Externe Publikationen

Historical migrations in Africa: from flexible configurations to transgressive mobilities

Jaji, Rose
Externe Publikationen (2023)

published on ammodi.com, 12.07.2023

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Stating that Africa’s past and present socio-political landscapes have been shaped by a history of migration and mobility is banal. Yet, this statement provides insights into longstanding patterns of mobility that persist on the continent despite efforts to curb them in modern African states. Mobility in Africa dates as far back as the hunter-gatherers who built their livelihoods around movement. One of the most significant mobilities on the continent is the Bantu migration (1000 B.C-1100 A.D), which saw dispersal of people from West-central to East and Southern Africa. A more recent example of migration is Mfecane or “the crushing”, a time of political turmoil which occurred in the 19th century in Nguniland in present day South Africa and led to migration by factional political and military leaders and their followers. The impact of Mfecane migration is observable in the demographic composition of modern states in Southern Africa; the different factions settled in present-day Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Historical mobilities in Africa challenge the conceptualisation of mobility and immobility as binaries. In this post, I elaborate on how contemporary migration governance on the continent can be traced back to the transplantation of Western notions of statehood and nationhood to Africa through colonialism, and how these ideas transformed migration and non-migration from continuums to binaries.