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- Convenors:
-
Nauja Kleist
(Danish Institute for International Studies)
Dorte Thorsen (Institute of Development Studies)
Ida Marie Savio Vammen (Danish Institute for International Studies)
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- Discussant:
-
Mattia Fumanti
(University of St Andrews)
- Track:
- Movement, Mobility, and Migration
- Location:
- Schuster Lab Bragg
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 August, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how mobilities and immobilities (re-)shape notions of hope, opportunity, risk and failure in a cross-cultural perspective, examining hope as a social category distributed unequally locally and globally as well as individual aspirations and practices for mobility and a better life
Long Abstract:
Mobility and immobility are central aspects of social and cultural hierarchies of contemporary life. People all over the world are exposed to widening sets of meaning of the good life as they experience other places through traveling, social networks, and media representations. Realizing these meanings is often related to the hope of mobility and a life elsewhere. Yet, an increasing number of people are excluded from the global circuits of legal mobility, being disconnected from the desired promises of globalization.
This panel explores new geographies of hope and despair, analyzing how mobilities or immobilities (re-)shape notions of hope, opportunity, risk and failure in a cross-cultural perspective. It takes departure in an understanding of hope a as a social category that can be distributed unequally locally and globally - for instance through migration regimes that shape access to mobility and livelihoods. It will also explore how hope is manifested in individual aspirations and practices for mobility and a better life and in the social utopias in religious institutions or grassroots movements. Papers will address ethnographic findings and theoretical reflections, such as: Who produces what visions of hope for whom? Who is included and excluded? How do people perceive and renegotiate these visions? To what degree do they relate to mobility, confinement, and social change? And what are the opportunities and limits of using a framework of hope and despair when theorizing mobility and immobility?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -Paper short abstract:
Expressions like “chercher la route” and “chercher la vie” have been used by several generations of African migrants. This paper explores whether this uniformity of expressing the desire to live differently helps migrants overcome the enormous difference between the life they dream of and the one they live.
Paper long abstract:
Among African migrants the word "adventure" is not just a generic expression of their aspirations for the future nor is "the adventurer" an analytical category invented by researchers to group migrants who overcome various risks and dangers to transgress the various barriers and borders which have been put in place to stem the flow of migrants. The notion of adventure, of being an adventurer, is an emic label that expresses a deeply felt desire to live in another way than is possible where the migrants come from or where they are. "Adventure" thus signifies migrants' aspirations to try different ways of living that involve fewer constraints, are more intense and more dignified. Among African migrants interviewed in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Libya and China, expressions like "chercher la route" and "chercher la vie" are common and have been used by several generations of migrants despite being a heterogeneous group and originating from different places and classes. This paper explores whether this uniformity of expressing the desire to live differently helps migrants overcome the enormous difference between the life they dream of and the one they live. This raises the question of whether migrants embrace the idea of migration being an adventure to downplay dangers, re-enact their journey and make sense of their experiences at a time when migration policies have been hardened across the globe and have created a militarisation of borders.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes changing discourses about the value of mobility, the elsewhere and the figure of the migrant in contemporary Senegal. It pays particular attention to the dynamic nature of the notions of hope and opportunity with respect to migration and as they are assigned to particular destinations.
Paper long abstract:
Mobility, in a variety of forms, affects the lives of numerous individuals and families in contemporary Senegal. In recent decades, many Senegalese youth, disenchanted with the possibilities for socioeconomic advancement at home, have sought opportunities abroad. Particular destinations have become repositories of hope for those convinced that migration provided the surest path to success. In this paper, I examine the possible repercussions of changing financial conditions in the global arena on Senegalese discourses about the desirability of international migration, the relative allocation of hope to particular geographic locations, and ideas about the figure of the international migrant. The analysis is based on empirical material collected through ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Senegalese migrants and non-migrants in Senegal and Spain. Spain has been a popular destination among Senegalese migrants and its economy has importantly suffered the impact of the global financial crisis. With the analysis presented in this paper I seek to contribute, beyond the Senegalese case, to a broader exploration of the dynamism of perceptions related to the hope and desirability attributed to different forms of mobility and destinations. The paper provides an empirically-grounded discussion on how the changing contextual conditions of migration are experienced and transmitted through the flow of information, material wealth, and people between sending and receiving countries. It highlights how those flows contribute to reshaping, among migrants and non-migrants, images of the elsewhere, ideas about where it is worth investing hopes and seeking opportunities, and the social status associated with international migration.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines notions of hope, achievement and loss in relation to Ghanaian migration. It explores the local category of 'borgas' - characterising successful international migrants - vis-à-vis deportees, aiming to to analyse the tension between their societal and individual hopes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines notions of hope, achievement and loss in relation to Ghanaian migration, exploring the local category of 'borgas' -´successful migrants from Western and North African countries - vis-à-vis deportees. It analyses the tension between societal and individual hopes of deportees and prospective migrants, asking the following questions: What visions of hope are distributed to deportees in Ghana? And how do deportees and their local communities perceive and renegotiate visions of hope, achievement and loss?
The paper argues that the position and status of 'borgas' is ambivalent. On the one hand, 'borgas' are widely admired for their material wealth, Western lifestyle, and ability to care well for their family members. Furthermore being a 'borga' can be a way of surpassing and transforming social hierarchies and a fast mode of becoming a 'big man'. These aspects of the 'borga' position inspire notions of hope and achievement among young people in relation to unauthorized migration to Europe or Libya.
On the other hand, the 'borga' position is becoming less prestigious as opportunities for wealth are growing in Ghana and as unauthorized migration is condemned by local and national authorities and elites who promote education and regular migration as the morally correct mode of achievement. Likewise, when migration projects of migrants do not succeed and they are deported, they risk becoming 'borga lose' - 'failed migrants' and the antithesis of success. There is thus a struggle between different scenarios of the good life, hope and aspirations of success and status.
Paper short abstract:
Through the concepts of hope and displacement, this paper reflects on how Ivorian zouglou music is consumed and marketed by a group of second generation return migrants as an important identity-marker that draws a boundary between the diaspos and their neighbours, through a counter-exclusion to the name-calling and social marginalisation they face in the city.
Paper long abstract:
The past decade's armed conflict in Côte d'Ivoire has been based on a nationalist rhetoric of autochthony and belonging that stigmatises "Burkinabe strangers" as scapegoats for the country's protracted socio-economic hardships. However, the forced "return" to Burkina Faso of first and second generation immigrants was experienced as an ambiguous movement from one state of exclusion to another. Labelled as "diaspos" and "ivoiriens", their forced displacement from Côte d'Ivoire entailed a social displacement to the margins of social life in the city in Burkina Faso.
Through the concepts of hope and displacement, this paper reflects on how Ivorian zouglou music is consumed and marketed by a group of 'diaspos', intent on performing their otherness and quite successful in exploiting that difference in the competition with non-migrant youths over access to employment and privileges. More specifically, I first demonstrate that zouglou music has become a trademark of the self-proclaimed 'diaspos' who deliberately mark themselves off from their Burkinabe neighbours through their clothing, their speech, and their taste in music. In this way, their past mobilities - their parents' labour migration to Côte d'Ivoire and their own forced displacement during the war - evoke a cosmopolitan youth identity that represents the hopes and dreams of many Burkinabe youths; to migrate to the regional metropolis of Abidjan and take part in global flows of urban youth culture, consumption, and privilege.
Paper short abstract:
Against the backdrop of the restricted European migration regime this paper explores how Senegalese migrants' maneuvers between different spaces of hope and despair in the metropolis of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years it has become exceedingly difficult for migrants to enter the European Union. The EU and its member states have made further restrictions on national asylum and migration policies and have de facto outsourced its border control, by collaboration with transit migration countries in Africa. This have together with the economic recession lead to a significant drop in irregular migrants seeking to cross the EU borders. At the same time the stock of West African migrants and asylum seekers in Argentina, especially from Senegal has risen since the middle of the 2000s. When the gates of Europe are closing to it seems that new 'routes of hope' appear.
The paper shed light on this emerging transatlantic migration flow by examining Senegalese migrants' everyday life in Buenos Aires. It will analyze how different social and legal possibility structures and constraints influence the migrants' livelihood strategies and their notions of hope and despair. The paper takes the conceptual framework of 'spaces of hope and despair' as a focal point. By viewing international migration through this lens, it is argued that the imaginaries of hope and despair that affect the livelihood strategies and shape the notion of the future for migrants are brought to the foreground. It thus explores the relationship between individual agency and the structures of uneven distribution of power and resources that characterize both the local context and the global world order today.
Paper short abstract:
Protracted displacement, a widely hostile environment and the lure of perceived better opportunities in ‘outside’ countries make migration an alluring prospect for Somali refugees living in Kenya. This paper will explore how people focus on their possibilities for onward migration through resettlement, reunification, or illegal means of migration as a way in which to escape Kenya and improve their lives.
Paper long abstract:
Landscapes of hope and despair are descriptive of many contexts of forced migration, and perhaps none more so than protracted refugee situations. For many Somali refugees, the ongoing conflict in their home country, now lasting more than twenty years, has dulled hopes for return. For those living in Kenya, policies that require encampment and severely restrict movement and livelihood opportunities, frequent arbitrary arrests and extortion from the police, as well as widespread xenophobia from their hosts, have fostered a hostile and insecure context for many, with limited opportunities for the future. Drawing on fieldwork among Somalis living in the Eastleigh, or 'Little Mogadishu' area of Nairobi, this paper will look at how diminished hopes for return have intensified desires for onward migration. The frequent return of friends and relatives from countries that are often seen as more desirable, either through deportation or using their highly-prized foreign passports for visits, as well as communication through the immensely popular use of social networking sites, further fosters narratives of opportunities abroad. Furthermore, they provide an opportunity to share advice on both legal and illegal means of reaching their desired destinations, allowing people to make important life decisions based on their need to qualify for particular migration criteria. The difficult and time consuming process of legal migration, either through resettlement or family reunification, means that people were able to maintain their hopes for onward migration over substantial periods of time, despite the many obstacles facing Somalis.
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on ethnographic research among Slovak Roma/Gypsy migrants in Great Britain. It explores how migration experiences shapes hopes and greater sense of possibilities for previously marginalized Roma in Slovakia. But it also situates their movements within unequally distributed forms of capitals, and new forms of disconnect and despair.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic research among Slovakian Roma/Gypsies migrating between Slovakia and Great Britain, this paper examines crystallisation of imagining 'England as a great splendour' and shows how it generates hopes and aspirations of moving towards 'better livelihood'. It analytically juxtaposes this anticipation of better future with emerging inequalities and disconnection of those who do not succeed in the migration and those who are left behind. Many of these migrants claimed asylum in various western European countries in late 1990s. Most of them were not granted asylum and returned home to Slovakia. Following the redrawing of geopolitical borders and changing mobility regimes after Slovakia accessed EU in 2004, many Roma families migrated to the UK. The successful returning migrants established new hierarchies and contributed to the crystallizing of the image of England as a space of hope and characterised by the expression 'going up'. By situating this notion within the daily sociability, I argue for seeing their migration as a potential avenue to carve out a sense of a viability against the oppressive circumstances and the asymmetrical relations with non-Roma and with non-related Roma. And yet the paper will juxtapose this hopeful movements with experiences of loss and disruption, of those who fail to fulfill their aspirations, and those who stay behind and never migrate. The paper shows the unevenly distributed possibilities and complex inequalities that these Roma encounter on their journey. I will draw on ethnography of Roma categories of movement, hope, loss and disconnect but connect it theoretically with G. Hage's and M. Jackson's work.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic research in Rabat, Morocco, this paper explores the tactics of long-term migrants from West and Central Africa concerning regularising their stay in Morocco, making a living and keeping connected to their desired future through a range of legal and illegal activities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at migrants from West and Central Africa who have been in Morocco for at least one year. Apart from university students who often are supported by bilateral study grants, the migrants in Morocco live in a variety of regular and irregular situations ranging from applying for asylum upon arrival or signing up for short-term education to legalise the stay in Morocco to overstaying visas, entering clandestinely, losing their passport to theft or selling it to mobilise resources. Migration management in Morocco makes it very difficult to obtain a residence permit legally, which is a prerequisite for obtaining longer-term and skilled employment. A residence permit, refugee status or the demand for asylum also reduce the risk of police harassment and deportation to Oujda, a well-known border town between Morocco and Algeria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork between February and September 2012, the paper examines whether migrants' tactics of legalising their stay or not shape the ways in which they make a living in Morocco and it analyses the opportunities and risks to which European and Moroccan migration management give rise. I question whether all irregular migrants who have been in Morocco for a long time are disconnected from the imagined and desired promises of Europe and explore how different people navigate the Moroccan context through legal and illegal activities to stay connected to their aspirations for the future, whether they hope to continue their journey to Europe or not.
Paper short abstract:
The paper will explore the possibilities of researching changing patterns of hope and despair by looking into politics and organization of the identification, repatriation and burial of dead migrants.
Paper long abstract:
Hopes for a better life elsewhere often go together with the hope of being buried 'at home'. Burial may be seen as "the ultimate test of belonging" (Geshiere) and migrant associations have a long history of establishing themselves around mutual support for burial arrangements, but also states and religious congregations have involved themselves in the issue. Whereas the individual hope for being buried at home does not correspond to Ernst Bloch's political-utopian "principle of hope", migrants' (and exiles') burial societies have, in particular in the 20th century, formed kernels of political movements for national independence, revolution and other social utopias. The question is 1) how migrants are involved in politics of death and disposal in the context of 21st century forms of mobility and 2) if/how these are related to wider political projects of hope. A particular case is the politics of the identification and repatriation of individuals who have died in the attempt to cross borders, an issue that states, NGOs, migrant associations and other social entities have become involved in and which link up to larger, critical movements. The paper will mainly seek to establish a conceptual framework for how new geographies of hope and despair may be explored through a focus on negotiations over the death and burial of migrants.