Imagining a future in ‘bush’: migration aspirations at times of crisis in Anglophone Cameroon

Abstract

This article addresses the migration aspirations of young, lower middle-class Cameroonians living in Anglophone Cameroon. Deportations and prevention campaigns portray the negatives of migration, yet often have little impact because they assume that migrants’ aspirations are grounded in the prior success of other migrants. This research takes its lead from the question: Why aren’t aspiring migrants in Cameroon discouraged by migration failure? It is based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted between September 2007 and January 2009 in Buea (South West Cameroon). Since the late 1990s, the desire for a future ‘away from home’ has come to be expressed in Anglophone Cameroon by aspirations of going to ‘bush’. Taking seriously people’s conceptions of success and failure in places of departure, the article argues that locally voiced claims of ‘global belonging’ exert an important influence on migration aspirations. An understanding of deeply rooted migration desires must include an analysis of identity politics.

Keywords:

• bushfalling
• Cameroon
• migration prevention
• deportation
• belonging

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful feedback, my informants for their trust and my colleague Christina Atekmangoh for her ongoing commitment to this research project.

Notes

1. These emigration attempts ranged from applying to foreign universities abroad for admission, to engaging in conversations with family members abroad and asking whether these relatives could ‘bring them over’. The survey covered 50:50 men and women, as well as three different neighbourhoods of varying income groups.

2. In a survey conducted in the 1990s, Séraphin established that more than half of the questioned population in Douala would like to migrate or at least travel out of the country. In his survey, most of the individuals who would have liked to emigrate were young, had a higher level of education and were not yet heading a household (2000, pp. 200–201).

3. Most of my informants had school-leaving certificates or even university degrees, but sustained themselves on local salaries and did not fulfil the requirements to be eligible for visas at consulate offices.

4. For tensions between bushfalling and claims of autochthony, see Nyamnjoh (2011).

5. A large amount of the literature on post-deportation trajectories discusses deportees from the United States who have criminal convictions and who have lived most of their lives in the United States.

6. Despite the shame of expulsion and alleged criminality in the very different case of young Cape Verdean deportees, Drotbohm nevertheless observed similar dynamics to those that I described above and noted the positive aura of ‘having been there’ (2011, p. 393) and the positive consequences that this can at times have for the attractiveness of these young men among local women (ibid, p. 388).

7. For a more theoretical discussion of the dynamics of imitation, see Ferguson (2006, pp. 155–175).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maybritt Jill Alpes

MAYBRITT JILL ALPES is a post-doctoral researcher in the Migration Law Section of the VU University, Amsterdam.