Creating Modernities through Conversation Groups: The Everyday Worlds of Hausa Migrants in Niamey, Niger

African Studies Review, Dec 2004 by Youngstedt, Scott M

assumption that rural communities are disconnected from the cosmopolitan centers of knowledge, production, and consumption. Nigerien villagers may appear rustic and provincial to their urban counterparts, but they have firmly inserted themselves in the global economy. . . . Their involvement in national and transnational circuits of wealth and information belies the tendency to imagine the chasm between rural existence and urban living, local knowledge and metropolitan experience. Indeed, Hausa men are usually equally comfortable in Niamey and small villages.6

In the context of extreme material deprivation throughout Niger, most Hausa perceive that rural to urban migration, at least on a seasonal basis, provides the only possible means to earn cash to survive (Painter 1987, 1992; Youngstedt 1993). Nigerien Hausa migrate to most of the diaspora communities mentioned earlier. Virtually all of the migrants I have interviewed over the past fifteen years state that Niamey is the most popular destination for Nigerien Hausa, especially for first-time migrants. This is the case because they avoid legal issues associated with crossing international borders, there are more hometown connections, and it is relatively easy to send money and messages and visit their home communities from Niamey. Migrants from any region of Nigerien Hausaland can reach Niamey in a day or two at most.

My approach is cognizant of labor flows and broad social dynamics (for example, Niger's peripheral position in global capitalism), while focused on the everyday lives of real people and what is important to them.7 For example, when I ask migrants "why have you come to Niamey?" their first response, almost universally, is simply "neman kud'i" (seeking money). Probing further, I am offered more nuanced explanations. Seasonal and settled migrants, as well as migrants in transit, with few exceptions strive to support families and communities through remittances and thus opt to live in extreme poverty, usually forgoing luxury in Niamey. Migration functions, as I have said elsewhere, as a sort of rite of passage through which an individual achieves prestige and self-respect through the demonstration of his courage to leave home and find success in the city, expecting to return home and fulfill his obligations as a person of consequence there (Young-stedt 1993:150). Most migrants dream of the day when they will triumphantly return home with lavish gifts of money, clothes, radio cassette players, as well as cultural capital such as new job skills, increased religious knowledge, proficiency in other languages, and experience of zaman duniya (staying in the world). Some men accumulate savings allowing them to marry at an earlier age than would otherwise be possible or marry second wives. Migrants also seek adventure; their thirst for it is commonly phrased in terms of bud'e ido (opening one's eyes) or ganin duniya (seeing the world).

While a man may migrate with all of these goals in mind, there is no getting around neman kud'i (seeking money). Since I began research fifteen years ago, more and more Hausa in Niamey experience declining economic opportunities and increasingly complain that everything in Niamey costs too much, particularly rent, food, and clothing (Koudize 1983; Sabo 1996). Today the majority of men in my research sample are unable to save any money, whereas most could in the early 1990s. Some feel too embarrassed to return home without gifts, and they extend their stay in Niamey hoping their fortunes will turn.