Social Im/mobilities in Africa: Ethnographic Approaches

Joel Noret is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Universite libre de Bruxelles. He has conducted most of his fieldwork in Southern Benin where he worked on funerals, religious change and the memory of slavery. In the last few years, he has started investigating social inequalities in education, combining ethnography with survey research to explore the making of unequal lives.

Introduction: Theorizing Social Im/mobilities in Africa Joel Noret Chapter 1. Inequality from up Close: Qur'anic Students in Northern Nigeria Working as Domestics Hannah Hoechner Chapter 2. 'Born Free to Aspire?' An Ethnographic Study of Rural Youths' Aspirations in Post-Apartheid South Africa Fawzia Mazanderani Chapter 3. Great Expectations and Uncertain Futures: Education and Social Im/mobility in Niamey, Niger Gabriella Koerling Chapter 4. 'Precarious Prosperity?' Social Im/mobilities Among Young Entrepreneurs in Kampala Laura Camfield and William Monteith Chapter 5. 'Here Men Are Becoming Women and Women Men': Gender, Class, and Space in Maputo, Mozambique Inge Tvedten, Arlindo Uate and Lizete Mangueleze Chapter 6. The Dynamics of Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt: A Discussion of Bourdieu's Theory of Social Space Benjamin Rubbers Chapter 7. Crisis, Work and the Meanings of Mobility on the Zimbabwean-South African Border Maxim Bolt Chapter 8. Domestic Dramas: Class, Taste and Home Decoration in Buea, Cameroon Ben Page Conclusion: A Multidimensional Approach to Social Positionality in Africa Joel Noret Appendix I: Sample characteristics Appendix II: Summary of entrepreneurs' directions of social mobility Index