WESTAFRGLOBDIA: Citizens and 'Strangers': The Global Diamond Industry, Migration and Citizenship in West Africa (1920-80)

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This project will be the first comparative and in-depth account of diamond extraction, migration and citizenship in West Africa. It will compare the development of the diamond industry in Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone from its early years of production in the 1920s to its nationalisation in the 1980s. My central hypothesis is that the growing demand for West Africa's diamonds not only provided additional opportunities for work and mobility, but also increased colonial and postcolonial anxieties among governments and the industry's bosses. These anxieties coalesced around three issues: how best to develop the nation, how to channel movements of people, and how to control labour. This research project will build upon previous research I carried out in West Africa and Europe. It will provide a deep historicization of the ways in which thousands of men and women came to be included and excluded from diamond mining in West Africa. It will demonstrate how new colonial agendas of industrial exploitation and development interacted with different realms beyond the merely economic sphere. It will shift current preoccupation with migratory trends between Africaand Europe to the more significant movements of people taking place within Africa. The project will develop a systematic dialogue between History, Development and Migration StBased on a multidisciplinary approach, the project explores the relation between the global diamond industry in West Africa, the ideology of Pan-Africanism and policies to control migration and citizenship rights. Its central argument is that this industry not only provided more opportunity for migrant labourers, it also increased colonial and postcolonial anxieties on how to best develop the nation and contributed to make ideas of nation and citizenship more exclusive. This work will shift our attention from movements of people along the Global South/Global North axis to the deeper histories of migration taking place within the African continent.