After trafficking: Togolese girls’ orientations to life in a West African city

Abstract

This article offers an alternative explanation for why people “traffic” their children from Togo into Nigeria. Rather than explain parents’ motivations for sending their children to work as domestic servants as an escape from poverty (per the human rights discourse) or a rite of passage into adulthood (as described by informants), I argue that it is rooted in a future-oriented strategy of survival in an age of economic decline. Instead of a means towards short-term profits, the practice delivers on a different imaginary of the future for post–Cold War Togolese, where the most common strategy for success is to leave the country. To track this shifting sensibility, this article presents the cultural styles of Togolese girls living in Lagos after they have been “trafficked” and categorizes them into two figures: the cosmopolitanist and the localist. These styles of living are emblematic of different orientations toward the future with respect to investments in city or “local” relations. Despite the terms “cosmopolitanist” and “localist,” these types are not spatially bound, rather they reflect young migrants’ refusal or commitment to the value constraints of rural society, as manifested in their choice of dress, companions, leisure activities, and so on.