Deadline for Abstracts: 30th September, 2024
All submissions and enquiries should be emailed to: contact@feministafrica.net (and copy) info@feministafrica.net
Issue Editors: Dorothy Takyiakwaa and Faisal Garba Muhammed
Introduction
Introduction
How do gender and class intersect with the experience of mobility in a political and economic climate where the physical mobility of ordinary Africans is viewed as a problem to be confronted and curbed, while their attempts at social mobility are curtailed by the same processes of exclusion and inequality? With global mobility regimes, national state structures, and the market assigning value and opportunities to groups and individuals based on class position and gender identity (among other markers of social differentiation), the aspirations of ordinary Africans to move from one geographical location to another, and from one social position to the next is impeded by the lack of access to resources and the increasing securitisation of mobility. Yet, Africans are moving in significant numbers within and beyond the African continent. In the process, they face difficult conditions en route to their destinations, and in their host societies. In a gendered world, their gender and sexuality as women, men, and sexual and gender minorities play a role in determining the opportunities open to them as migrants and the conditions under which they move, the work that they do, and the resources available to them to improve their lives. To be gendered as women, men, and sexual and gender minorities does not only affect one’s ability to move from one social position to another, but even perceptions about gender often (de) limit the aspirations of mobile/would-be mobile persons.
Despite their late start in cities, women have historically been mobile in Africa (Akurang-Parry 2002, 2010). Side by side with the historical female mobility is the imposition of gendered expectations and limitations around how people gendered as women and men can move across place, and vertically (up or down) the social ladder. This gendered imposition is taking a more profound turn with the ongoing conservative mobilisations in parts of Africa against non-heteronormative ways of life. Anecdotal evidence points to these mobilisations affecting the physical movement and the opportunities available for sexual and gender minorities to improve their lives and livelihoods. Sexual and gender minorities may have to move to be safe or restrict their movement to be safe. And when they move, access to resources such as healthcare can be daunting. Varied motivations, opportunities and limitations shape physical mobility decision-making and processes and these are further differentiated by gender and social class. These three broad dimensions (re)create different pathways and strategies for social mobility. This issue focuses on a deeper engagement of this interaction of gender, sexualities, class, and the experience of mobility, as mediated by various social, economic, geographical and political factors.
The issue adopts Issa Shivji’s (2017) conceptualisation of class as the relationship to life-sustaining goods through wage labour, and/or survivalist activities by those in employment and the unemployed who constitute the working people. This conception transcends the division of the working class and the lumpenproletariat given the social interdependence of both groups and the ease with which people move between the two groups. By gender, we refer to the assignment of social roles, obligations and expectations based on assumptions about biology with context variations across communities and social groups. Linking gender with social class in the process and experience of physical and social mobility foregrounds gender as mediating who moves and how they move, and how this in turn (re)produces social class. The gendered experiences in the host societies often determine the social position of a migrant. To illustrate, female domestic workers in the Gulf have limited opportunities to move up the social ladder from their class position as working people. This does not suggest a linear relationship between the three concepts, or their lived experience, rather they relate in a manner where one or more, in the context of other factors, are amplified or hushed.
Read the full Concept Note and Call for Paper here.