Oliver Bakewell

‘Keeping Them in Their Place’: the ambivalent relationship between development and migration in Africa

Abstract While there has been an explosion of academic and practitioner interest in the relationship between migration and development in the past decade, this article poses the neglected question of what is meant by development in this literature. It focuses on the ideas of development underpinning development interventions across Africa and shows how they have sedentary roots which are focused on the control of mobility and tend to cast migration as a symptom of development failure. This can be seen in the ongoing ambivalence of many development actors towards migration across Africa. The article argues that the current initiatives to link migration and development will remain fundamentally flawed until the concept of development is reconceptualised for a mobile world. In particular, it calls for the reconsideration of the ideas of the good life envisaged in development initiatives, moving beyond models of development based on the nation-state and abandoning the paternalist paradigms that fail to recognise the agency of migrants from poor countries.

Migration Systems, Pioneer Migrants and the Role of Agency

Abstract The notion of a migration system is often invoked but it is rarely clearly defined or conceptualized. De Haas recently provided a powerful critique of the current literature highlighting some important flaws that recur through it. In particular, migration systems tend to be identified as fully formed entities, and there is no theorization as to how they come into being and how they break down. The internal dynamics which drive such changes are not examined. Such critiques of migration systems relate to wider critiques of the concept of systems in the broader social science literature, where they are often presented as black boxes in which human agency is largely excluded. The challenge is how to theorize system dynamics in which the actions of people at one time contribute to the emergence of systemic linkages at a later time. This article focuses on the genesis of migration systems and the notion of pioneer migration. It draws attention both to the role of particular individuals, the pioneers, and also the more general activity of pioneering which is undertaken by many migrants. By disentangling different aspects of agency, it is possible to develop hypotheses about how the emergence of migrations systems is related to the nature of the agency exercised by different pioneers or pioneering activities in different contexts.

Migration, Diasporas and Development: Some Critical Perspectives

Summary This article poses three questions about the recent resurgence of academic and policy interest in migration, development and diasporas. First, over many years the connection between migration and development has been of marginal interest for many of those involved in the field of development studies; in many cases, where it has been considered, migration has been seen as a symptom of a development failure and cause of further underdevelopment. What has changed to bring about the dramatic turnaround in views in the last decade? Second, governments and development organisations are increasingly focusing on the role of ‘diasporas’ in the process of development. The attempts to co-opt diasporas into existing development practice tend to assume that they share a common set of interests and aspirations with the development industry.Here, we ask who is included within these diasporas and why should they be expected to contribute to development? This leads to the third question: what is the nature of development in which we are anticipating that the migration process and diasporas should play a role? This article argues that existing models of development are inherently sedentary and struggle to incorporate migration. In the increasingly mobile world new concepts of development are required. An open and critical dialogue between diaspora members and the development industry may help to achieve this.

Push-pull plus: reconsidering the drivers of migration

ABSTRACT Drivers can be understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement. This article considers key drivers of migration and explores different ways that they may be configured. We modify existing explanations of migration to generate a framework which we call push-pull plus. To understand migration flows better, analysts could usefully distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers. Combinations of such drivers shape the conditions, circumstances and environment within which people choose to move or stay put, or have that decision thrust upon them. In any one migration flow, several driver complexes may interconnect to shape the eventual direction and nature of movement. The challenge is to establish when and why some drivers are more important than others, which combinations are more potent than others, and which are more susceptible to change through external intervention. Drawing on Afghan and Somali movements featuring ‘mixed migration’, the article concludes that proximate and mediating drivers, rather than those in the structural and precipitating spheres, appear to offer greater potential for intervention. To be effective, though, migration policy should be understood not simply as a stand-alone lever, but within the wider political economy.

Broadcasting Migration Outcomes

This chapter examines feedback, one of the social mechanisms by which migration between localities in one period can affect subsequent migrations, giving rise to rather stable and recurrent patterns of migration. This feedback from earlier migrations is generated by the flow and counter-flow of people, goods, information and ideas in what are often referred to as ‘migration systems’ (Mabogunje, 1970; Kritz et al., 1992; Fawcett, 1989; Bakewell, 2014). Much of the literature to date has focused on feedback arising from the operation of migrants’ social networks. The idea of the social networks is certainly a powerful one and helps to explain the dissemination of ideas and behaviour between people and places. It has long played a central part in theories of migration, helping to explain why many migrants from the same origin location may end up at the same destination (Gurak and Caces, 1992; Singhanetra-Renard, 1992; Massey, 1990).

Introduction: Feedback in Migration Processes

The story of the pioneers setting off on an adventure into distant places, building new lives and then calling on people back home to join them has been told in many different ways over generations. Such tales of journeys and migrations lie at the heart of many narratives of national origin. For example, this is seen very clearly in the foundations of the United States, with the European ‘discovery’ of the New World and the subsequent mass migration across the Atlantic away from the desperate poverty of Europe. Today, it is commonly reflected in debates about the growth of migrant populations across the world. The idea of migration stimulating further migration is also well established in migration studies (de Haas, 2010; Massey et al., 1998). However, this process is often taken for granted and there is very little analysis of how and why this should happen, or—perhaps equally importantly—we are lacking the in-depth exploration of cases where it does not occur or when the process appears to be reversed so that initial migration actually hinders further migration.

Migration and Development

To what extent does development influence migration? How does migration affect development? In recent years, there has been a huge amount of research into such questions about what has come to be known as the migration–development nexus. In this important collection, Oliver Bakewell draws together key articles by leading scholars which investigate past and current thinking on the complex linkages between migration and development. The volume studies the impacts of levels of development on both internal and international migration and the impacts of migration on economic and social change in both origin and destination areas. Further topics covered include the influence of transnationalism and diasporas. It presents the reasons for the rise of the migration–development nexus and concludes by offering some critical perspectives on it.

Negotiating a Space of Belonging: A Case Study from the Zambia-Angolan Borderlands

Through a case study of Angolans settled in north-west Zambia, this chapter explores the gap between the formal regulatory environment that prohibits the integration of refugees and its local articulation that delivers precisely the opposite. Those who arrived as Angolan refugees have established a durable space of belonging, with a sustained welcome from local villagers, which has proved robust in the face of the government’s repatriation programme. The chapter shows how the underlying patterns of mobility, cross-border livelihoods and the sense of belonging have a continuity which is little affected by the vagaries of refugee policy defined by distant governments. This is not a story of resistance but one of local adaptation and reinterpretation of the law enabling former refugees effectively to become Zambian citizens.

Introduction: Forging a Study of Mobility, Integration and Belonging in Africa

This is an era in which varied forms of human mobility are redefining the meanings of home, community and belonging across the world, giving rise to novel forms of membership. This chapter argues that the experiences of Africans moving within the continent provide valuable insights into these memberships and the practical and ethical foundations on which they rest. It outlines the volume’s various case studies and highlights their contributions to scholarly debates. In so doing, it evokes the forge as a dual metaphor: on the one hand transforming, as mobility forms and reshapes the meaning and boundaries of community; on the other hand dissembling, as people consciously disguise their history or aspirations, generating inventive forms of representation that allow for novel ways of being. This approach draws attention to migrants, hosts, politicians and others as active, strategic and tactical actors at play within structural constraints and opportunities, rather than as passive subjects of these structural forces. The outcome may not fit with our normative aspirations; some will be illegal, morally dubious and physically precarious. Some others may embrace norms of rights and tolerance, while others reject the moral and political foundations of space-based political community. The chapter concludes by arguing that the work of scholars is not to celebrate the universal power of the subaltern or blindly condemn the constraints imposed by capitalism or coercive states, but rather to document and theorise these outcomes and their determinants. These tasks are at the centre of this chapter and the book it introduces.

Tracing diasporic identifications in Africa's urban landscapes: evidence from Lusaka and Kampala

ABSTRACT The transnational movements of Africans within the continent are seldom conceptualized as leading to diasporic identifications and relationships. In stark contrast, the migration of Africans beyond the continent, which occurs on a smaller scale, is routinely associated with diaspora formation. Drawing on fieldwork with migrants from Anglophone and Francophone West Africa and the Horn of Africa living in Lusaka and Kampala, this paper explores whether their movements gives rise to the formation of diasporic connections that sustain and reproduce identifications with the place and people of origin, over distance and through generations. The analysis illustrates how different layers of ‘origin’ and ‘destination’ factors interact to reinforce or undermine diasporic identifications in Africas urban landscapes. The homeland where mobility is embedded in socioeconomic relations that embrace transnational linkages may perpetuate connections. The conditions of urban life that impose pressures to remain outsiders may perpetuate exclusion and hinder integration.