Long Journeys: African Migrants on the Road

Trapped inside lorries or huddled aboard unseaworthy boats, irregular African migrants make for troubling headlines in western media, fueling fever pitch fears of an impending ＂African exodus＂ to Europe. Despite the increasing, albeit sensational, attention irregular migration attracts on both sides of the Mediterranean, little is known about what shapes and influences the lives of these Africans before, during, and after their ＂migratory projects.＂ By privileging migrants’ narratives and drawing on evidence-based field research from different disciplinary backgrounds, the volume demystifies and dislodges many common assumptions about the human ecology of irregular African migration to Europe, arguably one of the most widely debated, yet least understood, phenomenon of our time.

Alessandro Triulzi is Professor of sub-Saharan African History at the University of Naples ’L’Orientale’, Italy. He has published extensively on twentieth-century Ethiopian history, colonial memory and postcolonial violence. Since 2007 he has been involved in recording migrant testimonies and narratives. In 2012 he established an Archive of Migrant Memories in Rome to support migrants’ rights and agency through audio-visual productions.

Robert Lawrence McKenzie is an expert on governance, politics, and regional security in North Africa and the Middle East. He works for the U.S. Department of State, and he previously served as an advisor to the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As both a researcher and consultant he has conducted extensive field research on forced migration, African urban refugees, and international aid in the Middle East. Robert is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His doctoral thesis examines the lives of sub-Saharan refugees in Cairo, Egypt.