No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Mapping hidden journeys of Gambian migration and return
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2024
Abstract
Countering the focus on crisis and irregularity that frames dominant representations of African migration to Europe, this article explores Gambian migrant women’s journeys of return. It is argued that Gambian women returnees’ financial resources, levels of education, kinship relations and social networks have positioned them in such a way that they can benefit from the opportunities and possibilities in The Gambia, thereby influencing their decisions to return. Significantly, their positions have helped them to negotiate and, in some instances, challenge gendered expectations and relations in their experiences on return. Further, the exchange of knowledge and their transnational networks and connections place the global South and the global North as co-constitutive elements in the development of their work and their gendered subjectivities. As such, I focus on the analytical purchase that the concept of return affords, as well as its political possibilities. The article contributes to existing scholarship on migration by highlighting the importance of returnees’ multiple subjectivities in both their decisions to return and their experiences on return. In addition, I foreground the contributions that returnees make to the places to which they have migrated, thereby challenging representations of African migrants as deficient and of Africa as a place of absence.
Résumé
En réplique à l’attention portée sur la crise et à l’irrégularité qui définit le cadre des représentations dominantes de la migration africaine vers l’Europe, cet article explore le voyage de retour effectué par des migrantes gambiennes. Il soutient que les ressources financières, le niveau d’éducation, les relations de parenté et les réseaux sociaux des migrantes gambiennes de retour les ont mises en position de pouvoir bénéficier des opportunités et des possibilités présentes en Gambie, et ont par là-même influencé leur décision de rentrer au pays. De façon significative, leur position les a aidées à négocier et, dans certains cas, à remettre en cause les attentes et les relations genrées dans leurs expériences du retour. De plus, l’échange de connaissances, ainsi que les réseaux et les liens transnationaux, font du Sud global et du Nord global des éléments co-constitutifs du développement de leur travail et de leur subjectivité et de genre. De ce fait, l’auteur s’intéresse à la prise analytique qu’offre le concept du retour, ainsi qu’à ses possibilités politiques. Cet article contribue à la recherche existante sur la migration en soulignant l’importance des multiples subjectivités des migrantes de retour, tant dans leur décision de retourner que dans leurs expériences du retour. De plus, l’auteur met en avant les contributions des migrantes de retour aux lieux vers lesquels elles ont émigré, remettant en cause par là-même les représentations des migrants africains comme déficients et de l’Afrique comme lieu d’absence.
Resumo
Contrariando o enfoque na crise e na irregularidade que enquadra as representações dominantes da migração africana para a Europa, este artigo explora os percursos de regresso das mulheres migrantes da Gâmbia. Argumenta-se que os recursos financeiros, níveis de educação, as relações de parentesco e redes sociais das mulheres gambianas retornadas as posicionaram de forma a poderem beneficiar das oportunidades e possibilidades na Gâmbia, influenciando assim as suas decisões de regresso. Significativamente, as suas posições ajudaram-nas a negociar e, em alguns casos, a desafiar as expectativas e relações de género nas suas experiências de regresso. Além disso, a troca de conhecimentos e as suas redes e ligações transnacionais colocam o Sul global e o Norte global como elementos co-constitutivos no desenvolvimento do seu trabalho e das suas subjectividades de género. Como tal, concentro-me na aquisição analítica que o conceito de retorno proporciona, bem como nas suas possibilidades políticas. O artigo contribui para os estudos existentes sobre migração ao realçar a importância das múltiplas subjectividades dos retornados, tanto nas suas decisões de regressar como nas suas experiências de regresso. Além disso, coloco em primeiro plano as contribuições que os retornados dão aos locais para onde migraram, desafiando assim as representações dos migrantes africanos como sendo incapazes e da África como um lugar de ausência.
- Type
- Gambian migration
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute
References
Adi, H. (2012) ‘African political thinkers, Pan-Africanism and the politics of exile, c. 1850–1970. Immigrants and minorities: historical studies in ethnicity’, Migration and Diaspora 30 (2–3): 263–91.Google Scholar
Akesson, L. and Baaz, M.-E. (2015) ‘Introduction’ in Akesson, L. and Baaz, M.-E. (eds), Africa’s Return Migrants: the new developers. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Ammassari, S. (2004) ‘From nation-building to entrepreneurship: the impact of elite return migrants in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana’, Population, Space and Place 10: 133–54.Google Scholar
Battistella, G. (2018) ‘Return migration: a conceptual and policy framework’, Center for Migration Studies of New York, 8 March <https://cmsny.org/publications/2018smsc-smc-return-migration/>, accessed 3 May 2018.,+accessed+3+May+2018.>Google Scholar
Black, R. and King, R. (2004) ‘Editorial introduction: migration, return and development in West Africa’, Population, Space and Place 10 (2): 75–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bredeloup, S. (2013) ‘The figure of the adventurer as an African migrant’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 25 (2): 170–82.Google Scholar
Bryceson, D. (2002) ‘The scramble in Africa: reorienting rural livelihoods’, World Development 30: 725–39.Google Scholar
Carling, J. (2004) ‘Emigration, return and development in Cape Verde: the impact of closing borders’, Population, Space and Place 10 (2): 113–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carling, J. (2005) ‘Gender dimensions of international migration’. Global Migration Perspectives 35. Geneva: Global Commission on International Migration.Google Scholar
Carling, J. and Erdal, M. B. (2014) ‘Return migration and transnationalism: how are the two connected?’, International Migration 52
(6): 2–12.Google Scholar
Cassarino, J.-P. (2004) ‘Theorising return migration: the conceptual approach to return migrants revisited’, International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6 (2): 253–79.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, J. and Groes, C. (2016) ‘Introduction: affective circuits and social regeneration in African migration’ in Cole, J. and Groes, C. (eds), Affective Circuits: African migrations to Europe and the pursuit of social regeneration. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2012) ‘Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa’, Anthropological Forum 22 (2): 113–31.Google Scholar
Dennis, E. (2019) ‘“I like to be travelled”: Experiences of reintegration and psychosocial wellbeing amongst return migrants in The Gambia’. Master’s dissertation, University of Oslo. Available at <https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/69517>, accessed 15 November 2021.,+accessed+15+November+2021.>Google Scholar
Essien, K. (2014) ‘“Afie ni afie” (home is home): revisiting reverse transatlantic journeys to Ghana and the paradox of return’, Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration 7: 1–34.Google Scholar
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2020) ‘Introduction: recentering the South in studies of migration’, Migration and Society: Advances in Research 3: 1–18.Google Scholar
Gaibazzi, P. (2015) Bush Bound: young men and rural permanence in migrant West Africa. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Grillo, R. and Riccio, B. (2004) ‘Translocal development: Italy–Senegal’, Population, Space and Place 10 (2): 99–111.Google Scholar
Herz-Jakoby, A. (2013) ‘Mobility in the life and work of contemporary Ghanaian artists’, Critical Interventions 7 (1): 65–78.Google Scholar
Ifekwunigwe, J. O. (2013) ‘Voting with their feet: Senegalese youth, clandestine boat migration, and the gendered politics of protest’, African and Black Diaspora 6 (2): 218–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jedlowski, A. (2016) ‘All for a container: return migration, transport technologies and love affairs’, Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 6 (2): 94–111.Google Scholar
Kea, P. (2010) Land, Labour and Entrustment: West African female farmers and the politics of difference. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Kea, P. (2020) ‘Gambian educational migration, care and the persistence of the domestic moral economy’, Children’s Geographies 18 (6): 642–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kebba, O. J. (2019) ‘Mobilising human capital to harness the demographic divide: the role of the diaspora as actors of change in The Gambia’ in Rahman, E., D’Silva, E. and Peteranderl, S. (eds), The Demographic Dividend and the Power of Youth: voices from the global diplomacy lab. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kebbeh, C. O. (2013) ‘The Gambia: migration in Africa’s “Smiling Coast”’, Migration Policy Institute, 15 August <http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/gambia-migration-africas-smiling-coast>, accessed 17 July 2016.,+accessed+17+July+2016.>Google Scholar
King, R. and Christou, A. (2011) ‘Of counter-diaspora and reverse transnationalism: return mobilities to and from the ancestral homeland’, Mobilities 6 (4): 451–66.Google Scholar
King, R. and Lulle, A. (2022) ‘Gender return migration’ in King, R. and Kuschminder, K. (eds), Handbook of Return Migration. London: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Kleist, N. and Vammen, I. (2012) ‘Diaspora groups and development in fragile situations’. DIIS Report 09. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).Google Scholar
Lutz, H. (2010) ‘Gender in the migratory process’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (10): 1647–63.Google Scholar
Maher, S. (2017) ‘Historicising “irregular” migration from Senegal to Europe’, Anti-Trafficking Review 9: 77–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahler, S. and Pessar, P. (2001) ‘Gendered geographies of power: analyzing gender across transnational spaces’, Identities 7 (4): 441–59.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2016) ‘Decolonizing the university: new directions’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 15 (1): 29–45.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W. (2002) ‘The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference’, South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (1): 57–96.Google Scholar
Mogstad, H. and Tse, L.-S. (2018) ‘Decolonizing anthropology: reflections from Cambridge’, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 36 (2): 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myambo, M. (2017) ‘Frontier heritage migration in the global ethnic economy’, Public Culture 29 (2): 261–85.Google Scholar
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2018) Epistemic Freedom in Africa: deprovincialization and decolonization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olwig, K. F. and Valentin, K. (2015) ‘Mobility, education and life trajectories: new and old migratory pathways’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 22 (3): 247–57.Google Scholar
Pilling, D. (2021) ‘Understated Tanzanian author is recognised for his penetrating insights into effects of colonialism’, Financial Times Weekend, 9–10 October.Google Scholar
Roin, P. and Danielsen, M. (2018) ‘How to topple a dictator: the rebel plot that freed the Gambia’, Guardian, 22 May.Google Scholar
Roy, A. (2014) ‘Worlding the South’ in Parnell, S. and Oldfield, S. (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Setrana, M. and Tonah, S. (2016) ‘Do transnational links matter after return? Labour market participation among Ghanaian return migrants’, Journal of Development Studies 52 (4): 549–60.Google Scholar
Sheller, M. and Urry, J. (2006) ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A 38: 207–26.Google Scholar
Simone, A. M. (2001) ‘On the worlding of African cities’, African Studies Review 44 (2): 15–41.Google Scholar
Simone, A. M. (2011) ‘The urbanity of movement: dynamic frontiers in contemporary Africa’, Journal of Planning Education and Research 31 (4): 379–91.Google Scholar
Sinatti, G. (2011) ‘“Mobile transmigrants” or “unsettled returnees”? Myth of return and permanent resettlement among Senegalese migrants’, Population Space and Place 17 (2): 153–66.Google Scholar
Sinatti, G. (2019) ‘Return migration, entrepreneurship and development: contrasting the economic growth perspective of Senegal’s diaspora policy through a migrant-centred approach’, African Studies 78 (4): 609–23.Google Scholar
Singleton, J. (ed.) (1998) Learning in Likely Places: varieties of apprenticeship in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spadavecchia, C. (2013) ‘Migration of women from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe: the role of highly skilled women’, Sociology and Technoscience 3 (3): 96–116.Google Scholar
Thiong’o, N. (2009) Something Torn and New: an African renaissance. Philadelphia PA: Basic Civitas Books.Google Scholar
Vertovec, S. (2001) ‘Transnationalism and identity’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27 (4): 573–82.Google Scholar
Wong, M. (2014) ‘Navigating return: the gendered geographies of skilled return migration to Ghana’, Global Networks 14 (4): 438–57.Google Scholar