Elodie Razy & Marie Rodet 
Children on the Move in Africa [PDF ebook] 
Past and Present Experiences of Migration

A timely interdisciplinary, comparative and historical perspective on African childhood migration that draws on the experience of children themselves to look at where, why and how they move – within and beyond the continent – andthe impact of African child migration globally.






Children in Africa are heavily involved in migration but we know too little about the circumstances in which they migrate, their motivations and the impact of migration on their welfare, on wider society and in a global context. This book seeks to retrieve the experiences of child migrants, and to examine how child migration differs from adult migration and whether the condition of childhood pushes individuals towards specific migratory trajectories. It also examines the opportunities that child migrants seek elsewhere, the lack of opportunities that make them move elsewhere and to what extent their trajectories and strategies are gendered.

Analysing the diversity and complexity of children’s experiences of mobility in Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Sudan, Togo and Zambia, the authors look at patterns of fosterage, child circulation within Africa and beyond the continent; therole of education, child labour and conceptions of place and ‘home’; and the place of the child narrator in migrant fiction. Comparing different methodological and theoretical approaches and setting the case studies within the broader context of family migration, transnational families, colonial and postcolonial migration politics, religious encounter and globalization in Africa, this book provides a much-needed examination of this contentious and criticalissue.


Elodie Razy is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Liege (Fa SS). She is the co-founder and co-editor of the online journal
Anthropo Children: Ethnographic Perspectivesin Children & Childhood. Marie Rodet is a Senior Lecturer in African History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). She is currently working on her second monograph on slave resistance in Kayes, Mali.

Mục lục

Preface – Benjamin N. Lawrance

Introduction: Child Migration in Africa: Key Issues and New Perspectives – Elodie Razy

Introduction: Child Migration in Africa: Key Issues and New Perspectives – PART I: CHILD MIGRANTS: BETWEEN VULNERABILITY AND AGENCY? – Marie Rodet

‘An Ardent Desire to be Useful’: Senegalese Students, Religious Sisters and Migration for Schooling in France, 1824-1840 – Kelly Duke-Bryant

Girl Pawns, Brides and Slaves: Child Trafficking in Southeastern Nigeria, 1920s – Robin Chapdelaine

PART II: BEING A CHILD AND BECOMING A GENDERED ADULT: THE CHALLENGES OF MIGRATIONS IN CHILDHOOD

‘Bringing a Girl from the Village’: Gender, Child Migration and Domestic Service in Post-colonial Zambia – Sacha Hepburn

‘I Will Never Become a Crocodile but I am Happy if I Eat Enough’: A Psychological Analysis of Child Fosterage and Resilience in Contemporary Mali – Paola Porcelli

Working as a ‘Boy’: Labour, Age and Masculinities in Togo, c. 1975-2005 – Marco Gardini

PART III: MOBILITY, IMAGINATION AND MAKING NATIONS

Childhood, Space and Memory: Migrations of the
Métis in Central Highland Madagascar – Violaine Tisseau

‘We Were Mixed with all Types’: Educational Migration in the Northern Territories of Colonial Ghana – Lacy S. Ferrell

India-South Africa Mobilities in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: Minors, Immigration Encounters in Cape Town and Becoming South African – Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie

Education, Migration and Nationalism: Mapping the School Days of the First Genderation of Southern Sudanese Nationalist Leaders, c. 1948-1972 – with Harjyot Hayer – Hannah Whitaker

Child Narration as Device for Negotiation for Space and Identity Formation in Recent Nigerian Migrant Fiction – Oluwole Coker