Migrants and Strangers in an African City by Bruce Whitehouse

Author:Bruce Whitehouse [Whitehouse, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9780253000811
Google: T67EfaCaABwC
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2012-01-15T04:00:32+00:00

Under the stranger's code immigrants and their descendants give up their rights, believing they can never expect the same rights that they would enjoy back home. Since justice is unattainable, they feel that the only resolution to a conflict with their hosts comes through paying a stranger penalty. No matter what documents they acquire, they remain subject to the predations of rent-seeking officials and multiple other forms of exactions as long they continue to think that their only option is to tolerate these abuses. Rather than exercising the “politics of recognition” (Taylor 1994), which has become commonplace in African societies since the 1990s (Englund and Nyamnjoh 2004), they opt for a “politics of invisibility,” keeping a low profile and hoping for the best. Most believe they have no choice.

If they defended their interests en masse—by collectively refusing to pay bribes, refusing to be cheated out of their due, and refusing to put up with abuse—these migrants could guarantee greater respect for their rights. Taking such a stand, however, would be unseemly, a breach of their tacit agreement as strangers not to “rock the boat” in the host country. The stranger's code compels them to refrain from any activity that might unsettle the tenuous balance between hosts and immigrants. This includes not only political engagement and conspicuous consumption but also anything that might draw unwanted scrutiny to the strangers’ presence and their ostensibly subordinate role in the host society; one could add the taboo against religious proselytizing by strangers (see chapter 3), for example, to the three rules discussed above. In exchange for permission to stay in a land constructed as “belonging” to someone else, strangers feel obliged to keep their heads down and stay quiet. I believe the notion among my informants that honor and dignity are to a great extent place-bound, that the value of an individual cannot be appreciated on foreign soil—in short, that exile knows no dignity (see chapter 2)—only adds to their willingness to suffer indignities while living abroad.

Xenophobia and Integration

The specter of xenophobia lurked throughout my time in Brazzaville. Many of the West Africans I knew felt strongly that xenophobia was a major problem in Congo. They experienced their strangerhood every day as an imposition upon them by the host society, a refusal to accept them or make them feel at home. They would tell me time and again that Congolese simply “do not like foreigners” or even that they disliked people in general. The notion that Congolese were prone to anti-immigrant sentiments was a powerful means of explaining their ill-treatment, something they contrasted with their own society, which they saw as warm and hospitable to outsiders. I also had ample reason to be on the lookout for anti-foreign bias: xenophobia seems to crop up frequently in tandem with processes of globalization. Some political movements have embraced xenophobic discourse more or less openly: a placard popular among southern pro-government youths (the so-called Young Patriots) after the start of civil war in Côte d'Ivoire read “JE

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