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1. Migrations

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome and Emman Usman Shehu
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
Abstract:
Another year has ended. The editorial staff of Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration wish you a happy new year. What better way than to share the poem written by Dr. Emman Shehu?
Topic:
Migration and Poem
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Antinomies of Globalization in Contemporary African Migration: The nexus of Gender, Youth, Health, Remittances, Social Media, and Higher Education

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
Abstract:
Contemporary African migration continues unabated. It increasingly attracts media, state, expert, popular, and scholarly attention. The focus of most of the attention tends to respond to media reports of atrocities, tragedies, conundrums, xenophobic pronouncements and policy responses by powerful international actors, including decision makers in the most popular destinations of migrants. Today, the goings on in Europe, the United States of America (US), the countries of the European Union, the Gulf states, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Niger, and South Africa attract the most attention. Due to the catastrophic casualties and calamities experienced by migrants, the routes favored by migrants such as those through the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea, are also the subject of such focus. Youth migration and the health of African migrants are a big part of the story. Gender and migration is receiving more scholarly interest but not to the same extent as other aspects of migration.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Health, Migration, Social Media, and Youth
Political Geography:
Africa

3. Mixed, Perilous and Other Migrations: Do African Lives Matter?

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
Abstract:
This is a trying period for anyone that pays attention to African migration. Migrants’ gruesome deaths while in transit are given more coverage. Of these, those in the Mediterranean Sea, and to a lesser extent, the Sahara Desert make it more into the news. But there are also deaths in places in-between. Some are reported. Others are not. One only gets glimpses of such deaths when repatriated migrants mention or lament them. There has been more coverage of Libyan “Slave auctions,” at least after CNN released taped evidence from such markets (Elbagir, Razek, Platt, & Jones, 2017). The African Union (AU) and selected African states, including Nigeria, (which by dint of its sheer population size in the African continent, has more citizens caught up in the movements of migrants intent on getting out of their countries to realize dreams of social, economic and political security elsewhere), belatedly responded (Ibuot & Okopie, 2017; Daily Nation, 2017; Busari, 2017). Some have not bothered to do so. It is amazing that Nigeria and other African countries have embassies and diplomatic representative in Libya, yet, there was no previous report, awareness, response, nor were any measures whatsoever taken to document, respond to, and correct the abuses of citizens and violation of their human rights. What then is the value and utility of diplomatic representation? How do African governments understand their responsibilities to citizens? What is the function of the media in these countries? What is the duty of the AU?
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, Human Rights, Migration, Media, and Violence
Political Geography:
Africa and African Union

4. Breaching Fortress Europe: By Any Means Necessary: The Complications of African Migration to Europe

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
Abstract:
Although African migration to Europe dates back to antiquity, Africans’ presence in Europe increased substantially from the 1960s, especially since the imposition of neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, and the political crisis that consumed some African countries in the 1990s and 2000s. There has also been increased migration to Europe by the few skilled and professional Africans allowed to take advantage of opportunities that have opened up for employment in fields where there is a dearth of expertise. Nevertheless, predominant conceptualization of Africans’ movement into Europe entails breaching an impregnable fortress, using any means at their disposal. Those making irregular migration includes as a mix of refugees, asylees, documented and undocumented migrants. However, European economic crises and the vulnerabilities spawned in consequence, have laid bare politicized, securitized, xenophobic and callous responses, particularly in the frontline states that receive what is increasingly perceived as a “deluge.” Given the siege mentality that has developed around migration, the negative xenophobic attitudes, discourses and policies that emerge from them, and the increased securitization of migration, the siege characterization seems even more apt.
Topic:
Migration, Refugee Issues, Immigration, and Refugees
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

5. Fleeing Boko Haram: The Trauma of Captivity and Challenge of Freedom

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Captivity and freedom are seen as opposites. To be captive is to be imprisoned, detained, confined. To be free is to have liberty, autonomy, free will. It seems logical to associate captivity with trauma, and freedom with an end to trauma. However, enduring elements of trauma challenge the notion of freedom, especially when considering possible psychological effects of long-term captivity. The assumption that the cessation of captivity and experience of freedom constitutes a peaceful, joyful, and self-determining existence may be highly problematic, as may be the social implications of freedom and the impact of responses by others to a person once in captivity but now “free.” This article conceives of the route traversed from captivity to freedom by the victims of Boko Haram (including the young female students abducted from a school in Chibok) as akin to walking a tightrope—a tense, tenuous, perilous, unstable process. It is not impossible to get to freedom, but successfully traversing the tightrope may require unbelievable, extraordinary luck. The surest way to get through is to have the requisite training. Experience also helps. The experience necessary for surmounting the odds need not be experience of abduction and its horrors, but experience with strategies on how to cope with trauma. Such strategies can be provided through culturally appropriate psychosocial support.
Topic:
Culture, Trauma, Captivity, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. The Political Economy of International Migration: Three Important Perspectives

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
Abstract:
The publication of this issue is foreshadowed by the tragic drowning of hundreds of migrants, including Africans, in the Mediterranean Sea (BBC News 2015, Rosen 2015, Walsh, Almasy and Botelho 2015, Traynor 2015, Fottrell 2015). The sheer size of these drownings have once again caused popular horror and contemplation on causes and consequences of migration. The projection by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that these deaths could increase to over 30,000 just in 2015 is anxiety provoking and shocking (AlJazeera News 2015, Brian and Laczko 2014). The drownings have also caused increased focus on the policies of popular destination countries and regions and critiques of the harshness of these regimes as well as calls for more humane migration policies, research and documentation of the root causes of migration, and heartrending accounts of migrants’ motives and harrowing experiences (Clegg 2015, Barker 2014, Kassam 2014). As well, they have caused intensified media attention to the circumstances that propel migration from various African countries and the choice of destinations in Europe. These conditions and circumstances are hardly new. Neither are the tales of woe that attend the serious decision to abandon familiar misery of migrants’ homelands in hopes of somehow experiencing the miracle of success in unknown climes (Sy 2006, Ndege 2006, Morris 2005, Bailey 2005, Travis August, Kingsley 2015).
Topic:
Migration, Political Economy, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe