African Human Mobility Review

Migrations Between Africa and China: A Decentered Approach

Oreva Olakpe — 2023-08-18

Editorial

Prof Mulugeta Dinbabo — 2023-04-30

Migration in Southern Africa

Prof Daniel Tevera — 2023-04-30

Higher Education as ‘Strategic Power’? An Assessment of China-Africa Higher Education Partnerships and Collaborations

Obert Hodzi — 2023-08-18

China is internationalizing its higher education sector – setting up several bilateral and multilateral partnerships between public and private institutions across the globe. However, as the “West” is disentangling itself from partnerships with Chinese institutions of higher education and the Confucius Institutes (CIs), African countries seem to be turning to Beijing. As a result, China overtook France to become the most preferred destination for African students. But, is higher education Beijing’s new strategy to enhance its global status? What is the effect of the shift toward Chinese higher education on Africa’s migration trends, and what is the agency of actors in Africa? Focusing on these questions, and premised on the concepts of student mobility, South–South Cooperation (SSC), and people-to-people exchange to explain the novelty and exceptionality of the partnerships, this paper explores the typology, nature, and processes involved in these partnerships and collaborations.

Deportability, Deportation and Nigerian 'Deportspora' in China

Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo — 2023-08-18

How do the manifestations of deportability in everyday life and deportation experiences constitute African migrants into a “deportspora” in China? Despite the scholarly attention paid to the migration of Africans to China, questions of deportability and the simultaneous, reverse flows through their deportation are under-explored. In this article, I examine this critical gap by exploring the lifeworlds of Nigerian migrants and deportees from China, using data from two separate studies conducted in 2017 and 2020–2021. Nigerians are exposed to “illegalization,” experience deportability threats, and become vulnerable to arrest and re-dispersal as deportees. The realities of being undocumented and overstaying, the social act of running, and the host society’s instrumentalization of deportation to regulate or order the migrant community all point to the existence of Nigerian deportspora in China. The import of this form of social formation makes deportability and deportation an essential part of social life in the African migrant community in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The article advances critical debates in deportation studies, especially in the under-researched context of Sino-African migrations.

South Africa’s Involvement in Counterinsurgency in Cabo Delgado: The Inclusion of the Views of Mozambican Migrants as an Alternative People-Centric Approach

Joseph Makanda — 2023-04-30

Most scholarship on terrorism in Cabo Delgado (Mozambique) has focused on the nature and causes of the insurgency, who the insurgents are, where the insurgents come from, their underlying needs, and how the current military operations may be successful from a state-centric perspective. As a result, the role of non-state actors, such as migrants, has been left out. This is a qualitative study that relies on secondary data sources to offer a critical survey of the work done in the context of terrorism in Cabo Delgado. Using the counterinsurgency theory, the paper argues for the inclusion of the voice of Mozambican migrants in South Africa’s involvement in counterinsurgency in Cabo Delgado as one of the ways of developing a population-centric non-military approach. This is founded on direct and indirect ways of securing the population’s support, thereby isolating the insurgents in Mozambique. An awareness of the views of these migrants can shed light on what perpetuates the insurgency in Mozambique. The paper suggests new empirical studies that include the seemingly forgotten role of
migrants, in a non-military and people-centered approach in seeking to undermine global terror networks.

Faith-Based Business Ethics Among African Muslim Small-Scale Businessowners in Guangzhou, China

Qiuyu Jiang — 2023-08-18

Based on 14 months of ethnographic research, this article examines how African Muslim migrants build and maintain faith-based business ethics and how they apply these ethical business norms to help navigate their transnational lives in Guangzhou, China. Most of the African Muslim migrants included in the study are small-scale business owners who engage in semi-formal economic activities in both local and home markets. They face racial, cultural, and legal challenges on a daily basis. Unable to access formal means of support due to their precarious economic and legal status, many African Muslim small-business owners rely on informal business ethics to ensure a safe trading environment and mitigate risk. Their business ethics, I argue, are rooted in what I term “religious common ground” – the moral and ethical values shared among migrants from different Muslim groups. This article also explores the enforcing mechanisms of African Muslim small-scale business owners’ business ethics, such as mosques and coreligion business networks. This article concludes that there is no universal, standard code of conduct among African Muslim business owners in Guangzhou. Individuals among different Muslim communities have diverse interpretations of business ethics and practice them differently based on their nationality, ethnicity, religious habits, and socio-cultural backgrounds. This article contributes to a small but important literature that addresses the central role that religion plays in Muslim migrants’ business practices in a non-Muslim society.

South-South Cross-Border Marriage Between Chinese Men and Ethiopian Women

Wei Wang — 2023-08-18

This article develops an ideal type of South-South cross-border marriage. Based on an eight-month multi-sited ethnography in Ethiopia and China, I identified an unusual conjuncture of global forces, connections, and imaginations that facilitated cross-border marriages between Chinese men and local women in Ethiopia, which should be considered a novel ideal type. Its theoretical novelty is not only defined by the unique dynamics among Sino-Ethiopian spouses vis-à-vis the “segregated” Chinese documented in existing studies but also by these marriages’ distinct formation mechanisms. Sino-Ethiopian marriage is not formed due to China being an attractive destination but is associated with China’s incompatible hard and soft power as forces, Chinese factories and accumulated Sino-Ethiopian social networks in local communities as connections, and localized imaginations. Furthermore, this study calls for a paradigm shift in examining cross-border marriages between a developing South and a rising South in this dramatically changing global capitalist world system.

Framing Chinese Treatment of Africans in Guangzhou: A Study of Nigerian and Ghanaian Online Newspapers

Abdul-Gafar Oshodi — 2023-08-18

The treatment of Africans in Guangzhou, China in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic – here referred to as the “Guangzhou episode” – generated strong criticisms and made news headlines within and outside Africa. This paper analyzes the reportage of the episode in four online African newspapers: two each from Nigeria and Ghana. Specifically, it sheds light on how the episode was framed, comparing coverage between both countries. Using a discourse analysis that prioritizes language, source, and focus, the paper demonstrates that while Western media were important influences and sources for the newspapers, the African migrants’ experiences in the episode were largely framed within (ahistorical) victimhood. Yet the idea of “African” migrants had a noticeable Nigerian dimension.

Who Wants to Go Where? Regional Variations in Emigration Intention in Nigeria

Tunde Alabi — 2023-04-30

There has been an increase in the number of Nigerians desperately leaving the country. In the absence of accurate data on the rate of actual emigration, this study investigated emigration intention in Nigeria, and how it varies between northern and southern Nigeria – two regions with perennial sociocultural differences that have been neglected in migration research. The study also investigated the factors associated with emigration intention. It utilized secondary data from the Afrobarometer survey, including 1,600 Nigerian adults aged 18 and above. Logistic regression models were fitted to address the study objectives. The study found that the emigration intention rate in Nigeria was 35.5%, but it varied from 30.3% in the north to 40.3% in the south. The rate ranged from 26% in the north-east to 46.4% in the south-eastern part of the country. The most preferred destination for northern Nigerians was another country in Africa (32.4%), but it was North America for southerners (43.2%). At the multivariate level, the study found that living in the south, being educated, using the internet frequently, having tolerance for homosexuals, and participating in politics increased the likelihood of
emigration intention. However, being old, employed and having religious tolerance reduced the odds of emigration intention. The regional models revealed notable differences in the influence of age, education, employment, tolerance, and political participation. The study discusses the implications of the findings.