Introduction

Abstract

Africa is immensely influenced by the spatial movement of its population. Africa on the Move, however, is not about “African refugees” nor African migration to Europe. It is about much larger movements: the “everyday migrations” within Africa. And it is about the enormous relevance of migration to livelihood security on the African continent. Africa on the Move also makes clear that Africa is changing. Its social, economic, and ecological structures are subject to rapid processes of transformation. How do people organize their daily lives, either to improve their living conditions or to respond to these various changes? Here, migration plays as decisive a role as the social networks that span across vast distances between regions of origin and arrival. In particular, rural and urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa are closely linked through informal relations. Circular migration and an intensive exchange of information, capital, and goods characterize the interdependence of rural and urban areas. These linkages are largely constituted in the informal structures of social networks which span territorial borders and, in turn, have a considerable impact on the everyday life on the African continent. Within many people’s livelihood systems, the Here and There—e.g., in the city and in the countryside—have certain, partially complementary functions. It is only through a specific In-Betweenness that these can be linked and combined to contribute to livelihood security. This book is a plea for the translocal dimension of development to be given more attention than it has received so far. It is time both for development research and for practical development planning to adopt a translocal perspective. This introduction describes the basic idea of the book and explains its inner structure.