West African Migrants Research Articles

Cultivating Hustlers: The Agrarian Ethos of Soninke Migration

Sedentariness has been disregarded in migration studies. Although recent scholarship pays greater heed to immobility, the latter is often narrowly conceptualised as the exact opposite of mobility. This article attempts to overcome such dichotomies by focusing on agrarian life and activities in one of the most migratory rural contexts in West Africa, namely the Soninke villages of the Upper Gambia River valley. It shows how young men—normally the most mobile group in Soninke society—are trained to embody an agrarian ethos in order for them to be able to pursue not only agricultural livelihoods but also migratory ones. Physical, social and moral virtues cultivated in farm fields are thought to make the young man fit and adaptable to life and work abroad. The article further suggests that this agrarian ethos is reproduced through migratory dynamics, such as the integration of West African migrants as unqualified labourers in the stratified labour market of Europe and North America. As a synthesis or symbiosis between mobile and immobile cultural practices, the Soninke agrarian ethos provides us with ways of rethinking the relation between migration and sedentariness, thus bridging the dichotomy between the two.

Beyond “Kamikaze Migrants”: Risk Taking in West African Boat Migration to Europe

In recent years, tens of thousands of young Africans have left the shores of Senegal and other West African countries in small boats headed for Spain's Canary Islands. Most have spent a week or more at sea, and unknown numbers have died in the attempt. Given the danger of the journey, we ask how it could become a large-scale social phenomenon. The analysis focuses on how prospective migrants assess and relate to the risks of migration. We show that risk taking is shaped by context-specific interaction of disparate factors. These include economic obstacles to reaching social adulthood, notions of masculinity, pride and honor, and religion, in the form of sufi Islam.

Représentations et récits de la maladie chez des patients infectés par le virus de l’immunodéficience humaine originaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest et vivants en France

Migrants, especially from West African countries, are highly affected by HIV in France but their representations of the illness have not been much studied. The aim of this study is to explore their representations of HIV infection through their explanatory models and etiologic theories. Nine interviews of patients living with HIV from West African countries and migrants in France have been carried out with the Mac Gill Illness Narrative Interview, an interview schedule to elicit meanings and modes of reasoning related to illness experience. The illness narratives have then been analyzed through a method from medical anthropology. According to this study, AIDS remains a shameful illness, related to immoral behaviors such as unfaithfulness, intercourses with prostitutes or a high number of partners. Causality of illness is often related to the migration story. Stigmatization of people living with HIV is prevailing in the personal experience of the illness, which leads to underestimate oneself, to stop making plans for the future and brings social loneliness because of the secret around this illness. Like any illness, diagnosis of HIV infection involves questions: "Why me? Why now?" requiring an interpretation to recreate coherence in patients' lives. For medicals, caring about illnesses representations of the patients helps therapeutic relationship. Complementary surveys lead by a multidisciplinary team and an interpreter at different times could improve understandings of global representations of illness and their evolution.

Rents, rights, rejections and resistance: West African migrants, the EU's migration regime and militarisation in Mauritania

European Union (EU) migration policy prescribes dialogue and cooperation with the transit countries south of the Mediterranean, embodied in the Barcelona Process from 1995 onwards. This dialogue inflexibly favours the prevention of unwanted migration, which frequently arises as a result of political and economic crisis. Furthermore, the War on Terror has provided the conditions for a militarised ‘buffer zone’. At a time when several Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries are renegotiating their state regimes and external relations, this article examines the development of a securitised migration regime. It argues that rentier politics, which underpin international exploitation of Mauritania's mineral resources and the management of its borders, have contributed to the governance of migration. This undermines the holistic aims of EU policy. As a result, Mauritania engages in a dual role: first as receiver of ‘returned’ migrants from Europe; and secondly as ‘returner’ of sub-Saharan migrants who may attempt to proceed to Europe. This strains established but precarious patterns of West African trade and labour migration, but also offers opportunities in migrant communities to overcome the hazards of attempting to enter the EU. This article examines the dynamics of West African migration and migrants' resistance to the EU's border and labour policies.

A West African Sufi Master on the Global Stage: Cheikh Abdoulaye Dièye and the Khidmatul Khadim International Sufi School in France and the United States

AbstractThe recent wave of West African Muslim migration to the West started after the Great War and gained momentum in the 1960s. Sub-Saharan Africans have been particularly successful in finding a niche in Europe and North America partly because of the connection between immigrants and centers of Islamic spirituality and knowledge in Africa provided by a dynamic leadership that straddles the three continents. Based on extensive interviews in the United States and in France and on the examination of Murid internal sources and scholarly secondary literature, this article investigates the efforts of the late Sufi sheikh, Abdoulaye Dièye, to expand the Muridiyya Muslim tariqa in France and North America. I am particularly interested in examining the foundations of Dièye’s appeal, his struggle to earn legitimacy and relevance on the global stage, and the response of diverse constituencies to his calling. I contend that the attraction of Dièye’s teachings to Europeans, Americans, and Africans in the diaspora, is rooted in his dual cultural outlook as a Western educated and traditionally trained Murid.

West Africa: the dynamics and trends of international migration

OECD countries receive a little less than half (97 million in 2000) of the world’s total migrants, of which 3.8 million are from Northern Africa and 1.2 million are from West Africa. West African migration is on the rise, due mainly to an increase in intra-regional mobility (7.5 million). Within the OECD, North America receives the most West African migrants, followed by Europe. This article explores further some current trends in West African migration and outlines some of the issues that could affect this migration in the future, including climate change and demographic concerns in Europe. A European-North African-West African dialogue is proposed to address these future issues and help promote more structured means of cooperation.

The Role of Support Networks in the Initial Stages of Integration: The Case of West African Newcomers in the Netherlands

AbstractThis study focuses on the role of support networks in West African migration to the Netherlands. The authors examine the interactions of non‐State support groups with West African newcomers and explore the nature, scope and function of support. What type of support networks do respondents rely on, under which circumstances, and for how long? What is the scope of support? Is it to be taken for granted? What alternatives are there for those left out of the loop? The findings suggest that support is mainly punctual, in response to a specific need, and for a limited period of time. It is not to be taken for granted, as support groups have limited capacities, and protect themselves from excessive demands. They play a significant role in providing assistance to migrants, yet this role should not be overestimated.

Motion squared

Serving as a metaphor for practice, the concept of navigation has become increasingly popular in anthropological theory. The concept seems to have almost sneaked its way into our analytical vocabulary; it is used when referring to how people act in difficult or uncertain circumstances and in describing how they disentangle themselves from confining structures, plot their escape and move towards better positions. Yet, despite its increasing popularity, the concept is most often used in an unspecified or misunderstood manner — it is generally not well defined! Building on prolonged fieldwork in Bissau, West Africa, and with West African migrants in Lisbon, Portugal, I take a second look at the concept of social navigation, clarifying the notion as an analytical optic, discarding the most unfortunate misconceptualizations of the term and elucidating the contribution that the concept can make to our understanding of the way people act in their social worlds.

The EU Migration Regime and West African Clandestine Migrants

This article examines the relationship between the EU migration regime and clandestine migration from West Africa to Europe. A review of the development of EU border and immigration policy reveals significant and sustained moves towards securitisation of migrants and the externalisation of border controls to countries of origin and transit. This emphasis on repression limits the scope of cooperation with ‘third countries’ (those outside Europe) in co-development, labour mobility, sea patrols and repatriation, which are examined separately as deterrents to uncontrolled emigration. This paper then analyses the motivations and intentions of Senegalese youth around the Cap Vert peninsula. This analysis includes the role of emigration in development and more recently, the impact of human losses and repatriations resulting from the clandestine journey by pirogue (open fishing boat) to the Canary Islands. This article argues that in this case, youth are excluded both from labour and asylum policies and instead are managed as a security threat, contradicting the factors driving this journey.

The desert at Zait Bay, Egypt: a bird migration bottleneck of global importance

The study area at Zait Bay, Egypt (c. 700 km2) is situated in the middle of the West Asian-East African migration flyway used by very large numbers of soaring migrants. At this site the corridor narrows into a bottleneck. There exist only very few bottlenecks of this magnitude in the world. Observations were performed at all hours between sunrise and sunset at 26 observation sites, situated 5 km apart. The northern part of the area under investigation (19 observation sites) was situated within the Gebel El Zeit IBA (criteria A1 and A4iv), while the southernmost part (8 observation sites) was outside. The overall evaluation has shown that 179,681 soaring birds including 122,454 storks and 36,976 raptors were observed in total. Within a radius of 2.5 km from each observation site 97,143 soaring birds including 59,308 storks and 30,489 raptors were observed during the 604 hours of observation. Eleven species were recorded in numbers that exceed 1% of their flyway populations. Of special concern regarding bird conservation are those birds resting or flying in the first 200 m of elevation. In total 6,624 soaring birds were seen resting (2,252 within a radius of 2.5 km). Thirty-three percent of the storks and 47% of the raptors were observed resting or flying at heights within the lowest 200 m. The median height of flying birds varied between 5 m (harriers) and 500 m (Common Crane Grus grus). According to the raw data, criteria for nomination of the area as an IBA (20,000 raptors and storks in one migration season, globally threatened species) were fully met outside the existing IBA. Also, to the south of the study area, very high numbers of migrants were confirmed by spontaneous, non-systematic observations. Accordingly, a change of the boundaries is suggested. The regional analysis, based on extrapolations, has to be regarded as a preliminary study. The analysis failed to show a geographical trend for any single species. The data from this study establish a high concentration of gliding and soaring birds in the study area, within and adjacent to the already designated IBA.

Use of Spoligotyping and Large Sequence Polymorphisms To Study the Population Structure of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex in a Cohort Study of Consecutive Smear-Positive Tuberculosis Cases in The Gambia

Mycobacterium africanum, first described in Senegal in 1968, causes up to half of the smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis cases in West Africa, but it has not been found in other geographical areas except among recent West African migrants. The reasons for the geographic restriction of M. africanum are unknown. We used molecular tools to determine the population structure of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in a cohort study of consecutive smear-positive tuberculosis cases in The Gambia. We collected and genotyped 386 clinical isolates using spoligotype analysis and PCRs for large sequence polymorphisms (LSPs) and compared the genotype patterns to the patterns in an international database. The results of spoligotyping and LSP analysis for the study population were also compared to determine the correlation between them. The main lineages within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex identified in The Gambia included M. africanum type I (38.4%), characterized by an LSP in region of difference 702 (RD702; West African type 2). Among the M. tuberculosis sensu stricto isolates, lineages characterized by RD182 and by RD174 were the most common. We also detected a gradient in the prevalence of M. africanum that extended from neighboring Guinea-Bissau. The genotypic diversity of the spoligotype patterns was greater among the isolates of M. africanum than among the isolates of M. tuberculosis. We postulate that M. africanum became endemic in West Africa first, before the introduction of different lineages within M. tuberculosis sensu stricto.

West African Migrants in Spain: Human Factors and Emerging International Policy

West African Migrants in Spain: Human Factors and Emerging International Policy

Lark Mirror: African Culture, Masculinity, and Migration to France in Alain Mabanckou's <i>Bleu Blanc Rouge</i>

Every now and then, the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea claim the lives of hundreds of Africans willing to trek in the hot sun and board overloaded, rickety ships at the coast of Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco in search of a better life in Europe. Meanwhile, on the continent where the unfortunate immigrants hope to improve their fortunes, the European Union has passed the Returns Directive legislation which allows governments to detain illegal immigrants, including pregnant women and unaccompanied minors, for up to eighteen months and expel them. While the draconian immigration laws have been protested against by social groups within Europe and by world leaders such as Bolivian president Evo Morales, lingering questions remain.1 Is life in Africa so poor and des perate that it is worthwhile to endure the treacherous hazards of migrating to Europe, and the possibility that one may live in poverty or worse, be deported? Or, as Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop asked in 2005, following the reports of West African migrants dying in the Sahara Desert and at barbed wire fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Mellila, people are ready to sacrifice their lives to leave their homeland, but where is the willingness to serve that country, to invest a life there, at least in the interest of future generations?2 These questions underlie the reading of Alain Mabanckou's Bleu Blanc Rouge [Blue white red]. The Congolese writer's first novel captures the fate of Massala-Massala, a poor, lackluster young man who decides to seek his fortunes in France upon inspiration by Charles Mold, a flamboyant migrant who regularly returns home for the holidays with considerable wealth and

Help‐seeking behavior of west African Migrants

AbstractIn this article, the authors present essential aspects of the help‐seeking behavior with regard to mental health problems of Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands. Samples of citizens in the general population (n=97) and outpatients treated in mental health care facilities (n=36) were included. Data were acquired by administering a semi‐structured interview. Quantified data were analysed using hierarchical multiple regression analyses and direct (standard) logistic analyses. Help‐seeking pathways are multi‐determined. Being involved in Dutch society may determine an individual's attitude toward health care and the time before taking action. Particularly, socio‐demographic variables (e.g., age, unemployment, urbanicity) and acculturative demands (integrative skills, normative orientation) shape the help‐seeking orientation and service utilization in multiethnic settings. A liaison between mental health services, traditional healers, religious leaders and self‐help groups might therefore benefit patients. By identifying and emphasizing the specific social and acculturation components that facilitate or deter health behaviours, we are better able to implement health care interventions among different ethnic and cultural communities. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Relevance of John Steinbeck: A West African Prespective

John Steinbeck remains a very popular novelist in West Africa . His novels represent not only an American version of social protest that has now vanished with the twentieth century, but also an authentic portrayal of social truth that resonates profoundly with twenty-first century West Africa. Not surprisingly, The Grapes of Wrath has achieved the greatest fame for Steinbeck in this region of the world because its thematic preoccupations, scenes, and characters are very relevant and immediate to its readers. The hot, dry Oklahoma summer, the knocking down of the Joads' house, the heartlessness of the bank in forcing everyone unable to pay their bills to leave the land, the exploitation of the workers and tenants by corporations undergoing industrialization and mechanization, and the inability of workers to persuade the owners of the land to let them stay till they can perhaps relocateall these events and situations reflect the difficulties and stifling atmosphere facing twenty-first century West African migrant groups. The hasty impulsiveness of the Joads in deciding at night to get on the road before dawnand drugging Grampa with a bottle of soothin' sirup because he was reluctant to migratemirrors the rashness of West African migrants who move out of their home countries with meager resources and little preparation for their journey. They are driven, like the Joads, by a desperation that is political as well as economic, for some West African countries in the twenty-first century are still characterized by bad governance, dictatorship, and a despotism characterized by heartless mismanagement of God-given resources and total insensitivity to glaring poverty, suffering, and hardship. Dissident

Migration Patterns and Influence of Support Networks: A Case Study of West Africans in the Netherlands

This article explores the infl uence of support networks in the migration process of West African migrants to the Netherlands. Taking a case-oriented biographic approach, the article analyzes the migration stories of several West African migrants with a focus on the networks that facilitated their journey and their initial stages of integration. It highlights the role of support networks in different moments of the migratory process—pre-departure, arrival and settlement—and discusses the scope of support and the obligations that emerge from these social interactions. The article shows that respondents received different types of support, from different types of groups, at different stage of their migration, which shaped the distinctive features of their individual trajectories. An interesting aspect is the support that settled West African migrants give to West African newcomers, which suggests the existence of a regional collective identity. Limited resources, however, pose serious constraints on this type of support.

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of “Illegality”: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

ABSTRACTGiven the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so‐called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety‐ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three‐dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non‐consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid‐2002, however, a resource‐intensive, government‐sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being‐in‐the‐world.

Liminal Lives

Strategies of state surveillance shape the construction of migrant identities in France. Focusing on migrants from the Senegal River Valley in West Africa, the authors suggest that ideological and institutional constraints concerning legal status and family reunification create a shifting world of unstable identities for these migrants. The fall 2005 riots across France have been widely cited as an illustration of the failure of the French model of immigrant integration. Restrictive legislation since 1975 has challenged gender relations in migrant communities. The gendered production of immigrant identities merits special attention; women's and men's diverse experiences require differing strategies of adjustment. During the past 30 years, anti-immigrant discourse/practice has effectively contested the state policy of integration and its emphasis on achieving nationality as the ultimate immigrant objective. The gendered strategies of West African migrants demonstrate that state polices have created a new category of migrants whose everyday lives seem permanently in transition.

Migration and schizophrenia: the challenges for European psychiatry and implications for the future.

The last decade of the twentieth century has seen an unprecedented increase in the number of reports in the psychiatric literature documenting increased rates of psychotic illness among migrants in a range of European countries. In countries where high rates of immigration have been long-standing such as Britain and the Netherlands, these increased rates have also been seen in the second generation of migrants. This has impacted on psychiatry significantly with regard to the aetiology, diagnosis, and treatment of schizophrenia. We reviewed the literature to summarise the available evidence about the phenomenon across the European countries where these findings have been reported. Comparisons of the findings between countries were highlighted to establish their impact on psychiatry and to identify areas and implications for future research. The history of this kind of research is longest in Britain and has established increased risk for non-white migrants, with Caribbean and African patients being especially vulnerable. Caribbean migrants to the Netherlands have also been found to be at increased risk, but they are predominantly of Indo-Caribbean ethnicity. In the other European countries, East and West African migrants have been implicated in some countries, while European migrants have been implicated in other countries. Social inequalities, family fragmentation and urbanicity seem to be the main hypotheses proposed for these increased rates, though, in some countries where asylum seekers and refugees form the largest group of migrants, the stress of the migratory process itself may be implicated. These may all interact with genetic vulnerability and substance abuse. Ethnicity and differences in dominant language emerge as major structural references in this new epistemology of psychosis and both the causes and the effects on psychopathology may be filtered through an experience of social disadvantage in an urban environment.

Migration, return and socio‐economic change in West Africa: the role of family

AbstractThis paper seeks to analyse the influence of migrants' families on return and the transfer of financial, human and social capital by West African migrants who have lived in Europe and North America. Based on a survey of over 600 ‘elite’ and less‐skilled return migrants to Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, as well as qualitative research with migrants remaining in London and Paris, the paper argues that families play an important role in return migration, remittances, and aspects of human, social and financial capital acquisition and investment. Using Cerase's typology of return migration, the analysis seeks to discriminate between migrants whose return decisions were affected by their families – considered as ‘return of conservatism’ – and those who made individual return decisions – considered as ‘return of innovation’. The findings reveal that the relationship between the type of return (and extent of family involvement in this decision), and the extent of financial, human and social capital transfers, varies between countries and across groups of migrants. Although those whose return is influenced by their families might be considered to have made more ‘conservative’ return decisions, this group was found to be more likely to have transferred financial capital to their home country, and more likely to have maintained social capital gained abroad after their return. They were also as likely as ‘innovative’ returnees to have promoted changes in family life or in the workplace. The paper concludes by exploring several policy implications. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.