Negotiating contested ties: immigrants and primordial communities ‘back home’

Immigrants’ relations with home communities shed much light on these complexities involved in an individual's negotiation of presence in the myriad spaces that feature in Ekeh's work. In line with Ekeh's theory, much literature on immigrants’ interactions with primordial publics in their places of origin tends to emphasise persisting ties, harmony and benign reciprocity. Highlighted are immigrants’ visits to and insistence on burial back home, the making of remittances to and investments in home areas as well as the flourishing of associational life rooted in and aimed at strengthening common origins (Grillo Reference Grillo1973; Curtis Reference Curtis1995; Fall Reference Fall1998; Trager Reference Trager1998; Arhinful Reference Arhinful2001; Mazzucato et al. Reference Mazzucato, Kabki and Smith2006; Hickey Reference Hickey2011). Home communities in turn are said to contribute financially to the successful travels of migrants, provide social and moral compass and succour to immigrants, act as political bases and provide help to visiting or returning migrants (Ndegwa Reference Ndegwa1997; Geschiere & Gugler Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998; Nyamnjoh & Rowlands Reference Nyamnjoh and Rowlands1998; Smith Reference Smith2001; Mazzucato et al. Reference Mazzucato, Kabki and Smith2006; Dietz et al. Reference Dietz, Mazzucato, Kabki and Smith2011).

These major narratives, however, mask the turbulent undertones of these relations and the frustrations and complaints of many migrants concerning relations with primordial publics in their places of origin. These complaints often focus on the unreasonable weight of financial expectations from people at home, the cost of visiting these places, the burden of entertaining visitors from there and the misappropriation of remittances sent for investment in these places (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Geschiere Reference Geschiere, Diouf and Fredericks2014; Hay Reference Hay2014; Lindley Reference Lindley2007; Englund Reference Englund2004; Tabappsi Reference Tabappsi1999).

Truly frustrated migrants can adopt what we can call ‘the nuclear option’ of cutting off all ties with home areas. But this option is rarely used (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005). This is partly because it inevitably attracts punishment against the errant migrant that includes name-calling against and the ostracising of migrants as well as deployment of witchcraft against them by communities in places of origin (de Sardan Reference de Sardan1999; Geschiere & Nyamnjoh Reference Geschiere and Nyamnjoh1998: 41; Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh, Moore and Sanders2001, Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2007). Beyond such punishments, the act of cutting oneself off from home also means depriving oneself of many benefits of ties with home that migrants greatly value, even while protesting their limited space for manoeuvre in defining the terms of such engagement (Grillo Reference Grillo1973; Ekeh Reference Ekeh1975; Curtis Reference Curtis1995; Geschiere & Gugler Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998; Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2007).

It is on account of this that many migrants approach these relationships as contested social fields that have to be carefully negotiated through the deployment of multiple strategies, recalling the insistence on negotiability of social relations by Mbembe (Reference Mbembe, Berner and Trulsson2000) and Berry (Reference Berry1993). Migrants will occasionally go off radar by changing their addresses, phone numbers and social media accounts to reinforce their autonomy over the terms of interactions with their places of origin (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2007). At other times, they deploy structured narratives that employ exaggeration, underestimation, fabrication, the suppression of choice details, the reordering of facts and use of deliberate ambiguity to escape demands that they prefer not to be encumbered with. Similar narratives are deployed by primordial publics in these negotiations with migrants (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2009). Such narratives have also been pointed to in studies of refugees (Kibreab Reference Kibreab2004; Gale Reference Gale2007) and peasants (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1973; Scott Reference Scott1985).

Migrants can artfully mobilise the possibilities offered by great tragedies such as wars, outbreaks of inter-communal violence, economic crises and natural disasters to strengthen their arms in these negotiations over contested terms of engagement. The ‘attractiveness’ of these tragedies lies in the fact that they constitute widely publicised hardships whose invocation may insulate migrants from punishment and retaliation by members of their primordial publics in places of origin.

The (bio)politics of mobilising the possibilities offered by epidemics

Epidemics of contagious diseases understood in their broad biological, social, economic and political senses are examples of such tragedies. This is especially so when they afflict host and/or sending communities. They pose significant threats to human life, provoke irrational fear, and often coincide with the stereotyping of migrants as disease vectors leading to curbs on mobility, social crises and the subversion of economies (Eichelberger Reference Eichelberger2007; Bangura Reference Bangura2014; UNECA 2015; Monson Reference Monson2017; Abdullah & Rashid Reference Abdullah and Rashid2017).

These multiple dimensions and effects of epidemics lend themselves excellently to deployment in migrants’ negotiations of greater autonomy with primordial communities. The dampening of economies can be invoked to justify reductions in remittances to certain people. Travel curbs, the danger of infection and xenophobia can all be used to justify hesitation to travel home and greater discrimination in who and how many guests from home to host. Efforts to gain the upper hand in these contests within primordial publics drive some migrants to make common cause with civic publics (state agencies) and other primordial groups (host communities) through the embrace of epidemic control and prevention measures.

These moves raise important questions concerning Ekeh's (Reference Ekeh1975) reflections on social relations in Africa and the extent to which it can help us make sense of many social processes, including epidemics. First, it is clear that the portrayal of intra-communal relations as highly placid as opposed to inter-communal and state-society relations, is mistaken. The artful negotiation of contested primordial ties by Peul migrants is a very mild version of the violent confrontations that mark such intra-communal contestations in certain contexts across Africa. The contested nature of ties within primordial publics suggests a second way in which the work of Ekeh has to be nuanced. Patterns of alliance building and collaboration sometimes transgress communal and state-society boundaries as actors seek resources and allies to reinforce their positions in heated intra-communal contestations. This suggests that Ekeh's work may lead to an underestimation of inter-communal alliances and state-society collaborations.

One interpretation of the contestation within primordial publics is that they constitute only further evidence of what Ekeh describes as their moral character. The guile and determination that home communities display in their bid to rein in ‘errant’ migrants only points to the determination to maintain the health of what people see as an essentially moral primordial public at all costs. But the literature also suggests that, contrary to the depiction of Ekeh, expectations of individual material gains drive the involvement of some actors within these primordial publics. Many migrants definitely think so when they confront certain demands and strategies of some in their home communities. Further, the actions of certain actors within these spaces cast doubt on whether they feel a sense of obligation to these primordial spheres, as claimed by Ekeh.

The implication of epidemics in these processes of negotiating the terms of engagement between migrants and primordial publics in their places of origin reinforces the idea that epidemics can only be made sense of when immersed in long-standing social processes and struggles (M'Bokolo Reference M'Bokolo1982; Farmer Reference Farmer2005; Niang Reference Niang2014; Faye Reference Faye2015; Fairhead Reference Fairhead2016; Abdullah & Rashid Reference Abdullah and Rashid2017). For various actors, epidemics constitute opportunities for reinforcing control over population movements, implementing certain visions of urban planning, purifying nations and so on (Curtin Reference Curtin1985; Goerg Reference Goerg1998; Echenberg Reference Echenberg2002; Markel & Stern Reference Markel and Stern2002; Bangura Reference Bangura2014; Onoma Reference Onoma2017). The nature of measures adopted in the face of epidemics is then motivated by both these complementary concerns as well as anxieties over containing epidemics. Concerns over life (bios) and its preservation in the face of dangerous viruses are mobilised to structure social relations just as anxieties over the governance of social relations influence approaches to the project of preserving life as a biological phenomenon. This intersection of the practice of governing life (bios) and that of governing societies constitutes a veritable form of biopolitics in the vein of Foucault (Reference Foucault, Rabinow and Faubion1997).

In the next section, I show that the Ebola epidemic provided Peul migrants with resources with which to enhance their negotiating power over how they relate to primordial publics in Guinea. The reduction of travel to Guinea and the hosting of Guineans was in line with epidemic control and prevention methods. Both of these, along with greater control of migrants over decisions on remittances, ostensibly due to the hardships imposed by EVD, were also extensions of long-standing efforts by Peul to better dictate the terms of engagement with primordial publics in Guinea. The zest with which the Peul embraced epidemic control and prevention measures was certainly motivated by concerns over EVD, but it was also driven by efforts to gain the upper hand in historical struggles with primordial publics in Guinea. These struggles within primordial publics help us understand the convergence between the strategies of the Peul community in the face of EVD and epidemic control and prevention measures advocated by the Senegalese state and various non-state organisations.

Negotiating ties with primordial publics in Guinea

Regardless of where exactly in Guinea they migrate from, Peul, like many other migrant communities (H. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2013; Geschiere Reference Geschiere, Diouf and Fredericks2014; Hay Reference Hay2014), often maintain ties with primordial publics in Guinea, including at the family, neighbourhood, village and sub-prefecture levels. As in other migrant contexts (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Geschiere Reference Geschiere, Diouf and Fredericks2014), one of the most common ways that these ties manifest themselves is the visit of Peul to Guinea for reasons that include going to farm, to get married, participate in funerals and to ‘just visit people’ (Interviews 34, 35, 37). As is the case with many other migrant communities (Geschiere & Gugler Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998), the hosting of people from Guinea also constitutes an important way in which Peul remain linked to Guinea. These visitors include those seeking to settle in Senegal and people on short trips to conduct business, seek medical attention, apply for visas and so on. They include relatives and friends of the hosts as well as people from the same village, neighbourhood or sub-prefecture (Interviews 24, 29). The specific form that hosting takes varies widely and may include providing accommodation and food for and paying the school fees and health costs of the visitor as well as seeking employment for him or her (Interviews 32, 34, 37).

Transfers of money and material goods to Guinea also constitute an important way in which Peul remain linked to Guinea. Such transfers by migrants in other contexts have received much scholarly attention (Arhinful Reference Arhinful2001; Maimbo & Ratha Reference Maimbo and Ratha2005; World Bank 2006; Lindley Reference Lindley2007, Reference Lindley2009). In the Peul milieu, they often take the form of money as well as goods, with recipients including immediate and extended family members, friends, people from the same village, neighbourhood or sub-prefecture as well as community associations and ‘development’ projects. Regular remittances are common, but events such as deaths, births, marriages and religious festivities are also occasions for transfers (Interviews 25, 35).

As in other migrant contexts (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Hay Reference Hay2014), the maintenance of links to primordial communities in Guinea by Peul is partly because many of these migrants have family, homes, farms and businesses in these localities in Guinea. Peul migrants also draw significant benefits from these ties including expressions of support and praise, benedictions and community involvement in important events in the life of the migrant's family as well as material gifts like palm oil, peanut paste, cloth and jewellery (Interviews 24, 26, 27, 28). But coercive pressures by home communities, other Peul migrants and Senegalese society are also motivating factors for these migrants, as is evident in other migrant contexts (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2007). Xenophobic attitudes in host communities make it difficult for migrants to give up ties with places of origin even when they wish to (Mamdani Reference Mamdani2002) and such pressures are evident in xenophobic discourse targeting the Peul in Senegal (Onoma Reference Onoma2017). Also, people in Guinea pressure Peul migrants to continuously ‘assume their responsibilities’ to those ‘at home’. The Peul who demonstrate an unwillingness to visit Guinea, host people from Guinea or send money to Guinea are often called ‘les déracines’ and portrayed as useless people who have lost their way (Interviews 27, 28, 38).

These Peul who are widely disparaged as foolishly thinking ‘they are now real Senegalese’ can expect scorn, isolation and ostracism. They are not invited to activities in Senegal by other Peul migrants and many members of the migrant community stay away from their family events like baptisms and marriage ceremonies. They are deprived of news of their families in Guinea. On those occasions when they are forced to go to Guinea by events like funerals, they are derided and ignored by many there (Interviews 24, 26, 38). A Peul put it tersely: ‘Nothing good happens to a Peul who refuses to host people from Guinea’ (Interview 28).

The presence of these coercive pressures suggests that Peul often have dissatisfactions with the nature of ties with their home communities in Guinea. Such frustrations with places of origins have been noted in other migrant contexts (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; Lindley Reference Lindley2007; Geschiere Reference Geschiere, Diouf and Fredericks2014; Hay Reference Hay2014). Peul decry the overly onerous weight of demands from people in Guinea. ‘When Guineans know that you are well off they will do everything for you to aid your family to the point of pauperising you, including taking you to marabouts’, a Peul noted (Interview 24). Many denounce the ‘frivolous’ reasons behind some requests for help and the misappropriation of funds sent to Guinea for investment (Interviews 34, 37). A Peul noted that ‘Sometimes you send money to an uncle to build a house for you and they will eat that money and if you try to get the money it will be a war’ (Interview 24). Reference to the use of witchcraft and sorcery by those in Guinea against ‘errant’ Peul migrants mirrors the situation described in studies of Cameroon (Geschiere & Nyamnjoh Reference Geschiere and Nyamnjoh1998; Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh, Moore and Sanders2001).

Peul express great frustration over their limited ability to regulate these links with primordial publics in Guinea in the face of what they see as exploitation and abuse. One interviewee indicated that ‘It is the communities in Guinea that have the power to determine how many times we go to visit Guinea’ (Interview 28). Another pointed out that ‘some Guineans come here even without informing their hosts. They will just show up at your door. Some don't even bother to tell you what they came to do’ (Interview 2). The widespread use of cell phones and social media has reshaped space, connectedness and mobility, enhancing the proximity of migrants to communities in their places of origin for better or worse (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005; de Bruijn et al. Reference de Bruijn, Nyamnjoh and Brinkman2009; Madianou & Miller Reference Madianou and Miller2011; H. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2013; Hay Reference Hay2014: 8; Liu & Leung Reference Liu and Leung2017).

These challenges in relations with home communities create what we can think of as mutual alienation even as deeply intimate and historical ties pull members of these spheres together. For migrants this often takes the form of what Nyamnjoh, in another context, terms the development of ‘ambivalent attitudes towards home’ (Reference Nyamnjoh2005: 243). Peul, like migrants elsewhere (Lindley Reference Lindley2009), deploy various tactics to enhance their say over their location in these primordial publics. These measures reflect an acute awareness that it is more useful to think of these relations as negotiable ties that have to be artfully managed instead of as links that have to be ‘either maintained or broken’ to borrow the words of Geschiere & Gugler (Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998: 315). Many Peul opt for wily methods, which reduce the likelihood of retaliation by Guineans in allowing for plausible deniability of an intention to shirk responsibilities to ‘home’.

Some occasionally distance members of these communities by changing physical and/or electronic addresses and phone numbers without immediately informing all those who have their old contacts in Guinea. Others may simply get additional phone numbers that they share with a few people and leave calls to old numbers unanswered (Interviews 24, 35). The deployment of structured narratives by these migrants is pervasive. To turn down requests to host people from Guinea, Peul sometimes claim to have travelled or indicate that their houses are small and already full of Guineans they are hosting. They cite tough economic conditions in Senegal and poor performance of their businesses to enable them to exercise greater control over the amounts of money they send to Guinea, when they travel there and which visitors from Guinea they host. Other narratives of woe and misfortune dwell on road accidents, illnesses and court cases (Interviews 20, 27, 32).

Many Peul freely admit that these narratives are deliberately structured and strategically deployed to serve certain purposes. But regarding them as ‘lies’ is problematic. Often, they simply strategically exploit aspects of real life challenges to increase room for manoeuvre in what are rather sensitive negotiations. For example, a Peul will invoke real economic hardships as a reason for ‘not being able’ to respond positively to what she sees as an ‘unreasonable’ financial request while still contributing to a community development initiative that she finds worthwhile.

Harnessing the possibilities presented by the EVD epidemic

Peul harnessed the EVD crisis as an important resource to enhance their influence on the terms under which they interact with primordial publics in Guinea. The EVD crisis caused fear and suffering for the Peul even more than it did for other populations in Senegal. Areas close to the border with Senegal in Moyenne Guinée, such as the prefectures of Koundara, Mali, Labe and Koubia, where many of these Peul originate, suffered the fewest Ebola cases in Guinea. But these Peul migrants watched in horror as other areas in Guinea in which they had relatives and friends were ravaged by the disease. They also lived in fear of a xenophobic backlash against them were the epidemic to spread in Senegal even as they worried about the harm the disease will cause to them in such an eventuality (Onoma Reference Onoma2017). It was not a crisis that they welcomed or celebrated but it contained possibilities that could be mobilised for deployment in long-standing struggles with people in Guinea for many reasons. The highly contagious nature of EVD made ‘unnecessary’ movement in affected zones unwise, providing Peul migrants with a ‘genuine’ reason to not travel to Guinea and to discourage travel to Senegal by Guineans. The closure of the Senegal–Guinea border by the Senegalese authorities in March 2014 and again in August 2014 gave Peul ‘justifiable’ reasons to refuse to make unwanted trips to Guinea, even while the porosity of the border during these closures made it possible for them to undertake trips to Guinea that they saw as ‘necessary’. The economic hardships that the crisis provoked in many countries acted as a justification for structuring remittances in ways that better aligned with Peul migrants’ wishes.

Many Peul acknowledge that the Ebola epidemic became a weapon in negotiations with primordial publics in Guinea. One noted that ‘some people who did not want to go to Guinea, send money there or receive Guinean guests used Ebola and the closure of the border as an excuse’ (Interview 32). Another pointed out that ‘to avoid sending money to Guinea, some Peul were saying that because of Ebola they no longer had money and had lost their jobs so they could not send money. Some were even saying that the money transfer agencies had closed because of Ebola’ (Interview 41). A third claimed that ‘some Peul used the closing of the border as an excuse to not send money, visit Guinea, host Guineans and help people’ (Interview 37).

Some Peul interviewed for this study denied exploiting EVD to tame conviviality in their primordial publics. They claimed that Ebola's hardships ‘just forced’ them to curb remittances, reduce travel to Guinea and refrain from hosting many Guineans (Interviews 38, 40). But such interviewees always found it hard to explain why the hardships stopped them from making certain trips to Guinea but not others or why it prevented them from sending money to certain people but not others. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Ebola led to an overall decrease in the amount of remittances by Peul to Guinea. But it enabled them to more easily negotiate who to send money, how much, when and so on.

Understanding all of this requires an embrace of the plurality and complexity that characterises the motivations of social actors (Langewiesche Reference Langewiesche2003). The ways in which Peul reacted to the EVD epidemic were not informed by epidemic control and prevention concerns or interests in gaining the upper hand in negotiations over contested ties within primordial publics, but by both factors. The mix of concerns over protecting life in the face of a dangerous epidemic and ‘complementary interests’ in regulating social relations in motivating how the Peul reacted to EVD only means that the Peul, in elaborating a form of biopolitics, were like many others who face epidemics.

Some members of primordial publics in the Mano-River Basin countries that were the worst affected by the Ebola epidemic saw an occasion to squeeze more remittances out of relatives abroad. Some staff of agencies involved in epidemic control and prevention were concerned with personal wealth accumulation through the misappropriation of resources and accrual of high wages, per diems and so-called hardship allowances (IFRC 2017; Shepler Reference Shepler2017). Many big powers saw an opportunity to test military medical innovations (Kaplan & Easton-Calabria Reference Kaplan and Easton-Calabria2015). Nativists around the world discerned an opportunity to reinvigorate the pursuit of the Sisyphean objective of purifying nations (Laccino Reference Laccino2014; Smith Reference Smith2014). The reaction of all of these actors was influenced both by epidemic control and prevention as well as other long-standing socio-political and economic preoccupations.

The complementary concerns over what many Peul see as exploitative and abusive relations within primordial publics to which they belong lend credence to criticism of Ekeh's characterisation of the primordial public as an essentially moral sphere (Ukiwo Reference Ukiwo2005). The fact that these complementary concerns drove Peul to adopt the epidemic control and prevention measures advocated and specifically addressed to them by the Senegalese state is also significant (Interviews 3, 8, 19). This collaboration challenges the tendency to assume an almost unbridgeable gulf between states and social actors in Africa and to suggest that individuals will always side with their primordial publics against civic publics. The fact that the adoption of these measures by the Peul brought them closer to the wishes of Senegalese primordial publics even at the expense of primordial publics in Guinea is also significant. It undermines the expectation of interminable conflict between primordial publics that a lot of work on the political economy of Africa suggests. This embrace was evidence of Peul elaboration of what Nyamnjoh in another context refers to as ‘more flexible, negotiated, relational, and realistic ideas of belonging founded less on the essence of geography and biology than on conviviality and a shared humanity’ (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005: 243).