Children on the Move in Africa

Children in Africa are heavily involved in migration but we know too little about the circumstances in which they migrate, their motivations and the impact of migration on their welfare, on wider society and in a global context. This book seeks to retrieve the experiences of child migrants, and to examine how child migration differs from adult migration and whether the condition of childhood pushes individuals towards specific migratory trajectories. It also examines the opportunities that child migrants seek elsewhere, the lack of opportunities that make them move elsewhere and to what extent their trajectories and strategies are gendered. Analysing the diversity and complexity of children's experiences of mobility in Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Sudan, Togo and Zambia, the authors look at patterns of fosterage, child circulation within Africa and beyond the continent; the role of education, child labour and conceptions of place and "home"; and the place of the child narrator in migrant fiction. Comparing different methodological and theoretical approaches and setting the case studies within the broader context of family migration, transnational families, colonial and postcolonial migration politics, religious encounter and globalization in Africa, this book provides a much-needed examination of this contentious and critical issue. Elodie Razy is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Liege (FaSS). She is the co-founder and co-editor of the online journal AnthropoChildren: Ethnographic Perspectives in Children