Event Title
Paper Truths and Ersatz Lives: Authenticity and Fakery in an African Transnational Visa Economy
Description
“The subject of my presentation is the Nigerian transnational visa economy. This is the motley collection of practices, private and institutional actors, institutions and state and para-state agents involved in the production of alternative/official travel documentation for clients who hail from Nigeria. As a contribution to the scholarship on ‘globalization from below’, I demonstrate how those who work within this economy become participants in the transnational process by producing agents who eventually become transnational migrants. Furthermore, I situate the workings of the visa economy within a larger economy of falsification. I argue that the ‘visa economy’ is a fallout of a combination of factors: the dis-embedding of the state from ordinary people’s lives, the freeze in social mobility as a result of mass unemployment, and the ‘appetite for Elsewhere’ partly fostered by the scarcity of opportunities for material reproduction and professional enhancement.”
About the Lecturer: Ebenezer Obadare, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas
Document Type
Event
Start Date
23-10-2013 12:00 PM
End Date
23-10-2013 1:15 PM
Location
Fairhaven College Auditorium
Resource Type
Moving image
Title of Series
World Issues Forum
Genre/Form
lectures
Contributing Repository
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Transnationalism; Visas--Nigeria
Geographic Coverage
Nigeria--Economic conditions; Nigeria--Emigration and immigration
Type
Moving image
Keywords
Nigerian transnational visa economy, Transnational migrants
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws.
Language
English
Format
video/mp4
Paper Truths and Ersatz Lives: Authenticity and Fakery in an African Transnational Visa Economy
Fairhaven College Auditorium
“The subject of my presentation is the Nigerian transnational visa economy. This is the motley collection of practices, private and institutional actors, institutions and state and para-state agents involved in the production of alternative/official travel documentation for clients who hail from Nigeria. As a contribution to the scholarship on ‘globalization from below’, I demonstrate how those who work within this economy become participants in the transnational process by producing agents who eventually become transnational migrants. Furthermore, I situate the workings of the visa economy within a larger economy of falsification. I argue that the ‘visa economy’ is a fallout of a combination of factors: the dis-embedding of the state from ordinary people’s lives, the freeze in social mobility as a result of mass unemployment, and the ‘appetite for Elsewhere’ partly fostered by the scarcity of opportunities for material reproduction and professional enhancement.”
About the Lecturer: Ebenezer Obadare, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas
