Work, Labor, and Afroeuropean (Im)mobilities
摘要
This chapter analyzes work-related mobilities by placing different scales of mobility and immobility at the center of analysis. The readings first concentrate on two historical novels, Wilfried N’Sondé’s Un Océan, deux mers, trois continents (2018) and Emmanuel Dongala’s La Sonate à Bridgetower (Sonata Mulattica) (2017), which frame the Afroeuropean journeys of their privileged professional travelers within the context of coerced transatlantic (im)mobilities. Strategies such as juxtaposition bring these two otherwise somewhat far-removed categories of mobility together. In Ousmane Sembène’s short story “La Noire de…” (1962) work-related Afroeuropean mobilities are embedded in colonialist, racist, classist, and gendered power structures, challenging associations of mobility with freedom and labor migration with social mobility. Denis Oussou-Essui’s La Souche calcinée (2004) and Gauz’s Debout-payé (2014) attest to the precarious aspects of employment-related mobilities for African migrants in France. Gauz’s novel introduces different scales of employment-related (im)mobilities into the formal scale through multiperspectivity and focalizations. Together, the texts discussed draw a picture of the transtemporal links of Afroeuropean employment-related (im)mobilities, ranging from the times of the slave trade to contemporary neoliberal globalization.