In 1960 Côte d'Ivoire gained its independence along with many African nations. Felix Houphouët-Boigny, was facing development challenges along with growing aspirations for political and economic independence. Two forces influenced decision making. On one hand the natural resources, human capital and local knowledge, on the other hand, aspirations of immediate development following modernization perception and the involvement of foreign states and international bodies. These forces were at times contradictory.

The invitation of Israeli planning experts in December 1962 to submit a proposal for the planning of Cote d'Ivoire was only one amongst many other examples of foreign assistance offered in early phases of state building. The invitation led to a delegation of experts and propelled in a published report. Except for new planning agendas for rural areas, the report emphasizes the need for the legislative framework as well as monitoring tenure land rights and land allocation.

The report enables a better understanding of the role of state actors (France and Israel) and non-state actors, private corporations like Brom (France) and Lilienthal (USA) as many others. The report draws new perspectives on early years of post-colonial Cote d'Ivoire (1960-1963) and reflects the actors' agenda, both public and private.

On the basis of new, as yet unpublished archival evidence (including both written documents and photographers) we will show the intention and motivation of Ivorian leadership and will offer a new look at the history of Côte d'Ivoire early years of state-building as reflected in seeking for independent planning.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the mechanisms of denunciation and expulsion of "foreigners" in Ghana under the Busia government. It interprets a debate on nationhood linking to various decisive social themes, such as religion, success in commerce, smuggling and access to professions, and redefines "strangers".

Paper long abstract:

This paper will shed light on issues of xenophobia and denunciation in the context of Ghana's Aliens Compliance Order and its aftermath, allowing for the expulsion of "illegal aliens" from Ghanaian territory. Looking at two different regions (the Central Region and the Volta Region), I will attempt to point out the mechanisms of denunciation (through an analysis of letters of denunciation, an abundant and unused source) and the reactions of local authorities.

The issues of denunciation involved a number of questions. They fed into a wider discourse of anti-Nigerian images crafted in the colonial period already, and directed against the (alleged) particular behaviour of "Lagosians" and of "Hausas". They were linked to conflict around attractive professional positions, especially in commerce, but also within some corporatist professions (e.g. butcher's shops). But in the case of the Volta Region, conflict with "foreigners" also touched the question of smuggling networks; the activity in smuggling aroused the jealousy of certain individuals, and led to anonymously accusing Togolese citizens residing on Ghanaian territory.

Finally, anti-Lebanese sentiment in its most ambiguous ways was also linked to these activities, and in some cases also anti-Muslim sentiment, whenever the Muslim inhabitants of zongos (trade quarters) in Ghana's southern cities were suspected to be "Nigerians" and (in frequent cases) arbitrarily arrested. All these elements had massive consequences and defined a debate about nationhood that was only cut short by the military takeover of Ignatius Acheampong in January 1972.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the history of Nigeria and Ghana's dueling expulsions of one another's nationals in the decades after independence. It traces the processes underlying state-driven expulsion, and it addresses the social historical question of what happened to those who were expelled.

Paper long abstract:

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Nigerian and Ghanaian governments staged large-scale forced removals of one another's nationals, culminating in the 1983 deportation of over one million Ghanaians under civilian president Shehu Shagari. Colloquially known as the "Ghana Must Go" policy, these episodes had major economic and political effects in both countries. This paper will explore the legal grounding of the expulsions, analyzing how the colonial-era jurisprudence of domicile and inter-colony migration shaped acts of individual and state-sponsored expulsion after independence. What grounds did municipalities, regions, or colonies have to expel 'strangers'? This was not a settled matter, and a patchwork of ideas about domicile emerged across Britain's West African dependencies. After independence, domicile remained a source of dispute, and it became more contentious as colonial administrative boundaries hardened into national citizenships. The main sources for the paper are legal records and commissions of inquiry preserved at the Nigerian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in Lagos. Legal records from this period provide two things. First, they reveal how postcolonial governments balanced the desire to integrate labor markets (sometimes under the banner of pan-Africanism) against populist demands to prevent citizens from other African states from settling in Nigeria. Second, they provide a view of the social history of the expulsion; court cases and government inquiries narrate how individuals justified acts of xenophobia, and how deportees responded to their forcible removal.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores matters of national planning and nation-building in the West African state of Liberia between 1960 and 1971, exploring themes of migration, urban housing and vagrancy laws. It will pay careful attention to internal and external political pressures.

Paper long abstract:

The 1960s ushered in a decade of austerity measures in the West African state of Liberia, and in parallel with that a greater preoccupation with matters of national planning, also stipulated by external bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This paper is concerned with how nation-building strategies, which had concretized at the end of World World II, were sharpening between roughly 1960 and 1971. In particular, it will examine government and popular discourses concerning housing and urbanization and economic growth to piece together who belonged to the nation and how. What were the attitudes toward rural-urban migration? What plans did the National Planning Council have for the swelling "shanty towns" in the capital of Monrovia and surrounding a growing number of foreign concessionaries? Amongst other things, the paper will compare the urgency that government authorities gave to welcoming rural migrant-families (apparently to stimulate industrialization) versus to the forced relocation of supposed vagrants back to their rural homes with the help of the police (apparently to promote agricultural productivity). It will further address some of the difficulties associated with researching these themes at the Center for National Documents and Records Agency (CNDRA) - the national archives of Liberia.