Call for papers - Special Issue "Labor Migration and Commodity Production in Africa: Global Entanglements"

Human mobility across cultural, political, and social boundaries is nothing new in African History. As people moved beyond their immediate horizons for a variety of reasons, they (un)consciously spurred changes since immemorial times. However, the increasing interconnectedness of African societies with the development of global markets over the past six centuries brought about wide-ranging consequences, gapping inequalities not least among them (Green, 2019). The creation of labor markets where workforce ("free" or otherwise) could be procured over long distances to cater for commodity production has been studied for decades. Yet as Samir Amin once put it, many perspectives on labor migration fail to be more than tautologies that explain the phenomena of labor migration by merely indicating the existence of people who are likely to migrate (Amin, 1995). Further, many scholarly investigations on labor migration in Africa have been deadlocked in describing cases to fit into a typological "spectrum" of coerced labor ranging from chattel slavery to "free" contract labor (Martino, 2022).

This Special Issue intends to bring together studies on labor migration that focus on the agency of labor migrants in transforming connections between Africa and elsewhere. Its objective is to pinpoint how the making of these connections often hinged on the circulation of men and women engaged in commodity production/extraction for long-distance trading at a global scale. We thus seek to highlight how labor migrancy in Africa is a fundamental aspect in understanding the increasing interconnectedness of the world through commodity markets such as cotton, hard fibers, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, raw minerals, among many others. Contributions based on written and oral sources collected from African archives are especially welcome.

References:

AMIN, Samir. 1995. “Migrations in Contemporary Africa: A Retrospective View”. In: BAKER, Jonathan; AINA, Tade Akin (Eds.) The Migration Experience in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, p. 29-40.

GREEN, Toby. A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the rise of the slave trade to the age of Revolutions. London: Penguin Books, 2019.

MARTINO, Enrique. Touts: Recruiting Indentured Labor in the Gulf of Guinea. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2022

 

Guest Editors:

Kerem Duymus. Africa Institute of the University of Leipzig.

Felipe Barradas Correia Castro Bastos. Universidade Estadual do Centro Oeste do Paraná, Brazil.

 

Submission dealine:  manuscripts can be submitted until February 10th., 2024
Review process ends: until March 30th, 2024
Special Issue Publication (expected): May 2024.