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Paper short abstract:

We asked three thousand young West Africans about their most important dream in life. The answers are analysed with innovative methods alongside ethnographic data and provide a unique opportunity for placing migration within a broader spectre of imagined futures.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore the conceptual, methodological, and ethnographic potency of ‘dreams’ in the study of imagined futures and migration aspirations. The analysis is based on mixed-methods research with young adults in Tema (Ghana), Serekunda (The Gambia) and São Vicente (Cape Verde). In an early phase of the research, we were struck by how easily our Ghanaian interlocutors could talk about their dreams in life. Their accounts, and the conversations that followed, provided important context for understanding migration aspirations. Alongside continued ethnographic fieldwork, we therefore included the open question ‘What is your most important dream in life?’ in the project survey. Enumerators recorded the verbatim answers, and we developed a sensitive and multi-dimensional approach to analysing the 3000 responses. By taking a step back from a predetermined focus on migration, we are able to provide new understandings of whether and how migration features in the dreams of young West Africans. While ‘dreams’ of migration appear in titles of academic publications, and in informant quotations, they are rarely integrated in conceptual and methodological approaches. We argue that taking dreams seriously allows for more locally rooted and equitable knowledge production about migration. As an evocative and emotive concept, dreams can also enrich discussions about curtailed aspirations and the lived experience of liminality. The paper is based on the project Future Migration as Present Fact (FUMI), funded by the European Research Council (ERC).