The City and the Country in African Migration Narratives

No other binary is as pervasive as the city and the country in the lives of postcolonial migrants in Africa whether they are migrating within the continent and outside. This is due to the image of colonial modernity as transferred through various ideological means. Migrancy experience, decision, and rationale have continued to be interfered with via these historical legacies, and are still mediated by different cultural forms which include music, cartoon, animation, films, novels, poems, and even drama. For this reason, I am interested in different imaginaries of city and the country dyad, and subjects whose lives are ordered by urban-rural relations. I am investigating how migration politics is formulated and calibrated by the urban and rural network.