Making Movements Possible: Transportation Workers and Mobility in West Africa
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Timothy Mechlinski |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00633.x |
Making Movements Possible:
Transportation Workers and Mobility in
West Africa
Timothy Mechlinski*
ABSTRACT
This article concerns the social process of mobility control in four West African coun-
tries: Burkina Faso, Coˆ te d’Ivoire, Mali, and Ghana. Migration has long been an impor-
tant aspect of West African social, cultural, and political life. This study explores
everyday enforcement of international and internal mobility control, and the ways in
which Africans respond to and resist the actions of security agents. I accomplish this
using ethnographic evidence gathered when travelling over 10,000 miles in Burkina Faso,
Mali, Ghana, and Coˆ te d’Ivoire over a period of nine months. In addition, data were
gathered through participant observation while crossing international borders 23 times
in a sub-region of West Africa, and participating in 169 security control checkpoints in
total. This evidence is supplemented by 29 interviews with transportation workers across
the four countries studied. Augmenting the traditional social science literature on
migrant networks with an approach proposed by development economists, this article
shows that transportation workers play an essential role in mobility control in West
Africa. The theoretical insights derived here contribute to a larger project of bringing
borders and transportation into the same frame of reference as migration in academic
study. This project sees movement through interaction, rather than simply through the
systems approach so commonly applied in the literature and shows that in the countries
under study there exist unstated, implicit social norms among transportation workers,
their clients, and security agents, which constitute a key mechanism for migration. These
actors operate in a series of structured relationships, which can be described as institu-
tionalised, and which create a series of important exchanges governing movement in the
sub- region.
INTRODUCTION
The movements people make in West Africa, within their countries and between countries,
cannot occur without social interactions between various actors: transportation workers, pas-
sengers, and security agents in particular. These interactions help shape migrations and are
based on the socioeconomic arrangements, cultural practices, and political realities of the
region. Despite the significant amount of research that has focused on migration in West
* Lewis and Clark College, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Portland.
2010 The Author
International Migration 2010 IOM
International Migration Vol. 54 (1) 2016
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISSN 0020-7985
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00633.x
Africa (Adepoju, 2002 and 2004; Adepoju and Hammar, 1996; Amin, 1973 and 1974; An-
nan-Yao, 1996; Arthur, 1991; Bilger and Kraler, 2005b; Bocquier and Traore
´, 1996; Cordell
et al., 1996; de Bruijn and van Dijk, 2003; de Haan et al., 2002; Konseiga, 2005; Makinwa-
Adebusoye, 1992; Rain, 1999; Toure
´et al., 1992; van Dijk et al., 2001; Zachariah and Conde
´,
1981), the role of mobility control and transportation as they affect people’s movements has
yet to receive extensive critical attention. Following Bilger and Kraler (2005a), I analyse
migration in the specific forms and context in which it occurs by placing migration, transpor-
tation, international borders and mobility control in the same frame of reference.
Africa is a continent where a considerable part of the population ‘‘leads a mobile way of
life’’ (van Dijk et al., 2001: 14; see also, IOM, 2005) and West Africa, in particular, has
highly mobile populations, accounting for over forty per cent of the continent’s migrants
(Zlotnik, 2003). The literature on migration in Africa is vast and new research trends are
continuously emerging. Recent studies focus on the feminization of migration, the diversifi-
cation of destinations, the issues of brain drain and brain gain, trafficking and human
smuggling, and the intersection of migration and the spread of HIV ⁄AIDS (Adepoju,
2004).
Despite this vast and growing literature, the condition noted by Akin Mabogunje in 1970
that most migration models’ relevance for handling migration patterns in developing areas
has hardly been considered remains true today. In particular, this article considers the rele-
vance of migrant networks models for Africa. While often noting migrant networks as an
empirical reality in Africa (de Haan et al., 2002; Gugler, 2002), few studies adopt networks
as an organising principle or unit of analysis (cf. Andersson, 2001). Building on Guilmoto
and Sandron (2001: 150), I argue that transportation workers are part of the ‘‘market of
assistance to migration’’ that emerges to supplement the networks formed by migrants’ kin-
ship, friend and community ties. My approach departs from the dominant conception of
migrant networks as employed in the social science literature by arguing for the amplification
‘‘migrant networks’’ to include transportation workers and security agents. More broadly,
given the importance of transit migration in Africa (Brachet, 2005) and the increasing
involvement of non-migrants, including smugglers and coyotes in many areas (Ic¸ duygu and
Toktas, 2002; Spener, 2001), the lessons learned here have important implications for other
regions of the world as well.
Historical and Sub-regional Context
Stark geographic, climatic, and economic differentials exist between the coastal countries,
Coˆ te d’Ivoire and Ghana, and their landlocked northern neighbors, Burkina Faso and
Mali, which affect population mobility in the region. Pauline Makinwa-Adebusoye refers to
the ‘‘region’s two contrasting but complementary climatic zones – the forested rainy belt
along the Gulf of Guinea and the drier grasslands along the southern border of the Sahara
desert’’ which have affected the development of the zone’s particular patterns of population
movement (1992: 63). In particular, the various resources available in these different zones
affected pre-colonial trade routes, colonial strategies for the economic exploitation of the
zone, and post-colonial development strategies.
In the pre-colonial period West Africans migrated as warriors, settlers, traders and schol-
ars. The ancient African kingdoms spread their empires by invasion, conquering and annex-
ing new lands in the search for new human and natural resources. Well known for their
activity in West Africa, traders have long been a highly mobile group. For centuries predat-
ing colonization West African trade routes criss-crossed the region taking ivory, gold and
kola nuts north, and bringing salt and cotton cloth down to the forested areas. In addition,
120 Mechlinski
2010 The Author. International Migration 2010 IOM
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