Hannah Cross

Finance, Development, and Remittances: Extending the Scale of Accumulation in Migrant Labour Regimes

Abstract The last decade has seen a heightened level of interest in the relationship between remittances and development, driven by the World Bank and other Bretton Woods Institutions. This has materialised in a global agenda to incorporate migrants and their households in commercial banking. The double significance of this policy rests in the financial incorporation of migrants and their households, and in the deepening entrenchment of the historical labour migration dynamic between sending communities and centres of capital. The central role of labour power in the advance of money forms the core of this analysis of a contemporary market-building strategy. This article presents a threefold critique of the global remittance agenda, based on (1) its transformative profit-driven development ideology, (2) its detachment of remittances from the political economy of migrant labour regimes, and (3) its dismissal of existing modes of remitting and uses of the funds.

Migrants, borders and global capitalism: West African labour mobility and EU borders

1. Introduction: Conceptualising Migration and Labour Mobility 2. Capitalism, the State and Labour Migration 3. Primitive Accumulation and Labour Mobility: West African Migration in Historical Perspective 4. Accumulation, Dispossession and Labour Mobility: The Political Economy of Migration in Senegal and Mauritania 5. Regulating Migrant Labour: Clandestine Emigration and the EU 6. The Projection of Borders: the EU in Mauritania 7. Keeping Labour Costs Down: Global Pressures and West African Migrants in Spain 8. Remittances and Development: Why Formalising Remittances will not Alleviate Poverty 9. Conclusion: Unfree Labour Mobility between West Africa and the EU

Neoliberalism, labour power and democracy – the sense of an ending

Labour will take robust action to end the self-regulation of [UK] Department for International Development private contractors, establishing and enforcing new rules to ensure aid is used to reduce ...

African women’s struggles in a gender perspective

Women’s movements and associations flourished throughout Africa from the 1980s under major socio-economic and political transformations such as the democratisation of political regimes, the liberal...

Divisive democracy and popular struggle in Africa

In the post-Cold War international order, this journal has been concerned with the limitations of liberal democracy as demanded by donors, anticipating that it amounts to ‘political stability rather than democracy’ and ‘various forms of authoritarian regime with strictly limited political pluralism’ (Cliffe and Seddon 1991, 10). Issa Shivji (1991, 82) has argued that the liberal perspective of democracy is ‘part of the ideology of domination – in Africa essentially a moment in the rationalisation and justification of compradorial rule’. More recently, in a series of workshops in Dakar known as ‘Les Samedis de l’Économie’, Ndongo Samba Sylla (2014, 52) claimed that ‘there is no democratic government in the contemporary world’ and, as Francis Fukuyama acknowledges, the prediction of the ‘end of history’ has met its end (Ibid. 69). Recalling Marx and Engels’ observation that the dominant ideas of an epoch are just the ideas of the dominant class, Sylla qualifies his argument that:

Muslim families in global Senegal: money takes care of shame

belonging intersects with gender inequalities, or even if ethnicity is an important factor among female traders. Kinyanjui does a sterling job in showing the ways in which women organise themselves, support one another and help each other progress through informal organisations (Chapters 6 and 7). She discusses different forms of collective organisations (such as chama cha soko or chama, vyama in the plural – street or market associations, social groups) to show how such collective action contributes to women’s moving from the margins to the centre and empowers them. While this part of analysis is one of the most original parts of this book, I found it overtly optimistic at points. For instance, while it is undeniable that cooperation helps women’s trading activities, the inevitable competition for customers is not discussed here. Moreover, while female traders’ informal organisation is undoubtedly important in easing women’s presence in the central Nairobi, women’s arrival to the Central Business District was probably more related to the opportune historical circumstances (Asian traders leaving) rather than to the strategic choices of organised women’s groups. Women and the informal economy in urban Africa might be an ambitious title for the analysis that focuses only on female garment traders of Nairobi, but it is an important pioneering work that opens the door to the gender analysis of Kenyan informal sector. It is an important reference to anyone interested in gender, political economy of the African city, women’s informal organisation or urban planning.

Africa and the drugs trade revisited

In the 1990s Africa, once again, became ‘a new frontier’ – this time for the global war on drugs. Recognising the significance of the continent’s immersion in the global drug trade, this journal dedicated a pioneering special issue to the matter in 1999 (Vol. 26, No. 79). The previous year, the UN had held its General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) and published its first major report on drugs in Africa (UNDCP 1999). ROAPE’s focus on the drugs trade grew out of these initiatives at the time. The next UNGASS took place this year, in April 2016, against the backdrop of accelerating global drug policy reforms and the expansion and transformation of drug markets throughout Africa. The role of developing countries in policing drugs, but also in informing and shaping broader policy, added both depth and dilemmas in the run-up to the deliberations in New York. Seizing this opportune moment to present and discuss new research from across the continent, this special issue revisits some of the themes explored in 1999 and introduces new findings and avenues for research. Intended to dispel myths about Africa’s ‘drug problem’, contributors aim to steer both the academic and policymaking debate towards issues emerging from empirical findings in a variety of country contexts. The parameters of the continent’s involvement in the production, sale and consumption of (illicit) drugs have been subject to a number of notable changes since ROAPE’s first special issue on the topic. National policing bodies such as Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency have expanded their capacity, often with the assistance of external donors. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has opened offices in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Pretoria, and actively seeks to collaborate with local authorities. A multinational maritime task force is now policing the Indian Ocean and making record seizures, such as the more than 1.5 tonnes of heroin intercepted off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania in 2015 alone (CMF 2015a, 2015b). As a result, trafficking routes have evolved to evade intensifying policing. Consumption patterns on the continent have also changed. New drugs, such as methamphetamines, are sold and even produced in a number of African countries (Mark 2013). Substances previously confined to metropolitan areas are now trickling into rural areas (Syvertsen et al. 2016). In April 2015, Pierre Lapaque, the West and Central Africa representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), described the continent as ‘the market of the future for illegal drugs’ (Bouchaud 2015). Today drug consumption, trade and production in Africa is the subject of a special commission headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and discussed by media and policymakers in almost every African country (WACD 2014). The fact that the African Union has developed two Plans of Action on Drug Control and Crime Prevention – for 2007–2012 and for 2013– 2018 – is indicative of the continental scale of the phenomenon. However, statements like Lapaque’s convey an image of a sudden crisis that fits neatly into the broader rhetoric of the global drug prohibition regime. It also resonates with Africa-specific narratives of terrorism, corruption and state ‘failure’, which have captivated a range of audiences in the past decade and a half.

The politics of globalized labour in Africa

Gone, apparently, are the days when Africa could be dismissed as the ‘hopeless continent’, as The Economist (May 13, 2000), once described it. Such headlines, coupled with graphic images of war, disease and famine, were often used to create a picture of developmental malaise and a continent that has deviated from the ‘success’ story of contemporary global capitalism. While we have not completely escaped such tropes, we can nonetheless begin to witness the emergence of a more optimistic outlook. One could be forgiven for thinking that Africa is about to ‘take off’ like we have never witnessed before if we are to believe some of the seductive headlines that have populated media columns and book titles in recent years. The Economist (December 3, 2011), for example, recently claimed that Africa is full of ‘hopeful economies’ underpinned by strong Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth that has produced an unprecedented number of African billionaires flanked by swelling middle classes. Other authors have lined up to declare that this could be ‘Africa’s moment’ (Severino and Ray 2011) or the era in which ‘Africa emerges’ (Rotberg 2013). Pictures of shopping malls, skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption regularly appear within glossy magazine articles to evoke an image of a continent that is ‘finally’ taking its place within contemporary global capitalism. More critical accounts of these trends, however, suggest that narratives of ‘Africa’s rise’ are as naïve and simplistic as they are self-serving and problematic. Somerville (2013), for example, notes how ‘this flight of fancy is redolent of a “one-size fits all” approach to Africa and it exposes the lack of detailed differentiation of the progress in some areas and the decline in others.’ According to Mkandawire (2014), what is neglected by these accounts is not only a recognition of African heterogeneity, but also the social problems and vast inequalities generated by this form of economic growth; a view supported by Ray Bush (2013, 63), who argues that:

Understanding people and power in African political economy

We suffer the recent loss of a founding editor and dedicated contributor to this journal, Lionel Cliffe. Issa Shivji, Peter Lawrence and Morris Szeftel pay tribute in this issue. Lionel was a generous friend and mentor to many of us and his deeply engaged scholarship, both in the struggles he brought to light and, with the people around him (in the globalised sense), substantially exceeds the contemporary dimensions of academic achievement. A loss of this scale leads one inexorably to re-evaluate what is important but Lionel is an inspiration to me because consciously and by example, he also showed this in his life. We met in the formative and typically disheartening years of my academic career and built a friendship based on our shared interest in migration and refugee issues, a concern that he, his partner and daughter were actively engaged in while I was writing up fieldwork from West Africa. He regarded me with his characteristic warmth and humour and once playfully referred to me as his ‘grandstudent’; while our conversations were never trivial but focused on our joint research project (mapped out and yet to be finished), on world events including wars and revolutions, and on the experiences and insights of him and his comrades. In reflecting on Lionel’s influence, I recognise that over our leisurely coffees and sturdy lunches, seemingly only ever in the sun on the lesser known terraces in the University of Leeds campus or in his resplendent South Yorkshire landscape, he left me with something of a manifesto: to fight for political awareness, to nurture the minds of compassionate people who struggle, and to enjoy life. Lionel implored those of us who earn our living in academia to make choices about our work agenda and approach, opting for an approach that is not ‘forced upon us by institutional pressures and intellectual fashions’, and to be prepared to rebel as we examine our vocation. Emphasising the need to build networks with other scholars and activists, he noted that ‘not all intellectuals earn their bread as academics, and not all academics deserve the title intellectuals’ (Cliffe 2012, 222). The especially industrious and solidary tone of our latest editorial meeting, the first of our 40th anniversary year, was undoubtedly a credit to Lionel’s influence. Although we can barely begin to consider his legacy at this early time, we are making concrete plans to do so. Lionel continued up to the end of his life to cultivate intellectual projects and collaborations and to set and elaborate on research agendas for the Review and elsewhere, based on his political concerns. At the celebration of Lionel’s life last November, a former colleague recounted his response when employers demanded that he state his aims and objectives in teaching. After some thought, he explained that his aim was to instil empathy in students for people around the world. This empathy is ingrained in Lionel’s work, reflected in his consistent attention to gender as well as class in the changing relations of production (see Cliffe 1978, 339–342), and it has played an important role in shaping the ‘aims and objectives’ of this journal. It underpins a radical approach to political economy because, as Agozino’s piece in this issue reminds us, capitalism as the prevailing ideology actively discourages the understanding of people in the world, particularly those who struggle. In the fable of primitive accumulation, there are two types of people: those who work hard, invest wisely, are highly educated and are wealthy, and, on the other hand, the ‘lazy rascals’ who waste their time and wages, rob or beg for a living and are poor (see Marx [1867] 1970, 713). The continuous accumulation of capital is