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
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