Wayward Migration: On Imagined Futures and Technological Voids

Abstract

This article exploresimagined migration and migrantimaginaries. It takes its point of departure in fieldwork among would-be migrants in Bissau and traces the realization of their hopes into Europe. More specifically, it sheds light on the way young men from Bissau, the capital of the small, impoverished West African country of Guinea-Bissau, position the decline and destruction that characterize their city in relation to the peace, prosperity and progress they see elsewhere. In doing so, it illuminates a world that, seen from Bissau, is characterized by very uneven levels of control over socio-political matters. A world that is divided into different zones of mastery over social, political and economic processes. Finally, the article dwells on the consequences of this imagined global order and its effect on the acts and strategies of young migrants.

Keywords:

• Migration
• globalization
• racialization
• hope and prospects

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the fkk (the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication) and the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims for financial support during the period of fieldwork.

Notes

Guardian, May 29, 2006; Times, June 1, 2006.

I use the term ‘illegal’ migrant, rather than the more politically correct terms ‘irregular’ and ‘undocumented’ throughout the article. For those of my informants who have entered the EU either without documents or by manipulating rules and regulations, illegality saturates their migrant experiences. It defines their interaction with their host society and the status comes to shade even attempted licit actions.

Dal pa fera.

Odja si vida.

Sin progresso sin vida garantido.

For a further discussion of the concept of ‘navigation’ see Vigh (2006a).

‘They’ refers both to the ‘big men’ on the Government side, as well as to Government recruitment officers who were sent to Papel bairros, neighbourhoods, and other areas to convince able-bodied males to join the Aguentas.

Rendja malkriadesa; malkriadesa signifies bad behaviour, but to rendja malkriadesa is to look for trouble or incite aggressive behaviour.

Social or mechanical.

Shakespeare, W. 2003. Hamlet. Washington: Washington Square Press.