Children on the Move in Africa: Past and Present Experiences of Migration

252 Pages·2016·10.253 MB·English

by  Elodie Razy, Marie Rodet (eds.)

Children_PPC_19mm v6_B+B 22/03/2016 11:20 Page 1
‘a strongly original perspective on histories of childhood and migration in Africa, RE Edited by Elodie Razy & Marie Rodet
and more contemporary developments in child labour and educational migration. Ad
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... a good contribution to the fields of migration histories, African childhoods, and Ye
colonial and early postcolonial social history.’ – Dr Stacey Hynd, Senior &d Children on
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Lecturer in African History and Director of Postgraduate Research, History, Ry
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University of Exeter
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The widespread movement of children across African borders and beyond T
the Move in
has been a defining characteristic of the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries, yet we know too little about these children’s migratory C
trajectories and the opportunities or constraints that propel them to leave
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home. Drawing on the personal experiences of African children over more
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than a century, this book analyses the diversity and complexity of their ld Africa
PAST & PRESENT
experiences of mobility and how this shapes their identities. The authors Pr
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examine patterns of fosterage and child circulation; the gendered aspects of Se EXPERIENCES OF
child migratory trajectories and strategies; the role of education, child Tn
MIGRATION
&
labour and conceptions of place and ‘home’. Comparing different
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methodological and theoretical approaches and setting the case studies – Rn
from Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Sudan, E
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Togo and Zambia – within the broader context of family migration, Et
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transnational families, colonial and postcolonial migration politics, T
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religious encounter and globalization in Africa, this book provides a much- E
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needed examination of this contentious and critical issue. PM
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Elodie Razy is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Io
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the University of Liege (FaSS). She is the co-founder and co-editor of the Nv
online journal AnthropoChildren: Ethnographic Perspectives in Children & Ce
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Childhood. Marie Rodet is a Senior Lecturer in African History at the S
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School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). On
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Cover photograph: Young girl at work carrying washing to the fountain, Rufisque,
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Senegal, 2012 (© Babacar Traoré aka Doli) Gf
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JAMES CURREY
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN 978-1-84701-138-1
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and
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Children on the Move
in Africa
Past & Present Experiences
of Migration
Children on the Move.indd 1 31/03/2016 12:12
Children on the Move
in Africa
Past & Present Experiences
of Migration
Edited by
Elodie Razy & Marie Rodet
Children on the Move.indd 3 31/03/2016 12:12
James Currey
an imprint of
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge
Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB)
www.jamescurrey.com
and of
Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue
Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com
© Contributors 2016
First published 2016
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval
system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
available on request
ISBN 978-1-84701-138-1 James Currey (Cloth)
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset in 11/12 Photina MT
by Avocet Typeset, Somerton, Somerset
Children on the Move.indd 4 31/03/2016 12:12
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Preface by Benjamin N. Lawrance xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction
Child Migration in Africa: Key Issues & New Perspectives
Marie Rodet & Elodie Razy 1
P art I CHILD MIGRANTS IN AFRICA:
BEYOND THE DILEMMA OF VULNERABILITY
v.AGENCY 30
1 ‘An Ardent Desire to be Useful’
Senegalese Students, Religious Sisters & Migration
for Schooling in France, 1824–1842
Kelly Duke Bryant 31
2 Girl Pawns, Brides & Slaves
Child Trafficking in Southeastern Nigeria, 1920s
Robin P. Chapdelaine 51
P art II BEING A CHILD & BECOMING A GENDERED
ADULT: THE CHALLENGES OF MIGRATIONS IN
CHILDHOOD 67
3 ‘Bringing a Girl From the Village’
Gender, Child Migration & Domestic Service in
Post-colonial Zambia 69
Sacha Hepburn
Children on the Move.indd 5 31/03/2016 12:12
vi Contents
4 ‘ I Will Never Become a Crocodile
but I am Happy if I Eat Enough’
A Psychological Analysis of Child Fosterage
& Resilience in Contemporary Mali
Paola Porcelli 85
5 Working as a ‘Boy’
Labour, Age & Masculinities in Togo, c. 1975–2005
Marco Gardini 104
P art III MOBILITY, IMAGINATION
& MAKING NATIONS 123
6 Childhood, Space & Memory
Migrations of the Métis in Madagascar’s
Central Highlands (Nineteenth & Twentieth
Centuries)
Violaine Tisseau 125
7 ‘We Were Mixed with All Types’
Educational Migration in the Northern Territories
of Colonial Ghana
Lacy S. Ferrell 141
8 I ndia–South Africa Mobilities
in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Minors, Immigration Encounters in Cape Town
& Becoming South African
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie 159
9 Education, Migration & Nationalism
Mapping the School Days of the First Generation
of Southern Sudanese Nationalist Leaders, c. 1948–1972
Hannah Whittaker with Harjyot Hayer 175
1 0 C hild Narration as a Device for Negotiating
Space & Identity Formation
in Recent Nigerian Migrant Fiction
Oluwole Coker 191
Bibliography 205
Index 231
Children on the Move.indd 6 31/03/2016 12:12
Illustrations
Figures
1 Drawing by an unschooled boy, age 8 154
2 Drawing of a black car by Deaha, age 9 or 10 154
Maps
1 Europe and West Africa 26
Inset. Ghana, Togo and Nigeria 27
2 E ast, Central and South Africa and the Indian Ocean World 28
Inset 1. Zambia 29
Inset 2. Sudan and South Sudan 29
Children on the Move.indd 7 31/03/2016 12:12
Notes on Contributors
Kelly Duke Bryant is an Associate Professor at Rowan University in
Glassboro, New Jersey, USA, where she teaches African history. Her
published work, which includes a monograph and several articles, has
mostly focused on the history of education in colonial Senegal. She
has also written about the francophone African diaspora during the
nineteenth century. Her new research project examines the history
of labour migration and other travel between French West Africa and
Western Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.
Robin P. Chapdelaine is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s and
Gender Studies and International Studies at Denison University in Gran-
ville, Ohio, USA. Trained as an African historian, her research focuses
on child trafficking in Southeastern Nigeria during the colonial era.
She is interested in the use of juvenile servile labour as it relates to child
pawning, slavery and marriage practices. Her work is also informed by
the history of League of Nations and the subsequent increase in atten-
tion paid to the livelihoods of women and children in Africa.
Oluwole Coker holds a PhD in English specializing in African Fiction
from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a Lecturer at the English
Department, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria where his
teaching and research interests span post-colonial African fiction,
cultural and interdisciplinary studies. A 2014/2015 CODESRIA Child
and Youth Institute Laureate, Oluwole is also a 2014 ACLS/AHP Post-
doctoral Award Fellow.
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is a Senior Professor in the Department
of History at the University of the Western Cape where she is also the
Deputy Dean of Research in the Arts faculty. She has expert knowledge
on forced removals and land restitution in Cape Town and has written
specifically on marginalized people such as the Black River commu-
nity. She is also recognized as a leading scholar in the field of India–
South Africa connected histories. She is currently writing a book about
Indians in Cape Town. Her most recent publications deal with immi-
gration paper regimes.
Children on the Move.indd 8 31/03/2016 12:12
Notes on Contributors ix
Lacy S. Ferrell is Assistant Professor of History at Central Washington
University. She completed her dissertation ‘Fighting for the Future: A
History of Education in Colonial Ghana, c. 1900–1940’ at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. Her research interests include
education, schooling, childhood and gender in colonial Ghana.
Marco Gardini is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Anthropology
at the University of Milano-Bicocca where he is collaborating in the
research project SWAB (Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond,
ERC-GRANT 313737). His research interests include access to land,
forms of labour exploitation in rural and urban contexts and witch-
craft accusations.
Sacha Hepburn is currently completing her doctoral research in the
Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Her primary research
interests are the history of gender, age and labour in Africa. Her doctoral
research explores the history of domestic service in post-colonial
Zambia. She has completed degrees at the Universities of Warwick and
Manchester.
Benjamin N. Lawrance is the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed
Chair in International Studies and Professor of History and Anthro-
pology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research interests
include comparative and contemporary slavery, human trafficking,
cuisine and globalization, human rights, refugee issues and asylum
policies. Among his ten books are Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic
Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (Yale 2014), and Adjudicating
Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony
(Cambridge 2015), with Galya Ruffer. Lawrance consults on contem-
porary West Africa issues and has served as expert witness in three
hundred asylum claims.
Paola Porcelli is a clinical psychologist and a researcher specialized in
cross-cultural issues. After receiving her PhD at the University of Paris
8 in 2010, she had the opportunity to complete her academic training
through a post-doctoral fellowship at the Resilience Research Centre,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is interested in
the connections between child mobility and resilience and she aims at
developing culturally sensitive and strength-based approaches within
culturally diverse communities. She currently works as a researcher at
IWK Health Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Elodie Razy is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Anthro-
pology at the University of Liège (Faculty of Social Sciences). She is the
co-founder and co-editor of the online journal AnthropoChildren: Ethno-
graphic Perspectives in Children & Childhood. Her research and teaching
Children on the Move.indd 9 31/03/2016 12:12
x Notes on Contributors
interests include the anthropology of children and childhood and the
anthropology of migration. She has extensively published on those
subjects.
Marie Rodet is a Senior Lecturer in African History at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her prin-
cipal research interests lie in the field of migration history, gender
studies and the history of slavery in West Africa in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. She has written a number of articles on migra-
tion and post-slavery in Mali. She is currently working on her second
monograph on slave resistance in Kayes, Mali.
Violaine Tisseau completed her PhD in African History in 2011, enti-
tled: ‘Le pain et le riz: Métis et métissage entre Européens et Malgaches,
dans les Hautes Terres centrales de Madagascar, 19e-20e siècles’ (Paris
7 University – CESSMA) (to be published by Karthala in 2015). She is
affiliated to the Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAf) in Paris. In her
PhD dissertation, she studied the trajectories of some métis families
in central Highland Madagascar during colonization, highlighting
the importance of their Malagasy entourage in their lives. She is now
studying domestic servants in Madagascar.
Hannah Whittaker is a Lecturer in History at Brunel University. She
has written a number of articles on insurgency and counterinsurgency
in North East Africa. Her on-going research deals with ‘borderlands’
generally, and the Kenya–Somalia border specifically.
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