RACHID BENBIH, al-Hijrāt al-Nisāʾiyya al-Jadīda fī Afrīqyā: al-Muḥaddidāt wa-l-Daynamiyyāt [New Women’s Migrations in Africa: Determinants and Dynamics] (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2021), pp. 440.
Rachid Benbih’s
New Women’s Migrations in Africa: Determinants and Dynamics highlights the role of women in the process of migration in Africa and the routes assumed by these women from the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa through gender approaches. While women’s migration has been discussed widely – with various studies looking at women’s migration from the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa into Morocco as well as African migration more broadly – these studies have generally failed to pay attention to the African reality itself. Therefore, this book investigates the structural determinants of women’s migration in African societies in the postcolonial period, focusing on the socioeconomic grounds that fueled these migrations.
The book adopts a critical approach based on ethnographic fieldwork tracing the systematic social and political determinants in Africa behind successive waves of migration to Europe through Morocco. This approach draws on figures and data coupled with careful analysis of the lived experiences of migrant women from Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Morocco. It draws out the economic and social impacts of neoliberal transformation projects in Africa, bringing together the micro and the macro in the study of migration.
* This review was published in the 16th issue of AlMuntaqa, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the social sciences and humanities. You can read the full paper here.
