Abstract
Human mobility has been an essential constant in human history, and contemporary notions and manifestations of statehood are increasingly restraining the movement of certain people in the twenty-first century, mainly brown and black people from the Global South. Travelling While Black is a unique collection of reflective essays that explore and theorise about human beings in motion and the intersectional issues of race, gender, and identity from the perspective of a Black African female researcher, political analyst, and traveller. Nanjala Nyabola's personal experiences form the bedrock of her intellectual contributions, grounding her scholarly work in a deep understanding of human knowledge and humanity. Nyabola's critical analysis of dominant discourses and processes surrounding migration and contemporary statehood challenges our misconceptions about migrants distorted by colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Nyabola compels us to question the hierarchical social world order, which values and empathises with specific lives – determined by a matrix of privilege that includes race, gender, wealth, and country of origin – while undermining and preventing the movement of others.
Travelling While Black comprises seventeen distinct essays focusing on specific traveling experiences woven together by the overarching themes of identity and belonging, otherness, white supremacy, and power dynamics. In each chapter, Nyabola poses thought-provoking questions that challenge readers to examine their beliefs and privileges, and to consider how these either disrupt or perpetuate systems of inequality and discrimination. For instance, in the first chapter, M’pa Blan, meaning “I am not white” in Kreyol, Nyabola reflects on race as a complex social construction of otherness. She defines race and identity as fluid, extending beyond mere skin colour to encompass various forms of privilege. She demonstrates how white supremacy operates within humanitarian work and outside white spaces, showing the perversity of its manifestation in our societies and within ourselves.
In the second chapter, Travelling While Black, Nyabola describes how fear constructed by Western media and white men's perspective reflected in travel guidebooks has impacted every step of her travelling experiences, particularly in Africa. Many chapters in this book – including The Seat that Eats Our Children, Looking for Bessie, The African is Not At Home, Ukabila, This is For the Community, and On Race – demonstrate how colonial histories of structural racism continue to influence our prejudiced perception of Africa and Africans and inform current anti-black discriminatory policies of migration. The colonial project's obsession with categorisation has established an elusive understanding of home and who belongs in it, perpetuating unequal dynamics of power for privilege. Nyabola argues that the process of decolonisation is incomplete and will remain so until we acknowledge and tackle the deep-rooted colonial legacy that undermines the intellectual contributions and humanity of black and brown people, particularly those living in poverty.
The standardisation of visas, inherently discriminatory, has created a singular story of the migrant labelled and politicised as a burden rather than a creator and contributor. In one of her most illuminating essays, Periodic Offerings to the Visa Gods, Nyabola explores how the cruel-money-making machine system utilises ritual humiliation to keep people in their places and legitimise a world order constructed by and favouring the Global North and whiteness. The inaccessibility of visas has forced individuals and families to take dangerous journeys across seas, oceans, and borders to flee, find better opportunities, or simply explore the world. The Mediterranean Sea has consequently become a burial ground for Africans emigrating, which Nyabola explores in The Sea that Eats Our Children. Nyabola argues that migration is a crisis created by European states and their violent colonial history. After decades of plundering Africa, European powers have engaged in political and economic interference and sabotage to ensure Africa remains dependent on Europe.
Nyabola's work is profound and resonates with a collective movement for liberation. The vulnerable and intimate stories of dislocation and moments of discomfort she shares bring an emotional and universal dimension to her academic contributions. Particular essays, however, are missing the voices of underprivileged migrants and everything they bring with them: their stories, cultures, expertise, and skills. Including their voices and perspectives, rather than speaking for them, could have further affirmed our shared humanity and value. Nevertheless, Nyabola constantly engages in a process of self-reflection to understand and challenge her assumptions and practices, a process necessary to create a different world.
Human movements have always been part of history. Modern states, shaped by globalisation and capitalism, are transforming into fortress societies, building physical walls to exclude black, brown, poor, and unwanted human beings and preserve a false sense of identity. Travelling While Black is a defiant and beautiful book that awakens one's sense of empathy by unpacking dehumanising notions of the other established by the hierarchical social world order. It is a testimony to how white supremacy continues to colonise our imagination and to the vital internal work needed to transform perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world we live in.
