All for a container! Return migration, transport technologies, and love affairs

Jedlowski, Alessandro

doi:10.3167/TRANS.2016.060207

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Article (Scientific journals)

All for a container! Return migration, transport technologies, and love affairs

Jedlowski, Alessandro

2016 • In Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 6 (2), p. 94-111

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https://hdl.handle.net/2268/175616

DOI
10.3167/TRANS.2016.060207

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Keywords :

Shipping container, Transport technologies; Return migration, Transnational mobility; Social construction of technologies

Abstract :

[en] This paper analyzes the articulation between mobility and technology within life trajectories marked by migration, exile and the search for economic achievement. It does so by focusing on a Nigerian couple’s (attempted) itinerary of return migration from Italy to Nigeria, and on the tensions that surround the role played by a specific transport technology, the shipping container, within this process. It highlights how, throughout the itinerary that brings the container from Italy to Nigeria, its social meaning and that of the cargo stored in it become the center of a series of tense interactions, in which diverging imaginaries about transnational mobility, migration and life abroad come to the fore, and provoke radical transformations in the life of the people involved in the itinerary of the container itself.

Disciplines :

Anthropology

Author, co-author :

Jedlowski, Alessandro ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Institut des sciences humaines et sociales > Labo d'anthropologie sociale et culturelle (LASC)

Language :

English

Title :

All for a container! Return migration, transport technologies, and love affairs

Publication date :

2016

Journal title :

Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

ISSN :

2045-4813

eISSN :

2045-4821

Publisher :

Berghahn Journals, Oxford, United Kingdom

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

94-111

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/trans/

Available on ORBi :

since 30 December 2014

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