Hahn 2007d - Migration as Discoursive Space.pdf

7/21/2019 Hahn 2007d - Migration as Discoursive Space.pdf

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Cultures of MigrationAfrican Perspectives

edited by

Hans Peter Hahn and Georg Klute


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Migration as Discursive Space Negotia-

tions of Leaving and Returning in the

Kasena Homeland (Burkina Faso)

Hans Peter Hahn(Bayreuth)

1. Introduction

1

This essay explores a particular perspective on migration. It deals with

migrations from a rural area in Burkina Faso to the West African

coastal regions (Cte dIvoire and Ghana) and in particular with the

situation of returning migrants and the perspective of those left behind

in the village of origin. A closer look at this case study allows us to

move beyond the dominant discourse on migration which explains the

migratory phenomenon as a result of deficits in the society of origin or

as a search for an improvement of ones economic situation. Within

this line of reasoning, to compensate a deficit or to improve a situation

always tends to be regarded as the underlying motive of migrants. This

explanation, which may be called the deficiency-model, is a wide-

spread but not always explicitly pronounced argument both in moderni-

zation (or development) theory as well as in dependency theory in

migration studies (Kearney 1986). Arguably, it may be a result of the

researchers personal bias and of their own social experiences, stem-

ming from non-mobile contexts (De Bruijn et al.2001). In opposition

to this deficiency-model the following essay is based on the assumption

that migration is not born out of need, but embodies part of the

everyday strategies of many people in Africa and elsewhere. With this

I am pursuing the line of thought as outlined in the introduction to this

book.

1 A preliminary version of this paper was presented in November 2005 at aColloquium at the Institute for African Studies at Bayreuth University. I wish to thank

my colleagues for their comments on this text.


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150 Hans Peter Hahn

In contrast to the deficiency-model, the main argument of my con-

tribution is that migration forms a strategy to complement the space, in

which a society and its members are located, in which they feel at

home. The space constituting the basis for personal experiences of the

migrants is enlarged by the fact that they live in more than one location,

moving between the place of origin and destination and acquiring the

necessary competencies to make a living at either of these places

(Meier 2003). The social identity in the society of origin is not ques-

tioned by the phenomenon of migration which is merely developing

into a habit or a tradition. The space associated with the society has no

demarcated boundaries. This space comprises the most diverse loca-

tions or spots in towns and abroad, wherever migrants of a specific

origin live and maintain contact with their places of origin. Identities of

migrants may be strongly influenced or even altered by the impact of

the migration experience (Baker and Aina 1995), but the migrants

tend to assume that, as long as they maintain social relations with their

society of origin, their identities remain congruent with the identities of

the other members. Thus, my second argument is that the maintained

contacts represent a particular value in that they sustain a shared social

identity between migrants and those left behind.My third argument is related to the dynamics of developing new

identities and negotiating aspects of common understanding between

migrants and the people left behind. Considerable misunderstanding

and misjudgement may prevail between migrants and their relatives

who continue to live at the place of origin. But these are topics which

are negotiated with varying results between the two social groups.

They do not, however, question the fundamental conviction on both

sides that they actually belong to one and the same society, independent

of the fact where the respective members live at any given moment.

The perspective adopted in this essay is closely linked to the point

of view taken by Michael Lambert (2002 and in this volume) and

Jeffrey Cohen (2004) as they focus on the relations between migrants,

ex-migrants and those left behind (Lambert dealing with the Jola in

Senegal and Cohen with people from Oaxaca in Mexico). I agree with


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Migration as Discursive Space 151

their interpretations of the role of migration in the respective societies

in that people in my case study and in the two other societies named

above use migration as a feature for negotiation about gender and

generational conflicts. Migration among the Jola and in Oaxaca as well

as for the Kasena in Burkina Faso enhances the space of representation

of values and agency for each of these groups, without rejecting the

notion of shared values and interests. This leads us to the idea of

cultures of migration. In contrast to the usage of this term in other

recent publications (Cohen 2004, Ali 2007), however, culture in our

context has no meaning other than discursive space or sphere of

meaningful negotiations. The term culture may not be understood in

any essentialist vein, i.e. as a particular strategy of acting or a specific

pattern of behavior.

By contrast, the following case study from the village of Kollo in

Southern Burkina Faso will illustrate how fragile and contradictory the

strategies of migrants prove to be. The fact that every single migrants

departure and return to the place of origin has a provisional character

and that the migrants repeatedly risk being condemned by those left

behind, underscores migration should not be regarded as patterned

action. Nevertheless, there is a common understanding of migration,voluntarily accepted by migrants and left-behinds alike. This under-

standing makes migration acceptable for both groups and provides a

space for the articulation of particular interests. It is in this context that

remittances become a key feature. The reciprocal interests between

left-behinds and migrants play an important role in the valuation of

each individual migration process, but none of the men and women

involved in these negotiations has the means to dominate this debate or

to define what is right or wrong as regards the migrants actions. Even

if the views are never unanimous in a society but rather the subject of

differing opinions, they can present a form of foundation for the

cultures of migration. Everyone those left behind like their fellow

migrants participates in the judging of the migrants actions. It is

those discursive fields which integrate migration into the local culture.


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152 Hans Peter Hahn

Focusing the meaning of cultures on the discursive field of ne-

gotiations therefore becomes fundamental for explaining why migrants

leave, why they return to their villages of origin, and why remittances

are so important.2 The cultures of migration in Southern Burkina

Faso have developed in the context of a tradition of migration in West

Africa lasting for almost a century. Thus, migration has a local history;

it is further subject to constant changes in its modes and valuations.

The term culture, used in this sense, underlines that migration is

embedded in local societies in the West African savannah.

For much scientific research and most corresponding literature,

this is hardly a self-evident statement. The observations for example by

Elliot Skinner (1965) on the migration of the Mossi in Burkina Faso

rely on migration being depicted as something that threatens the local

societies. Even though the documentation produced by Skinner is

valuable for its descriptions and its richness in detail, migration seems

to be a phenomenon that either has changed fundamentally since the

1960s or he has misinterpreted it. This is the case in particular regard-

ing his estimation of the effects caused by migration for those left

behind. Thus, Skinner painted a gloomy picture of the Mossi villages

being deserted by the young men, the villages wells collapsing becauseno one was there to maintain them, the fields remaining uncultivated

due to a lack of manpower, and so on Skinner neglected to mention

that migration in the Mossi area (as well as in other regions of Burkina

Faso) had started already at the beginning of the twentieth century and

has not abated ever since. In other words, Skinner simply overlooked

the fact that even in his time there already existed a local tradition of

migration, a tradition that continues until today yet has prevented the

villages from collapsing and the social order from dissolving.

2 The role of remittances is widely discussed in migration studies. Beside the

economic effects on the macro level (impact on national revenues in foreign currencies)the local relevance focuses on the recognition of social obligations. Cliggett (2000,

2003) shows in her Zambian Case study that the value of the remittances is too low toimprove living conditions in the rural settlement. Migrants bring gifts back to the

village of origin mainly in order to strengthen their social position.


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In order to make the problems of identity and shared values as

clear as possible, it is useful to regard migratory phenomena beyond

African contexts, too. Studying the debate surrounding migration in

such divergent places as West Africa, Germany, South America or

Mexico may help to enhance our understanding of migration in all of

these places. Transposing insights from other contexts should not

imply that migrants throughout the world share the same fate or the

same attitudes. But looking beyond the African continent may provide

fresh arguments to reconceive migration for this particular case study.

More specifically, I want to draw on the work of Vilem Flusser, a

migrant himself, who returned to Central Europe after more than thirty

years in South America. Flusser entitled one of his books on migration

and mobility The Freedom of the Migrant (2003), thus opening up a

most unconventional perspective on the actions and identity of mi-

grants. What constitutes the freedom of migrants is obviously a

question that applies to any context of migration worldwide, for

migrants in Africa no less than those in Germany. I will return to this

perspective towards the end of the paper in order to illustrate the

usefulness and transferability of Flussers unique perspective.

The remainder of this essay is divided into three sections. In thefirst I present the findings of a case study based on research among

Kasena people in the village of Kollo in Burkina Faso. In the second I

discuss the Flusserianconcept of Freedom in the light of the migra-

tory phenomena to be observed among the Kasena. In the concluding

section I will assess once more the benefits that can be gained from

using the term cultures of migration.

2. The case study

More than ten years ago, at the beginning of my research among the

Kasena in the village of Kollo in Southern Burkina Faso, only a fewkilometres from the Ghanaian border, migration did not seem to be a


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154 Hans Peter Hahn

very important aspect of the local society.3It was only after some years

and a number of field trips that the significance of migration in this

small village dawned on me. One possible explanation for overlooking

the importance of migration at the time was due to my initial fields of

study, namely agriculture and local crafts. Obviously, during their

absence, migrants participate neither in the one nor the other.

However, there is another even more important reason for my

overlooking the widespread migratory phenomena. At the beginning of

my research I shared the common expectation that the migrants

households would differ significantly from those of other families,

assuming them either to exhibit a different lifestyle or to be enjoying

considerably better economic living conditions.4 Both assumptions

proved to be wrong: It was only little by little and in the course of a

great number of conversations that I discovered that many of those

whom I had interviewed as farmers or craftspeople, and whom I had

accompanied to their fields, could actually look back on experiences of

extended stays in Ghana or Cte dIvoire years or decades earlier.

They had reintegrated into their society of origin without making any

changes in lifestyle compared to those who had never left the village

for an extended period.5

Nor were they any better off than the others.Migration proved to be much more normal than I had expected

and, of course, also much more widespread. In all likelihood, the

3 The findings presented in this text are based on fieldwork in Burkina Faso, carried

out within the framework of the collaborative research programme Local Action inAfrica in the Context of Global Influences (SFB/FK 560) at the African Studies Centre

of Bayreuth University. This research programme financed several research periodsfrom 2001-2006 covering 18 month of fieldwork in Burkina Faso. Previous research(1993-1999) in the same area was made possible through research grants from the

German Research Foundation (DFG). I hereby express my gratitude towards the DFGfor making this research possible.4 The book of Verda (2002) is an outstanding example, of how migrants introduce a

new lifestyle to their villages of origin in Northern Ghana. New and improved housesare among the most prominent features introduced by migrants, when returning. This

applies for Northern Ghana as well as for Madagascar (Thomas 1998) and Belize (Wilk1990).5 This context parallels the findings of Meyer Fortes, dating from the early 1930s.Fortes (1936: 51) reports that ex-migrants re-integrate into their villages of origin in

Northern Ghana and become pure traditionalists.


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frequency of migration in Kollo is not unsimilar to what was reported

by Michael Franke (1982) about a village in Northern Ghana, which is

located only 40 km from Kollo, where Franke found that about 75 % of

the male population had been involved in migration at some point in

their lives. For the women, the share of migrants exceeds 25 %.

Although I have not conducted a survey of all migrants and ex-migrants

in Kollo, the high number of absent men and the imbalance of the sexes

in the households that I documented are strong indicators that Frankes

figures may apply to Kollo, too.6

Another factor which helped to improve my understanding of the

migration phenomena is the report of a British administration official

(Cardinall quoted in Duperray 1984:214), who describes how, in 1918,

several ten thousand Mossi were crossing Navrongo in the North of the

Gold Coast (as Ghana was called at that time) on their way to the

South-West of the country, where there was an urgent need of man-

power for the gold mines. At that time British policy actually encour-

aged temporary North-South labour migration. The British administra-

tion even provided military escorts for the workers to return safely to

their region of origin with their earnings. District Commissioner

Watherston (1908:360), the author of another even earlier account,inquires whether the migrant labourers by dint of the opportunity to

temporarily escape the authority of the village elders and to buy

European fabric at the end of their working period might not be

happier than those left behind at their place of origin?

This rhetorical question most likely will never be answered. The

particular value of these documents, however, is twofold: Firstly, they

provide the earliest figures for migration from Burkina Faso to the

coastal area of West Africa. Secondly, they present historical evidence

for the local embedding of migration: Obviously the migrants already

knew how to travel, where to sleep and how to find provisions on their

6 In the 17 households documented in detail in my sample, there are 21 men as

contrasted with 50 women many of whom raise their children alone, while theirhusbands work in Ghana or Cte dIvoire. For more information on the census see

Hahn (2006:71).


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156 Hans Peter Hahn

journey. In a historical perspective migration has grown constantly

ever since, at times slower, at times faster, even though the policy to

promote it was soon stopped.7At least for some time politics resorted to

the adverse the administration tried to regulate or even prohibit

migration. Yet such measures by the state had very little influence on

the actual behaviour of the migrants (Asiwaju 1976).

Sensitized by these documents, I used later field trips to gather

more information about migrants in Kollo. Questions concerning

absent family members and their activities provided me with valuable

indications as regards migration patterns, durations of stays abroad and

ranges of remittances. The amounts of money brought home when

returning from the Southern Ghana or from Abidjan varied between

20.000 and 200.000 F CFA (equals 30 300 EURO). For my research

on consumption and the acquisition of goods, I concentrated on how the

migrants arranged the balance between monetary gifts and goods of

consumption, placing a special focus on how much money or goods

migrants managed to remit and how these remittances were perceived.

The following examples will both illustrate the problems encountered

by returning migrants, and illuminate the destinies of these migrants.

The first example is about Allasani who belongs to a compound inthe centre of the village, headed by a retired health-officer. In 2001,

when Allasani was 16 years old, he went to Kumasi for the first time.

He wanted to live there with an older brother in order to make his first

experiences with labor migration. After a stay of 6 months, he returned

with a bicycle for himself, which he had defined as the goal of his

undertaking beforehand.8 In addition he gave 20.000 F CFA to his

father. Measured by the short period of his absence and the fact that he

had experienced the South for the first time, his stay was considered to

be a success. There is no question for Allasani that he will seek further

opportunities to migrate and to stay in the South for longer.

7 For further evidence on the relative importance of circular labour migration, evenin the first decades of the colonial period in West Africa, see Gregory, Cordell, and

Pich (1989).8 This pattern of migration rather matches the concept of the target worker as

explained by Gregory and Pich (1983).


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In the second example the first son from a neighboring compound,

Bugayiri, returned with more than 100.000 F CFAin total in cash from

his two-year stay in Abidjan lasting from 2000 to 2002. With this

money he purchased a bicycle (for around 35.000 F CFA) and a radio

recorder (15.000 F CFA) for himself. For his mother he bought a large

metal cooking pot for brewing millet beer (15.000 F CFA) and a complet

(i.e. a skirt) of fabric of the best known quality in the region (7.500 F

CFA). A part of what remained he gave to his father, another part he

used up with his friends at the small market nearby. I emphasize these

numbers because they illustrate how selective and restricted the influ-

ence of the remittances is compared to the economic situation of the

household as a whole. The stay of Bugayiri was regarded as very

successful, indeed, and during the following market days his return,

together with the gifts he had acquired for his family, were a main

subject of conversation in the market.

In the third example we are dealing with Aniwe, the first son of

the above-mentioned retired health-officer and the compound in which

Allasani is living. After spending more than ten years in Abidjan with

the village not having heard from him along most of the period, Aniwe

all of a sudden returned as a grown man in his thirties one afternoon in2002. Aniwe waited in the shade of a tree outside the entrance to the

compound, hesitating to enter until he had had the opportunity to talk

things over with his father. As I learned the following day he had given

his father 20.000 F CFAon this occasion. After all those years he had

not saved more money, the father informed me angrily. He added, he

really should have sent him straight back, and if he did not do so, it was

purely for the sake of Aniwes mother, his first wife.

The fourth example concerns another young man as well. In 2003,

Ako returned to the compound of his parents after five years in Abid-

jan. In the meantime his father, Adagara, had lost his wife and was now

living by himself between the decaying mud houses. He depended on

daily gifts of food, given as charity from a neighbor. Everybody in the

village knew about the precarious situation of Adagaras household, in

spite of the fact that he owned a large radio cassette player as well as


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158 Hans Peter Hahn

several metal buckets and plastic mats. As the old man told me, all

these expensive consumer goods originated from the past visits of Ako.

This time it was Akos plan to do more for his father. Beside the sum of

150.000 F CFAhe had purchased a roll of corrugated iron worth at least

50.000 F CFA, with which he planned to build a new house for his

parents, not knowing about the death of his mother. It took him some

days to come up with a decision: His wife who originally came from

Cte dIvoire and hence did not speak a word of kasIm, the local

language, should stay with her father-in-law and care for him while

Ako returned to Abidjan. But weeks later, when I passed by for a short

visit, he had neither built the house nor was he ready to leave. He was

obviously in trouble. He recognized that he would not be able to leave

until he had found a lasting solution for his fathers problems.

The fifth and last example exhibits a totally different dynamic. A

middle-aged man, Alwarati, lives in his own compound, located in the

south of the village Kollo. Together with his wife and children he had

spent some years in Ghana working on plantations, before deciding to

resettle in Kollo. At the time, when I got to know him better, in 2002,

he had already been back in the village for two years and had built

himself a house roofed with corrugated iron, which led me to believethat he was quite well off at the time of his return. Not only had he

built a house in the immediate vicinity of the compound of his parents

but also a di-ni, which is a traditional round house with a mud roof,

vestibule and adjoining room. As he explained, he had had a dispute

with his younger brother a short time after his arrival in Kollo. For this

reason he had not only built a new compound for himself and his wife

in proximity to his parents place but had also made his mother follow

him into the new compound, constructing a di-ni for her, too. During

a temporary absence a three months trip to Ghana, where he still has

many friends his younger brother in Kollo became sick and died. As

a result of these events many in the village suspected Alwarati of using

witchcraft. After all, he not only seemed to have quite a good liveli-

hood but he had also succeeded in drawing his mother onto his side. In

particular the fact that the old woman had left the compound of the


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forefathers must have represented a provocation for his younger

brother. But this already difficult situation was compounded by the fact

that a few weeks before I had the opportunity to get to know his

compound better his mother died, too. The di-ni, the round house

which had been inhabited for less than two years, the large and still

quite new corrugated iron house with its half-finished enclosure all

this made him and his wife appear to be living on a construction site,

which, considering the turbulences in the family, is probably a fair

description of his social situation: Two members of his family had died

in less than two years, there was the unresolved dispute, the leaving of

the parental compound and, last not least, the neither formalized nor

invalidated accusation of witchcraft, all of which burden him and

threaten his existence in the village. It is unclear how the situation will

develop for him and his family, but my comments sufficiently illustrate

the problems, which should be understood as problems of integration.

These are only a few of the scores of stories of migrants and their

homecoming that I encountered during my research stay. But the

sweep between Allasani, the 16-year-old, who proudly returned home

with his bike after only some months, and Alwarati, the mature adult

who together with his wife and children is seeking both a place andrecognition as head of the compound, suffices to demonstrate two

things: Firstly, there is no such thing as a typical way of migrating,

there is no dominant migration pattern. On the contrary, it is more

accurate to assume a diverse range of migration practices. Secondly,

and notwithstanding this diversity there are rather clear ideas about the

estimation of the action of migrants in the local community. Everybody

can see when (i.e., after which period of time) and how (i.e., equipped

with which resources) a migrant returns. Both aspects are important for

the assessment of that persons actions. But of even greater importance

is the way the ex-migrant deals with the expectations of his family.

3. The freedom of the migrant

What is the relevance of the freedom of the migrant for the context of

Kollo? At first glance, the case study seems to present stories of


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160 Hans Peter Hahn

entanglements and disappointments rather than freedom. As a matter of

fact, many migrants whom I interviewed in the city, far away from their

places of origin, seemed to be afraid of their home. When I inquired

about the period of time that had passed since their last journey and

about their intentions of returning home in the near future, I received

surprisingly evasive responses.9 The apparent fear of the native soil

must be understood as a worry about whether one can compete with the

expectations of the family and if one is in a position to do so at all

how expensive such a visit would be.10

The place of origin represents

a challenge with regard to t ones own economic capability as well as

ones social ties, which one would obviously like to sustain in spite of

all adversities.11

Of course my questions were posed with a particular expectation

in mind. And precisely what was implicit about them made answering

them so difficult for the migrants. My questions and it might just as

well be the questions of any other person who is closer or more trusted

evoked their ambitions not to abandon the ties with their place of

origin. I recognize here a Janus-faced process of refashioning the

migrants identity: On the one hand he is quitting his place of origin,

but on the other hand the migrant is simultaneously realizing evermore clearly his own interest in upholding a link to his place of origin.

In consequence this process creates problems, forcing the migrant to

make decisions, but, as Flusser has argued, the migrant also gets to

know himself, thus becoming better sensitized about the nature of his

ties with his place of origin.

9 Interviews with Kasena from Kollo were carried out in Kumasi (2005) and in

Ouagadougou (2001-2003). Although George Marcus (1995) advocates promoting thisproceeding as: multi-sited fieldwork, I prefer the advantages of a specific perspectivewhich, in the context of my research, are linked to the place of origin. For a critical

discussion of Marcus methodological point of view cf. Hahn (2004).10 This applies to African migrants in Europe as well (Arhinful 2001).11 This notion is quite close to Charles Piots point of view. Piot (2000) describes thesystem of relations between urban Kaby and those living in the area of origin in rural

Northern Togo as a system of reciprocal obligations: People from town have to providefood, consumer goods and other kinds of economic support; people living in the

villages give transcendental protection in terms of the local religious system.


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I intentionally avoid using the notion of home in this context

since this expression seems to restrict its connotation to a specific kind

of linkage. The two questions of whether or not to return and what

defines the quality of attachment to the place of origin are truly central

for an understanding of migration. There is no evidence that the

migrants have any clear-cut conception of what constitutes home and

what its significance for them is. Migrants perpetually face the task

that they need to re-position themselves in relation to their place of

origin. But as the examples indicate, the actual experiences with what

others would call home are very different. Obviously the notion

itself is difficult to grasp, not least because home can be both the place

of origin as well as the destination of migration. At the places of

destination, in such cities as Kumasi, Abidjan or Ouagadougou, people

who are not migrants often highlight the fact of migration by asking

their interlocutors the following question: Where do you come from?

This question of origin often misses the target of an objective reply

and leaves the migrants in the uncomfortable position that they are

continually reminded that they have to determine what constitutes their

true home. For my part, I was rather astonished to find so little

reflection about the notion of home in the scientific literature onmigration.

12 It seems to me that the German-Turkish author Renan

Demirkan presents one of the most convincing reflections yet on the

issues surrounding the redefining of the notion of home. Demirkan

(1991:47) overturns our conventional assumptions of home when she

makes her father (born in Turkey) reflect: Sometimes, home is a place

which is yet to be found.

But if origin and home are terms whose definition depends on

the perspective of the migrant, then what is migration? An intense

debate has arisen about the most appropriate definition of the term

12 Of course there is a great share of literature considering the relevance of the place

of origin for the migration process. But there are only very few documents that makeclear that home is an imagined and re-evaluated place in the cultural topography. In

the African context, the process of gaining a new perspective on the place of origin isvery well discussed in some articles about the Ethnic Associations, founded by

migrants in many African cities (Snyder 1978, Lentz 1995, Gugler 2002).


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162 Hans Peter Hahn

migration, focussing in particular on the definition of circular

migration, or return migration. Both concepts provide a useful

description of the migratory phenomena in Kollo. But any definition

must attempt to cover the more complicated cases, too. For example:

Are the migrants in South Africa who return to their hometown every

weekend also circular migrants? And what does it suggest that there is

such a differential between the intention of returning and the actual

realization? Is a context in which fewer than half of all migrants

actually return still to be described in these terms? Moving beyond the

definition introduced by Sjaastad (1962), which is widely accepted and

sees economics as the primary force, more recent definitions draw on

distance and time as the critical factors (Cordell, Gregory, and Pich

1996, see also Adepoju 1996). Migrants are now only recognized as

such if they stay away from home for no less than a certain period of

time and maintain a certain distance from home. Setting these criteria

aside, the problem of definition would resolve itself more easily if we

placed the perspective of the migrant centre stage rather than the

scholars. It is after all the migrant who defines whether the place

where he is living is the destination of his migration, or whether that

place has come to represent home for him.The examples given in the last section have shown that the experi-

ence of migration is not just to be seen as a consequence of a temporary

absence and a possible return after some time. The empirically measur-

ablepattern ofmigration should not be seen as the basis for migration;

rather, it is the attitudeof the migrant towards his situation. Neither is

it the distance nor the frequency of return, nor even the realization of

plans to return, which are crucial, but rather the perception of this

objectiveby the migrant himself. The freedom that Flusser places in

the centre of migration depicts the process of self-ascribing the home

and redefining the importance of that place for the migrants everyday

life. Personal roots, as Flusser puts it, are no longer something im-

planted but something that belongs to oneself, something for which

one even has to struggle. The freedom of the migrant consists in facing

his ambition of return with all the consequences that this entails, and to


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be sensitized to the irony of roots, which are not grown (in spite of

the biological context of this metaphor) and are not something abso-

lutely necessary.13

Talking about migrants as being uprooted (Colvin,

Ba and Barry 1981) is, by these thoughts, unmasked as nonsense.

Whoever has no roots is not a migrant because the place of origin has

lost relevance for him.

This observation also explains the central role of the logic of ab-

sence and presence, which I encountered again and again in Kollo in

conversations about migrants. If somebody had not visited the village

for 10 to 15 years, this did not seem to be a major problem. The people

left behind were sure that knowledge about the place of origin would

never be lost. However, if it became known that this migrant had

founded a family at the place of destination and raised children there

who had never seen the place of birth of their father, then people would

seriously rebuke this migrant for forgetting his initial intention to

return.

This circumstance explains why in many cases even the children

of migrants, who according to the standard definitions would never

be described as migrants, continue to see themselves as migrants. In

the case of Kollo, the only condition required to be recognized as amigrant by those who live at the place of origin is to have visited the

village in order to see their fathers compound and get to know their

relatives. Most young descendents of migrants who were born in

Kumasi and never spent more than a couple of weeks in Kollo regard

themselves as migrants originating from Kollo. In spite of having

Ghanaian nationality and English schooling, they consider themselves

as being Kasena from Burkina Faso. Compared to the young non-

migrant people in Kumasi it is mainly the difference in the subjective

13

Jonathan Friedman (2000) critically discusses the term of roots. As he shows, themetaphor of roots in the context of globalization is often used to describe the condition

of the other, of social groups that are supposed to be victims of globalization. Incontrast to this, western people, regarding themselves as globalized, have the capacity

to use routes, in order to be as mobile as possible. The dichotomy between uprootedmigrants and globalized mobile people illustrates the dubious nature of the idea of

globalization as such. See also for this argument Silverstein (2005).


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164 Hans Peter Hahn

perception of themselves with respect to their (imagined) belonging to

the people of Kollo that defines their status as migrants. Visits to the

village of origin and the perception of a different identity are comple-

mented by the awareness that those who continue to live in the place of

origin still maintain some particular expectations. As a matter of fact,

people in Kollo trust those migrants to provide help when needed and

give support whenever someone from the village arrives in town. The

migrants are generally classified as members of the households, even

when they are born abroad and have spent most of their life in Ghana or

Abidjan. It is not without pride that the inhabitants of Kollo emphasize

that their village is much bigger than the houses and more populous

than the residents visible at any given moment.

Studies of migrants who themselves have never migrated may at

first seem to be covering territory of merely theoretical relevance.14

The

experiences of my field research, however, confirm excellently what

Harri Englund (2002) reports about migrants in a semi-urban context in

Malawi. This group of migrants consists mainly of younger men and

women who were born in Malawi as children of migrants. They find

themselves confronted with the claims of long-time residents and

frequently become involved in violent conflicts between migrants andhosts. The restrictions imposed by the hosts and long-time residents

seem to be unacceptable to the migrants children, who consider

themselves as modern individuals, living in this place in order to make

their living as an urban workforce. As Englund states, the different

dispositions for agreeing to these restrictions are based upon different

notions about the ties which each group has with the place. Englund

calls the linkage to the place emplacement. Obviously the emplace-

ment for migrants differs from the hosts notion of emplacement. It is

this very emplacement that makes migration possible, but it also sets

narrow limits. Englund understands his case study as a critique of the

dominant discourse of globalization, which over-emphasizes the

14 Beside Englund (2002) who will be discussed in some detail here, there are otherexamples: Haitians in the US (Stepick 1998), Lebanese in Ghana (Leichtman 2005),

Turks in Germany (Schiffauer 1991) and so forth


19/28


openness of boundaries. By contrast, he highlights to the persistence of

boundaries that make migration continue to appear as a dangerous

undertaking.

Undeniably globalization signifies among other things a process

that facilitates and expands mobility. But, as Englund has pointed out,

migration is indeed more than transporting people from one place to

another. Decisive for the identity of a migrant is neither the actual path

linking the place of origin with the place of destination, nor the distance

or even the frequency with which one goes back and forth, but rather

the change in status that a migrant experiences. Criteria of distance,

time or even economics are not sufficient to understand migration. In

this context, Englund draws on a play of words originally formulated

by Edward Casey (1996), who demands that migration studies should

focus on transformation of placesinstead of the transportation between

places.15

Most now agree that it would be wrong to think of this transforma-

tion as something that the migrant himself is able to control. The

metaphor of an iceberg helps to explain the situation of the migrant:

The tip of the iceberg which protrudes from the water represents the

articulated strategies of the migrants themselves. Their ability to act isvisible from far away. This translates into our context as: To set off at a

certain moment or to return. The much larger part of the iceberg that is

hidden under the surface of the water is related to the migrants ties

with his place of origin and his destination. These ties represent the

currents in the water which determine the direction of the iceberg, here

meaning the direction the migrants future existence will take. The

metaphor of the iceberg has the advantage that the underwater currents

may eventually change their direction, just like the migrants have to

15 This idea has since been adopted by European migration studies. See for example

Gerd Baumann (1995) and his research on multiethnic suburbs in London. Therecontextualisation of space as an analytical category is very perceptively discussed by

Pries (2005).


20/28

166 Hans Peter Hahn

make up their mind at one point and determine what or where their

home is, and whether this term still has any relevance for them.16

With reference to the ties and conflicts which the migrant faces,

the significance of the place should not be underestimated. In the light

of our discussion, the role of location with respect to migration should

be considered as a social process, implying more specifically a change

in the hierarchy of locations. The Spanish anthropologist Pascual-de-

Sans (2004) has defined migration in this way, describing it as a

process by which people negotiate the social dimensions of space. He

uses the term of idiotopy to refer to the imaginary categorization of

locations. Biographical descriptions of migratory experiences have

shown how migrants are very well able to describe such shifts in the

significance that places have for them. The place of destination can

gain importance even before migration itself starts; later, with many

years experience of migration, the place of origin often comes to be

seen in a very different light. The ideology of the topos describes a

relative estimation of socially defined spaces and their change over the

course of time.17

Either way, the ideology of the topos is not only

about individual changes of perception but always about collective

agreements as well, concerning the significance of a place in thishierarchy and the affiliation of individuals or groups with this place.

Places are no longer simply geographically defined units, but merely

socially negotiated spaces.

16 There is a dangerous tendency in migration studies to overestimate the agency ofmigrants. Kearney (1986) at his time rightly encouraged researchers in migration

studies to focus on the migrants agency. But to take his agency and creativity forgranted (as Knrr 2005) underestimates the problems migrants are constantly facing.17 This is particularly relevant for the cyclical re-evaluation of the place of origin.Very often, people are inclined to ignore it while growing up. But later in life the place

of origin tends to regain greater significance for them. Negotiations of social dimen-sions of places imply that different valuations occur within a society. This is the notion

behind Michel Foucaults term Heterotopia (1986), too.


21/28


4. Cultures of migration

Against this theoretical background, the freedom of the migrant can

be reformulated as the possibility to modify the idiotopy in a society.

Migrants achieve this by arguing a different valuation of the places.

The regard of a place, for instance the destination of migration, by the

migrants or the ones left behind is negotiable. It is safe to assume that

the regard of the migrants differs considerably from the valuation of the

others due to their different experiences. Different meanings are alsoattached to the context of the destination: For the migrants the destina-

tion carries a different connotation than for the people who live there

without being migrants. This is illustrated perfectly by the current

debate about transnationalism. Nina Glick-Schiller (2004, 2005) and

others convincingly argue that the dominant topographic concept of

nation is a methodological barrier for understanding valuations of

place which are situated in different nations and tied together by

transnational social fields. Transnationalism therefore represents an

anti-nationalistic concept that does not deny the relevance of the

nation as such, but insists on the possibility that other idiotopies are

possible.

The concept of idiotopy has further implications for the identity of

the migrant. It suggests that the identity of a migrant is characterized

by a differential vis--vis the social identity of others, both in the host

society as well as in the society of his origin. The migrant creates

valuations of these societies and their locations that differ from the

idiotopies of non-migrants. I call this the double difference, and I

regard this as a fundamental feature of the migrants identity. Both

places, the place of origin and the destination of migration, are linked

by the migrants biography. Due to this inseparable connection the

double difference cannot simply be swept away after the experience ofmigration. Psychologically speaking, migration never ends. Indeed, this

twofold difference encapsulates not just the sum of two particular

identities but also the mutual dependence of these differences.


22/28

168 Hans Peter Hahn

I want to stress that this perspective generates some important

consequences. Obviously, migrants are fully conscious of the problems

related to, or created by idiotopy and the twofold difference. Migrants

do not experience these problems by accident, nor are they passive

agents; rather, they tend to put them to good use. This brings us back to

the notion of cultures of migrations. Sensitivity for differences and a

feeling that discourses or negotiations might create mutual understand-

ing, if not common point of views, are central components of how we

define cultures of migrations.

As Lambert documents in his contribution, too, cultures of migra-

tion are inevitably about conflicts within society. In Lamberts case

study, migration invariably initiates a process of negotiations, where

not only the valuation of places (e.g., the rural Casamance, or Dakar) is

expressed, but where for example women benefit from their expanded

opportunities to negotiate their social role in society. Thus, the culture

of migration signifies a shifting of cultural values also in the society of

origin. Women claim particular rights and can make use of their

migration experience to realize these claims. The cultures of migration

open the perspective for differences in identities and interests hidden

behind the actual migration. Hence migration becomes a means bywhich differences are articulated. This perspective enhances our

understanding of migration in our case study of Kollo. There, too,

migration can be perceived as a field for the articulation of differences

and conflicts. However, the central issue in Kollo remains the conflict

between generations, less the conflict between the sexes. Young men

and women in Kollo make use of migration, in order to gain independ-

ence from their fathers. They thereby, simultaneously achieve a self-

contained position in society.

In interviews about individual migration stories I repeatedly en-

countered the account of a scene which demonstrates this conflict

particularly clearly: It is the story about the departure of a young man

who wants to go to the south as a migrant even though he does not

receive permission to do so. A solution to this conflict, reported over

and over again, is that the person in question leaves the compound of


23/28


his parents secretly by night and, in order to pay for the fare to Ghana,

takes a goat or a sheep with him.18

Amazingly, the clandestine depar-

ture and the theft of an animal from the fathers livestock is not really

seen as a problem as long as the son manages to hand a sum of money

equivalent to the value of the animal to his father upon his return. This

remarkable behavior is granted to the migrant without much comment.

Even those who do not share his desires and plans acknowledge his

action for the sake of his intention to migrate.

Obviously, this is a sign that there is something like a cultures of

migration in the sense explained above. At the same time it reflects

what these cultures accomplish: Namely in a conflict it offers both

sides recognized and acceptable ways to articulate their proper position

and to realize their objectives. This does not mean that every migratory

phenomenon is acknowledged by society. To the contrary, my case

studies confirm that sometimes severe critique, articulated by the local

people, can pose existential difficulties to migrants after their return.

But the fact that people migrate, return and bring remittances home

with them, opens up a meaningful space for agency and negotiations.

Cultures of migration are thereby also acknowledging the perpetua-

tion of local cultures, which have the capacity to cope with the temporalabsence of some of its members and to integrate the migrants experi-

ences from abroad into their own horizon.

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284 Abstracts

Migration as Discursive Space Negotiations of Leaving and

Returning in the Kasena Homeland (Burkina Faso) (Hans Peter

Hahn)

Migration has a long tradition among the Kasena in rural Southern

Burkina Faso, the area of study. Migration is seen as a part of the

lifecycle. The majority of the young people leave for several months or

years in order to work in coastal cities of West Africa or in the planta-

tions. The temporal leaving is not considered as a problem for the socialcohesion in the village as long as the migrant maintains the contact to

his place of origin. The economic outcomes and remittances cover an

extremely large range from almost nothing to considerable wealth. In

spite of the fact that remittances do have little impact on the livelihoods

in the place of origin, migrants are judged in the local community by

their individual economic success or failure, and by the modalities of

giving when they return to the village. The importance of remittances is

not so much based on its economic value, but merely linked to the

reconnaissance of social obligations and relatedness. Although the

elderly in the village often criticize the younger migrants they know by

their own experience how difficult it may by to accumulate means as

remittances. A particular culture of migrants is constituted by the

categorial including of the absentees into the village community and by

the discourses about the migrants outcome.

Documents

Hahn 2007d - Migration as Discoursive Space.pdf