The following is a guest blog post written by Paolo Gaibazzi, Social Anthropologist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO). Gaibazzi is also the author of Bush Bound: Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa. Below, Gaibazzi discusses how ‘staying put’ may shed light on current West African migrations.
How can the experience of a small, migrant-sending West African village contribute thoughts on the current migration crisis in Europe? Sabi is a rural community in the Gambia River valley with a long history of male international emigration in which I have had the privilege to live and do research. The resulting book – titled Bush Bound – is an account of how migration pervades everyday life in the community, but especially of how people continue staying on the land. I suggest that this small but significant laboratory of (im)mobility might help us rethink the assumptions about freedom, movement and sedentariness informing, and often distorting, European debates about African immigration.
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