| 摘要 | What are the effects on African migrants when migration and border control makes it difficult to realize migratory aspirations? Contrary to ideas that restrictive mobility regimes result in fewer migrants, African migration patterns are instead in a process of reconfiguration.
In a new themed section of the journal Africa¸ this reconfiguration is explored with a focus on the family relations, social identities, reciprocities, and moralities that contemporary African migration projects are embedded in. An introduction by Dorte Thorsen, University of Sussex, sets the scene for the following three articles, offering insights into the layer between migrant narratives and mobility regimes. Maybritt Jill Alpes, VU University Amsterdam, describes the moral economy surrounding migration brokerage in a case study from Cameroun while Dorte Thorsen examines the intertwining of waiting, hope and morality in precarious border zones in Rabat, Morocco. Finally Nauja Kleist, DIIS, analyses how involuntary return to Ghana impacts gender and family relations.
With a focus on Ghanaian male labour migrants who have been evacuated or deported from Libya, Kleist proposes that involuntary return constitutes a disruption of migration projects, rather than their termination. Overland – and high-risk – migration to Libya is livelihood-related, primarily conducted by men, with the aim of supporting relatives and, especially for younger men, of saving money to establish a future in Ghana and become respectable adults. Migration thus has collective and individual aspects, embedded in local expectations, family reciprocities, and masculinity ideals. These dimensions are also at play in the case of involuntary return.
Characterized by being abrupt and unprepared in nature, and by return migrants bringing few or no belongings or savings with them, involuntary return causes tensions in gender and family relations when returnees turn from providers to dependents. Employing a moral economy perspective, Kleist shows how such situations illuminate the ambivalence of family reciprocity and interdependencies in migrant families – not the least for women who have stayed and hold everyday responsibility for providing for their families while their migrant husbands or brothers have left. For migrant men, returning empty-handed disturbs masculinity ideals, related to adulthood, responsibility and accumulation, often resulting in their re-migration. Hence, the article demonstrates how involuntary return aggravates the life situation of both returnees and their families, reproducing and exacerbating global and local inequalities.
The themed section is guest-edited by Dorte Thorsen and Nauja Kleist as part of a research programme on the social effects of migration management for West African migrants, funded by Danish Council for Independent Research – Culture and communication. |
