Migrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi

The Pressure of being a Man in an African City
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-84701-352-1
Verlag: James Currey

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 184 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 232 mm x 156 mm, Gewicht: 292 g

Reihe: Making & Remaking the African City: Studies in Urban Africa

Examines how young male migrants in urban Nairobi navigate the tension between expectations of success and repetitive failure.

Pipeline is a low-income, high-rise-tenement settlement in Nairobi's marginalized East and one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated estates. An aspirational place where fleeting forms of capitalist consumption reassure migrants of an upward trajectory, it is also a place where their ambitions of long-term economic success and stable romantic relationships are routinely thwarted. This book explores how men who migrate to Nairobi from Western Kenya navigate this tension that is generated by the contrast between their view of Pipeline as a launching pad for their personal and professional careers and the fact that they face constant economic, romantic, and personal backlashes.

Drawing on over two years of fieldwork, the book reveals that many male migrants design their future on trajectories of personal and economic growth but have to adjust or indefinitely postpone their plans once they arrive in Kenya's capital. Under the pressure to succeed from romantic partners, spouses, rural kin, and children, they create and participate in homosocial spaces where a sense of brotherhood emerges and their experience of pressure is attenuated. Alongside a deep ethnographic exploration of how male migrants model their financial, physical, and mental well-being in three different masculine spaces - an ethnically homogenous investment group, an interethnic gym, and the semi-digital sphere of self-help books, workshops, and motivational trainings on man- and fatherhood - this book brings a new perspective to our understanding of urban African life and the nature of masculinity.

This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, with funding from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Open Access Fund and the German Research Foundation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmidt, Mario

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Entwicklungsökonomie & Emerging Markets
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Nachhaltigkeit

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
Part 1: Experiencing Pressure
1. The History and Infrastructure of an Aspirational Estate
2. Economic Pressure and the Expectation of Success
3. Romantic Responsibilities and Marital Mistrust

Part 2: Evading Pressure
4. Investing in Male Sociality and Wasteful Masculinity
5. Lifting Weights and the Performance of Brotherhood
6. Masculinity Consultants and the Threat of Men's Expendability

Conclusion: Pipeline to Nowhere

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Schmidt, Mario
MARIO SCHMIDT is a senior research specialist at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi and an associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale). Apart from exploring notions of masculinity among rural-urban migrants, he is interested in the effects of evidence-based development aid interventions across East Africa and the epistemological and ethical foundations of the behavioral sciences.