Retheorising Migration: A South-South Perspective

Broadening the conceptual scope beyond the Global North and ‘Asian biases’, this chapter takes cognisance of the challenges of universalistic approaches to migration realities, which undermine the fact that both experience and knowledge are contextual. Emphasis is on re-theorising migration to account for contextual specificities that shape the realities of moving within the Global South, particularly in Africa where migration – subsequent to involuntary push factors such as civil war, political violence, economic challenges, extreme poverty and social realities specific to the continent – is often a forced experience compared to the Global North where it is a choice and lifestyle. Contextual theories of migration in this chapter avoid rendering the specific universal by exploring how the state polices the migratory process; the social meanings society attaches to ‘that which is foreign’; and the ultimate meaning of being a black African migrant in Africa. These contextual realities call for conceptual renegotiation of the meaning of Africanness or African identities, especially for black Africans located in spaces of violent and brutal prejudice against those perceived as foreign. The main conceptual contribution is built around experiences that hardly find their way into mainstream discourses and theorisations where Global North and Asian biases have dominated what has become to be known as literature and theories of migration.