Chapter 9 The Anthropology of Forced Migration in Africa Stephen C. Lubkemann, Stephen C. LubkemannSearch for more papers by this author Stephen C. Lubkemann, Stephen C. LubkemannSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Roy Richard Grinker, Roy Richard GrinkerSearch for more papers by this authorStephen C. Lubkemann, Stephen C. LubkemannSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher B. Steiner, Christopher B. SteinerSearch for more papers by this authorEuclides Gonçalves, Euclides GonçalvesSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 January 2019 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119251521.ch9 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary African migration may only recently have gained greater public visibility, but it has long been a transformative force in Africa linked to a long history of incorporation into successive geo-political systems of global domination and exploitation. This chapter highlights anthropological research in Africa that featured prominently in creating and orienting the new interdisciplinary field of forced migration studies. It plots how Harrell-Bond and other anthropologists shaped the scope of the field through works that insisted on critically questioning the categorizations used by policy-makers to distinguish and demarcate the displaced from other migrants. The chapter tracks some of the key problematics that Africanist anthropologists have explored as they have studied all of different forced migrant populations, including social differentiation and social transformation. It briefly discusses some of the ways in which the anthropological study of African displacement has set the stage for new directions in Africanist anthropology. A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa RelatedInformation

In this article I draw comparatively on ethnographic material from my work with war-affected populations from postcolonial Mozambique and diasporan Liberia to argue for a fundamental shift in the conceptualization and study of displacement. I argue first for a need to shift from an emphasis on physical mobility as the sine qua non of “displacement,” to an empirical investigation of the less-than-self-evident relationship between physical mobility and social mobility. I illustrate how the meanings and outcomes of physical mobility are far from given but must be treated as an empirical problem, in which the social opportunity structures that cultural agents ultimately navigate are reconfigured in complex, contradictory, and inadvertent ways that simultaneously generate new and socially differentiated challenges as well as opportunities.

In this article I draw on a long history of successive transatlantic “displacements” and “returns” that have shaped and reshaped Liberian diasporan identities. Proposing that diasporicity is above all an identity discourse, the first part of this article documents and compares dramatic differences in that discourse across historical generations while also examining arguments about this form of identity and social differences in subscription to it within specific generations. This history has been one of successive and often mutually contradictory recastings of where “origin” is located, which have been subject to social argumentation. A comparison of these identity discourses across different historical generations suggests the need to investigate diasporicity as more than merely an affirmation of belonging but rather also a powerful critique of exclusion. Finally, I hone in on the variations of diasporicity that have emerged within the Liberian transnational field during a single historical period (the present) to demonstrate how diasporicity as a particular form of identity emerges under—and inherently references—conditions of experiential fragmentation that are largely unforeseen and fundamentally problematic for current analytical concepts of generation. Describing some of the multiple diasporicities within the current Liberian transnational field, I argue that any concept of diasporic generation must be one that empirically ascertains the boundaries of shared historicity rather than assuming that temporal and social boundaries coincide.

It is not surprising that war tends automatically to imply violence. Indeed in his influential treatise on the anthropology of violence, David Riches identifies warfare as nothing more than "violence that is subject to a certain level of organization." (1986:24). Analysts ofwar-torn societies are often consumed by two primary problems: how violence is organized, and how warscape inhabitants handle it. This narrow focus derives less from any empirical investigation, but rather from our pre-conceptions about violence as a determinant of warscape behavior and agency. Violence comes to be treated—either explicitly or by default—as the only concern of consequence to people in warzones. However, this seemingly self evident relationship between violence and war distorts our understanding of the social life and behavior of warzone inhabitants. This article, using fieldwork I carried out in Mozambique during civil war, illustrates

This paper explores the long history of successive transatlantic “displacements” and “returns” that have shaped Liberian diasporan identities in order to re-think the central elements that structure “diasporicity” - a form of identity discourse with increasing currency in the contemporary African context. Liberia’s history has been one of successive realizations of ideologies of forms of “return” without any definitive dissolution of diasporic identity. Digging beneath narratives that highlight similarity, longing, and attachment, I consider the neglected centrality of sentiments of abjection and experiences of structural violence in underwriting an identity in which “origin” is far from fixed —but rather continuously re-located so as to critique lived experiences of discontent. Starting with the original “back to Africa” settlers, this historical analysis highlights how Liberian diasporicities have re-located “origin” and re-problematized “belonging” in highly contradictory ways— yet always primarily as a marker of socially-selective dispossession rather than merely physical dispersion. Against this historical arc, I hone in on four highly contradictory variations of diasporicity circulating within the current-day Liberian transnational field to underscore how this form of identity is mediated by contextually-specific socio-political conditions racialized experiences; contested along lines of class, gender, and generation; and implicated in multiple political struggles.