Laurent Fourchard

LAGOS AND THE INVENTION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN NIGERIA, 1920–60

This paper seeks to trace the origins of offences by youths as a distinct social concern in Lagos and examines the categorization of a group, the ‘juvenile delinquent’, by colonial administrators and welfare officers. While organized pickpocketing and prostitution by young people emerged as an issue in Nigerian newspapers in the 1920s, it was largely ignored by local administrators until the appointment, in 1941, of the first Social Welfare Officer. This led to the implementation of new administrative and judiciary machinery which combined two processes: it legislated ‘juvenile delinquency’ into existence as a clearly identifiable social problem; and criminalized a large portion of urban youth, especially female hawkers. The combination of these processes constitutes what can be called the invention of juvenile delinquency in Nigeria.

Between world history and state formation : new perspectives on Africa's cities

The dramatic urban change taking place on the African continent has led to a renewed and controversial interest in Africas cities within several academic and expert circles. Attempts to align a growing but fragmented body of research on Africas urban past with more general trends in urban studies have been few but have nevertheless opened up new analytical possibilities. This article argues that to move beyond the traps of localism and unhelpful categorizations that have dominated aspects of urban history and the urban studies literature of the continent, historians should explore African urban dynamics in relation to world history and the history of the state in order to contribute to larger debates between social scientists and urban theorists. By considering how global socio-historical processes articulate with the everyday lives of urban dwellers and how city-state relationships are structured by ambivalence, this article will illustrate how historians can participate in those debates in ways that demonstrate that history matters, but not in a linear way. These illustrations will also suggest why it is necessary for historians to contest interpretations of Africas cities that construe them as ontologically different from other cities of the world.

Bureaucrats and indigenes: Producing and bypassing certificates of origin in Nigeria

ABSTRACT In the last three decades, the politics of indigeneity have led to discrimination against and marginalization of non-indigenes as well as numerous violent conflicts between indigenes and non-indigenes in Nigeria. This discrimination, which is based on a localized place of belonging, has today become bureaucratized: local governments produce ‘certificates of indigene’ to identify the origin of their holders. This article looks at the bureaucratic machinery of issuing certificates of origin in two local governments of Oyo State (in the south-west) and the everyday encounters between users and bureaucrats that cannot be reduced to practices of corruption. It looks at the complicated and ambivalent process of identifying a ‘true indigene’; this process is supposed to strengthen local citizenship but it also contributes to the daily functioning of the state and is largely accepted by the majority as part of the states ‘insidious gentleness’. The article also seeks to understand why official discrimination against non-indigenes is poorly contested locally by assessing the role of these documents in accessing public employment, university places and basic services, and examining whether areas inhabited by non-indigenes are perceived as being neglected or abandoned by the state. Currently, discrimination policies are implemented unequally and in many instances client–patron relationships help sidestep these policies. RÉSUMÉ Au cours des trois dernières décennies, les politiques de l’indigénéité ont conduit à la discrimination et la marginalisation des non-indigenes au Nigeria et à de nombreux conflits entre indigenes et non-indigenes. Cette discrimination fondée sur une politique localisée de l’appartenance est aujourd’hui bureaucratisée : les gouvernements locaux produisent des certificats d’indigene qui identifient clairement les origines de leur détenteur. Cet article explore l’appareil bureaucratique chargé de délivrer ces certificats dans deux gouvernements locaux de l’Etat d’Oyo (dans le Sud-ouest) et les interactions quotidiennes entre usagers et bureaucrates qui ne peuvent se réduire, contrairement aux perceptions populaires, à des pratiques de corruption. Il examine plus particulièrement le processus compliqué et ambivalent d’identification d’un ‘vrai indigene’ censé renforcer le sentiment d’appartenance à une citoyenneté locale et qui contribue simultanément au fonctionnement routinier de l’Etat. Cette « douceur insidieuse » de l’Etat est largement acceptée par la majorité. L’article essaie aussi de comprendre pourquoi la discrimination officielle contre les non-indigenes est si peu contestée localement en évaluant le rôle de ces certificats dans l’accès à l’emploi public, à l’université et aux services de base. Il se demande enfin si les quartiers habités par les non-indigenes sont localement perçus comme abandonnés par l’Etat. Il s’avère que les politiques discriminatoires sont en réalité très inégalement appliquées et l’importance des relations de patronage permet en réalité de contourner nombreuses formes de discriminations.

Introduction of xenophobia and citizenship: the everyday politics of exclusion and inclusion in Africa

If you go to Alexandra (Johannesburg), to Sunnyside (Pretoria) ... everywhere, spaza shops, hair salons, everything has been taken over by foreign nationals ... They displace South Africans by making them not competitive. (Major Kobese, Director of Policy Support in the Office of the Director General, Department of Home Affairs, South Africa, cited by C. van der Westhuizen in Cape Times, 6 September 2011, p. 11)

The Limits of Penal Reform: Punishing Children and Young Offenders in South Africa and Nigeria (1930s to 1960)

In the 1930s and early 1940s, a new set of experts in South Africa and Nigeria favoured the adoption of similar bodies of legislation based on nineteenth-century British penal reform with the idea that rehabilitation rather than punishment was a more effective strategy for dealing with the ‘juvenile delinquent’ and children in ‘need of care’. This transnational penal reform movement was shaped by local social and political attitudes toward youth crime. The reformist movement was an ambivalent project however. Since its inception in the British Empire and after the Nationalists came to power in South Africa, officials relied on localised versions of the social disorganisation thesis, which argued that juvenile delinquency and destitution was the product of the urbanisation process. In both countries this thesis provided the main ideological basis for the development of a punitive welfare state: flogging, repatriation to the countryside, imprisonment, forced work (in South Africa), and fines (in Nigeria) became the major bureaucratic solutions provided by an expanding welfare state.