The Human Cost of African Migrations

Toyin Falola,Niyi Afolabi

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135904418
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Ciencias sociales
• Categoría: Emigración e inmigración

In an era of globalization, population growth, and displacements, migration is now a fact of life in a constantly shifting economic and political world order. This book contributes to the discourse on the beneficiaries, benefactors, and the casualties of African displacement. While the few existing studies have emphasized economic motivation as the primary factor triggering African migration, this volume treats a range of issues: economic, socio-political, pedagogical, developmental, and cultural. Organized with a multidisciplinary thrust in mind, this book argues that any discussion of African migration, whether internal or external, must be conceived as only one aspect of a more complex, organic, and global patterning of "flux and reflux" necessitated by constantly shifting dynamics of world socio-economic, cultural, and political order.

Chapter One
Introduction: Migration Fantasies, Nightmarish Realities

Toyin Falola and Niyi Afolabi

OVERVIEW

In the age of globalization, one of the major challenges faced by the international community, as well as local governments, lies in the pervasive rise in migration patterns and the determination of migrants to pay any price necessary to better their lives. From the perilous clandestine trips across borders, to the deadly confrontation with Atlantic currents, to questionable exploitative arrangements made with dubious migration tycoons, migration has indeed become for many, what international trade was in the mid twentieth century.¹ Despite the human rights protections accorded to international migrants through the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, the gap between policy and implementation is staggering, due to the economic cost for the receiving countries. It is against this background that a Conference on “Movements, Migrations, and Displacements,” is plausible, since in addition to examining the economic cost, it has focused on the human cost-especially in this volume.

Let us cite extensively from the welcome address of the convener, Professor Toyin Falola, whose laconic vision of the conference has generated an edited volume of compelling breadth—a timely venture that sets out to explore major topical issues facing Africa and the World, especially regarding the issues of African migrations:

Africans have always been on the move, ever since the time they created civilization and scattered it around the continent and elsewhere…. We are ready to listen to fresh ideas on new cultural, historical, sociological, methodological, and theoretical questions that will address relevant, recurring and urgent issues or raise neglected topics…. The richness is reflected in the wide variety of issues that are represented… : migration and shifting identity; hybridity and transculturation, the impact of Western and Asian settlers in Africa, trans-national struggles and ideas, and the African diaspora in other continents. Other major issues include those with regard to refugees, the representations of migrations in literature, films, and media, exile and homecoming narratives, sociological issues such as crime, juvenile delinquency, unemployment, family structures, gender and generational disparities, and memoirs of migrancy.²

Given this extensive scope, the timing of the conference could not have been more appropriate, as it sets out to theorize on the human cost of African migration as an aspect that has received the least attention in emerging studies of African migration in the age of economic globalization.

THEORIZING THE HUMAN COST

Going by the multidisciplinary thrust of this book, any discussion of African migration, whether internal or external, must be conceived as only one aspect of a more complex, organic, and global patterning of “flux and reflux,”³ necessitated by constantly shifting dynamics of world socio-economic, cultural, and political order. While existing scholarly studies by Adepoju,⁴ Akpraku,⁵ Gordon,⁶ Arthur,⁷ Okafor,⁸ and Schulman⁹ among others, have emphasized economic motivation as the primary factor triggering African migration, this volume promotes multivalent perspectives that are reflected in the diversity of the issues covered by the four sections that range in their thematic foci from the medical, the economic, the sociopolitical, the pedagogical, to the developmental. This volume extends the debate by challenging assumptions and proposing novel frameworks and new methodological vistas for understanding the complexity of African migrations.

In theorizing on the human cost of African migrations, the following premises provide the fundamental determinants for its attraction, persistence, and contradictions: (i) The push-pull dynamics seem to favor, respectively, both the beneficiaries and the benefactors, depending on the perspective from which the “benefits” are defined and processed—as well as who is defining and processing. (ii) Internal economic, political, and socio-religious crises have made migration very alluring to African migrants seeking economic or political refuge in the West. (iii) Displacement caused by the foregoing crises, especially those of African refugees, has made migration or immigration a humanitarian policy issue for developed countries such as the United States, Canada, and the European Union. (iv) Issues relating to labor shortages in the West, especially in the healthcare profession, make the migration of health care professionals from Africa beneficial to Euro-America. (v) Questionable elements, including unsuspecting parents in Africa, take undue advantage of young, naïve African girls, as well as older women, by selling them into prostitution and servitude in Europe and America through organized, criminally entrepreneurial middlemen and women. (vi) African migration is not only external but internal, as witnessed in the pattern of job-seeking Africans settling in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and other countries. (vii) African migration, while beneficial in some instances, has a developmental cost for Africa, since the education of some of the highly trained professionals who are migrating to the West was financed by local, state, and federal governments in Africa.

In the final analysis, the benefit of migration is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, for some scholars argue that African migrants are developing Africa if they are able to send capital accumulated in the West back to Africa. Other scholars argue in favor of those few professionals who return home to impart their knowledge and skills in Africa. Ironically, this group of voluntary returnees is in the minority. Essentially, the human cost of migration is expected to rise proportionately to the capital gain which, often times, is the arena of only a select few who are usually ashamed to confess the nightmarish sacrifices and compromises they are often compelled to make, in order to achieve and sustain the ever glorified Western dream.

MIGRATIONS AND HEALTH ISSUES

This section addresses the implications of migration for African health professionals, as well as the relative quality of health care on both sides of the Atlantic. Good health is considered one of the fundamental human rights, but for the migrant, nothing can be farther from the truth, especially during the long journey toward integration and citizenship. In fact, the Yoruba say that eni to ba ti ni alafia, oun gbogbo lo ni—that is, one’s health is the best of all riches. Ironically, global migration patterns of African professionals, especially health-care providers, have complicated the quality of health care in African countries. Essentially, Africa is being abandoned for better opportunities in the West and in the Caribbean, as well as in the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, to mention but a few locations of migration for African medical professionals. In their unity and diversity, the five chapters in this section engage the conditioning roles of migration and health care in Africa and the African Diaspora. From the human cost to Africa, to the market driven opportunities for Africans in the West, to the global gain for the rest of the world, this section complicates the idea of health, access and equality, forcing us to revisit and rethink our notions of the relationship between World Health Organization (WHO) and World Trade Organization (WTO). In this corrupt and corrupting partnership, health care ceases to be a fundamental human right, but becomes a fundamental human business with serious consequences for those naïve casualties caught in its web of apparent “philanthropy,” indifference, and capitalist calculation. Unfortunately, the African migrant is the silent participant in this global quagmire of supply-demand dynamics that care less about human capital and more about economic exigency and expediency.

In Chapter Two, “Migration and Health in Africa and the African Diaspora,” Kathryn H. Jacobsen argues, in a quadripartite approach, that there is a direct relationship between migration and the health of African immigrants, whether in the era of forced migration (slavery) or during voluntary migrations in search of a better life. First, Jacobsen posits that migration (whether intra or inter) significantly impacts the health of Africans. Second, migration often improves or deteriorates the health of Africans depending on where they go, and their relative status upon entry (refugee or voluntary migrant). Third, African migrants are often comparatively in better health, as compared to the African descendants. Fourth, African migrants’ combined level of infectious diseases are higher, their mortality rates are lower, their susceptibilities to chronic disease are lower, while infant mortality rate is higher in Africa in comparison to their African descendants and Euro-American counterparts. In sum, the study reveals that Africans have a relatively sound health condition that may gradually deteriorate due to migration patterns of health professionals from Africa to the West. Consequently, in terms of African health condition, the ratio of at-risk populations left behind in Africa increases proportionately to the ratio of health practitioners pursuing better opportunities outside of Africa. The implications of this study are several: on the one hand it demystifies the stereotypes associated with images of Africans in the Western media, as sickly and dying of malnutrition; on the other hand, it educates us regarding the medical cost of migration in human and financial terms, in Africa as well as in the African Diaspora.

Along the lines of the stereotypical images of Africans in Western media, Charles Adeyanju, in Chapter Three, “Discourse of Health Risks and Anti-Racial Diversity in the Media Coverage of the Non-Ebola Panic,” documents and analyzes the relationship between immigration policies, race/racism, and the media in Canada. Through the pretext of the case study of a sick visitor to Canada, incidentally from the Congo (Zaire/Africa), the study unmasks the subtleties and ambiguities of racism especially in the media, and how such racism becomes pervasive and political. Using four newspapers’ coverage of this event in Ontario, Canada, the study concludes that through the media’s appeal to the emotions and feelings of the Canadian people, they are able to sensationalize the debate on anti-racial diversity in Canada. The implications of this study imply that Canadians are urging their government to reform immigration policies in the name of their well being (health) and national security. As the author’s title indicates (“Non-Ebola Panic”), the irony of the case-study is that the so called “health-risk” associated with the visitor’s misdiagnosis as “Ebola,” actually turned out not to be Ebola related at all. However, through the negative media coverage, the panic had already done the intended damage by mobilizing Canadians to speak against racial diversity, since every African visitor or resident is now a potential health risk to Canadians.

While anti-diversity campaign is highlighted in Canada with the foregoing case-study, Obijiofor Aginam, in Chapter Four, “ ‘Predatory Globalization’?: The World Trade Organization, General Agreement on Trade in services, and Migration of African Health Professionals to the West,” revisits the contradiction of portraying Africans as carriers of infectious diseases on the one hand, while on the other hand, recruiting their health professionals to work in the health care profession. In this compelling study, Aginam exposes the double-edged nature of trade agreements (WTO, GATS, etc) between developed and developing nations under the guise of economic globalization. As the author convincingly argues, the agreements are, indeed, pretexts to justify labor migration (and exploitation) from the developing world to the West. The author lays out the serious and precarious implications of such non-reciprocal migration for the African continent. In essence, Aginam sees Africa as ultimately receiving the short end of the bargain, as further accentuated in his conclusion: “GATS must be situated in a broader global social policy context, and globalization needs to be humane. Managed migration ought to bring benefits to source countries without crippling their health and other sectors. Some of the proposals made on ethical recruitment of doctors and nurses from developing countries will most likely be trumped by the intrusive provisions of GATS and the WTO trade regime.” Such an incisive conclusion is unmistakable in its direct indictment of questionable economic globalization in the health care sector.

In a curious case-study of three graduating classes of a Nigerian medical school, Ike Anya, Chikwe Ihekweazu, and Enyi Anosike, in Chapter Five, “Searching the World: Following Three Graduating Classes of a Nigerian Medical School,” painstakingly provide a brief and exploratory study, suggesting that about 40% of trained medical professionals from the University of Nigeria medical school have left Nigeria within ten years of their graduation. While their destination countries of choice are listed as USA, UK, Ireland, and South Africa, the authors conclude by projecting that the next stage of the study will include an email questionnaire, examining the motivation, career paths, and future plans for those medical graduates who are living abroad. Complementing this case-study is Sifiso M. Ndlovu’s Chapter Six, “A Group of Twenty Nurses and the Pan African Struggle for Liberation,” a rather extensive and compelling analysis of the specific experiences of intra-African migration (from South Africa to Tanzania) and their return (post-Apartheid). Drawing on the experiences of twenty South African nurses who volunteered to go and help alleviate staff shortages in the medical field in Tanzania, the chapter offers a provocative insider view of the contradictions of medical aid, especially coming from a neighboring African country to another African country. The significance of this chapter lies in its combination of issues of migration on both sides of the spectrum—workforce gain and workforce exploitation—ironically within Africa. The experiences narrated are melancholic and informative—providing first hand narratives of exploitation, double standards, frustration, and anxiety even for those nurses who had good intentions in going to help a neighboring country, only to be maltreated. These chapters provide two opposing views of migration for health care providers, whether they are looking forward to practicing in the West, or within Africa.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND EXPLOITATION

This section deals with the often silenced narratives of young African women sold into domestic labor and prostitution within Africa and in the West. Despite their melancholic exposition, the three chapters call our attention to the dark side of migration as it affects the most vulnerable and naïve in African society: women and children. By uncovering the pretexts, myths, motivations and disappointing realities, the chapters sum up one of the ugliest human ventures after slavery—human trafficking. In fact, it is arguable that sexual exploitation, regardless of the financial “gain” promised to the unsuspecting victims of this offensive trade, is a modern form of slavery. In Chapter Seven, “Trafficking of Young Women and Girls: A Case of “Au Pair” and Domestic Laborers in Tanzania,” Elinami Veraeli Swai contends that due to the general unequal treatment of women in Tanzanian society, traffickers take advantage of young women who see domestic work as their only alternative to poverty and oppression. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of habitus ...

Índice

• Cover Page
• African Studies: History, Politics, Economics, and Culture
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations, Acronyms, Language Clusters
• Preface
• Chapter One: Introduction: Migration Fantasies, Nightmarish Realities
• Part I: Migrations and Health Issues
• Part II: Human Trafficking and Exploitation
• Part III: Migration and Education
• Part IV: Refugees, Displacement, and Re-Settlement
• Conclusion: “Unknown Immigrant:” The Persistence of Migration Blues
• Contributors