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The Age of Migration in Afro-Asia: Towards a ‘Multicultural South’?

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Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World

Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

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Abstract

This chapter explains the motivation of the collaborative research project, gives summaries of all chapters and presents the theoretical framework of the book. As economic interaction between Africa and Asia intensifies, people’s mobility has accelerated across these regions. Empirical research on emerging migrant spaces is therefore much needed, and this book tries to elucidate the dynamics of interregional migration by combining a wide variety of academic disciplines. The editors present three main arguments. First, migrant communities in host societies can be interpreted as ethnic ‘exclaves’ of transnational networks of migrants. Second, in Afro-Asian societal contexts, relationships between communities can often be described as ‘aloof coexistence’ rather than integration and assimilation. Third, migrants make use of ‘bridging’ as well as ‘bonding’ social capital for daily survival, giving rise to pockets of active inter-group communication.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Representative of this view, propagated by influential international think tanks, is Mckinsey (2010), ‘What’s driving Africa’s growth’. http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/middle-east-and-africa/whats-driving-africas-growth (accessed on 5 April 2011).

  2. 2.

    Also see Foreign Policy (2013), ‘The myth of Africa’s rise’. foreignpolicy.com/2013/01/04/the-myth-of-africas-rise (accessed on 23 June 2015).

  3. 3.

    ‘Zambian miners kill Chinese managers during pay protest’, BBC News, 5 August 2012.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-19135435 (accessed on 20 June 2017); ‘Umphakatsi kicks out Asian businessman’, Times of Swaziland, 24 October 2016.http://www.times.co.sz/news/110332-umphakatsi-kicks-out-asian-businessman.html (accessed on 20 June 2017); ‘Africans protest in China after Nigerian dies in immigration raid’, The Guardian, 16 July 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/16/china-african-protesters-immigration-raid (accessed on 20 June 2017).

  4. 4.

    High mobility of Africans around internal frontiers of the African continent and the fluid nature of their political institutions constituted a precolonial pan-African culture (Kopytoff 1987). It seems that the patterns persisted into the contemporary times (Kane and Leedy 2013).

  5. 5.

    This assumption is not always realistic as warned by Phillips (2007) who emphasizes the value of raising voice in group contexts.

  6. 6.

    While the path-breaking work of Putnam (1993) was about regional disparity in social capital in Italy, Fukuyama (1995) compared national performance of social capital on a global scale without references to the Islamic and African worlds.

  7. 7.

    Recognizing the diverse number of ways to address minority rights in Asia, Kymlicka invites Asian scholars to engage in the global debate on multiculturalism to make it more inclusive (Kymlicka 2005).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa

    Scarlett Cornelissen

  2. Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yoichi Mine

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  1. Scarlett Cornelissen
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  2. Yoichi Mine
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa

    Scarlett Cornelissen

  2. Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yoichi Mine

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Cornelissen, S., Mine, Y. (2018). The Age of Migration in Afro-Asia: Towards a ‘Multicultural South’?. In: Cornelissen, S., Mine, Y. (eds) Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60205-3_1

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