Introduction

This introduction anticipates the main arguments about how postcolonial African migration to the West is not only a spatial movement in search of material and physical security but also an expression of the mimetic desire for being by imitating the West against the background of the dehumanizing historical legacies of slavery, colonialism, and Western dominance. Whereas poverty, conflicts, and climate change as causes of migration are straightforward, the migration of non-poor, educated, and wealthy Africans to the West is not adequately analyzed or understood. This book is based on field research, my personal experiences as an African/Ethiopian, mimetic theory, and a hermeneutical analysis of African and Western literature against the background of the impacts of slavery, colonization, and Western dominance economically, aesthetically, politically, and technologically.