Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Michelle Engeler
(University of Basel)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- NB003
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel links processes of class production and reproduction to modes of identity formation in diverse transnational spaces. It invites contributions that discuss people's mobile life trajectories and their class belongings between the poles of metropolis and village in Africa and beyond.
Long Abstract:
In recent debates within African Studies (middle) class relations have gained a lot of attention. This panel links the topic to transnational processes of class formation and identity making in different localities. Thus, key questions concern the entanglements of class belonging(s) to varying transnational and translocal spaces. We want to ask if and in how far class is travelling and transforming between different spaces, e.g. the rural and the urban. Papers based on in-depth case studies might refer to people commuting between metropolis and rural settings in various African contexts and beyond. Examples could include mobile academics and professionals, traders or labor migrants. Contributions offering theoretical insights may reflect on the visibility of the transnational reproduction of class and identity, for instance by thinking of festivities or built environments both in urban and rural contexts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Girls as young as twelve years old from Iramba district in Tanzania are often misled by people to urban centres (mainly to Dar es Salaam and Mwanza) with false promises of employment and other attractive incentives (Kamala et al., 2001; Swantz, 2007)
Paper long abstract:
Girls as young as twelve years old from Iramba district in Tanzania are often misled by people to urban centres (mainly to Dar es Salaam and Mwanza) with false promises of employment and other attractive incentives (Kamala et al., 2001; Swantz, 2007). In urban centres, these girls are commonly employed as domestic servants, but also as barmaids, sometimes by force (Mbonile, 1996). Both domestic servants and barmaids, fleeing abusive employers, fall prey to prostitution. As prostitutes, they work without protection and become vulnerable to violence and sexually transmitted diseases - particularly AIDS that has become one of the leading causes of death in Tanzania (Msisha et al., 2008). This study adopts an approach that allows the lived experiences of these girls to be accounted and interpreted so as to contribute to the understanding and knowledge about their live in the urban centres. Such an approach, first of all, takes a keen interest on these girls as actors of their own lives and as members of their families and communities. Secondly, the approach intends to provide the cathartic benefits that occurs when a person experience comfort, validation, empowerment and a unique opportunity to confide her personal experiences in someone knowledgeable, interested and caring, alongside the opportunity to work through and express emotions (Dickson-Swift et al., 2006). The assumption is that when these girls participate in telling and retelling their stories, an entirely different set of social dynamics and cognitive processes would take place which, in return, would have effects on their lives.
Paper short abstract:
This paper takes a closer look at the life trajectories and shifting identities between rural and urban worlds of protesting young people who were studying in the 1970s in Bamako.
Paper long abstract:
In the years following independence, all positions in the Malian administration had to be occupied by locally trained staff. To achieve that goal, the most gifted pupils of the rural settings were sent to the "Grandes Ecoles" in Bamako to pursue their education. For them, their professional career coupled with social recognition and economic comfort seemed to be secured as all university graduates at that time were obliged to sign a ten year contract to ensure their working power for the state administration. However, many of them then were involved in student protests, which were violently defeated by the ruling military junta. As a consequence, most of the protesting students were relocated to rural areas for disciplinary reasons or even had to escape into exile. Thus, their once promising and taken-for-granted futures in the urban space of Bamako all of a sudden broke up and they were confronted with profound uncertainty.
This paper takes a closer look at the shifting identities between rural and urban life-worlds of protesting young people, who were studying in the 1970s in Bamako. In their narratives, the former students portray themselves as a very special academic generation, who had the chance to get a high-quality education, but were not able to enforce their ideals about social justice.
Paper short abstract:
Expats are often described as a distinct group of privileged foreigners living comfortably in “golden ghettos”. This paper discusses how expats negotiate and at times downplay (economic) differences among themselves in order to convey a sense of “sameness” against the local society (in Kampala).
Paper long abstract:
Drawing from my PhD research on expat migration to Kampala, Uganda I will discuss social mobility and class-diversity among this group of privileged migrants. Economic and cultural diversity among expats is often downplayed in favor of emphasizing "sameness" by disassociation from the local society; a phenomenon that has been described as "expat bubbles" or "golden ghettos".
Finding "like-minded" people with similar experiences and needs as quickly as possible is one of the important themes in the interviews I conducted. Thus, various expat groups and "personal brokers" offer possibilities for a seamless arrival to Kampala and to make friends right away. One prerequisite for a successful stay abroad was said to be the willingness to quickly meet and engage with other expats; equally offered and demanded among expats.
Certain types of diversity (e.g. national diversity) are celebrated in order to understate economic inequality and class differences and constitute expats as a distinct group of people. But the predicate of sameness becomes porous when people do not easily find access to expat groups (such as men who accompanied their wives on an expat assignment cannot join "women's groups", people who are self-deployed without a financially lucrative "expat package" or who were not willing to integrate by refusing invitations). Though expats are privileged migrants on a global scale, they are by no means a homogenous group. Thus, my paper discusses upward as well as downward social mobility of expats in order shed light into the often too homogenously described "expat bubble".
Paper short abstract:
The decision to send children to Nigeria from Britain serves as an act of social positioning and a key feature of the aspirational strategies of a British Nigerian middle class, in which the middle classes are shrinking in Britain and perceived to be growing in parts of Africa.
Paper long abstract:
West Africans have a long history of investing in their children's education by sending them to Britain. Yet, some young British-Nigerians, are being sent to Nigeria for secondary education, going against a long historical grain. The movement of children from London to Nigeria is about the making of good subjects who behave in such a manner as to ensure educational success and (re)produce middle class subjectivities within a context of increasing economic precarity. This movement must be understood within the context of neoliberal globalisation and the emergence of a 'new geography of centrality' in which a matrix of global cities transcends North-South and East-West divides. Further, the continued salience of the Africa rising narrative has encouraged the descendants of Nigerian migrants to the West to return to live in Lagos as repatriates. It is within this context that many first and second-generation Nigerian migrants to Britain are sending their children to be educated in Nigeria. The decision to send children to Nigeria serves as an act of social positioning and a key feature of the aspirational strategies of a British Nigerian middle class, in which the middle classes are shrinking in Britain and perceived to be growing in parts of Africa. Paradoxically, within the context of neoliberal globalisation, British Nigerians now benefit from an elite Nigerian education, the networks this experience gives rise to, and, potentially, the economic power of the Nigerian state, formerly characterised within the Western imaginary as a 'disenchanted space'.
Paper short abstract:
This paper asks for the motives of the middle class to support distant relatives. Reasons include the increase of social capital and involvement in decision-making.
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation, I will tackle the question for what motives rich relatives engage in supporting geographically distant youngsters. Many of my Kenyan middle class informants received financial support from relatives for studies or other projects. A certain 'development mindedness' (Geißler and Prince, 2010) can be inferred, however, motives are not altogether altruistic. I argue that support of distant relatives does not only show one still cares, but guarantees being involved in crucial family matters. Pamich, for instance, makes sure that others within his kinship network know he is supporting relatives by covering their school fees. By that he publicly demonstrates his generosity and financial capability. Moreover, it increases the social capital of a donor and mentor and, if successful, leads to the reproduction of class, so his plan. Following this model and becoming a donor was even mentioned as career aim of ambitious middle class youngsters.