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Mallam’s Passport A Poetic Reflection of an Intra-African Academic Migrant

  • Babátúndé Fágbàyíbọ́(author)
Chapter of: From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity
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Title Mallam’s Passport
SubtitleA Poetic Reflection of an Intra-African Academic Migrant
ContributorBabátúndé Fágbàyíbọ́(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0508.03
Landing pagehttp://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0508/chapters/10.11647/obp.0508.03
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightBabátúndé Fágbàyíbọ́
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2026-04-29
Long abstract

The six poems included in this chapter explore the precariousness of being an academic migrant. This does not mean that these poems are exactly autobiographical in the sense that they actually happened to me, but more broadly, I have used a form of poetic license to not only imagine possibilities and cases, but also to dramatise some actual events that I have either personally experienced, heard about from friends and acquaintances who are also migrants like me, or read about in the media. Moreover, my research is based on exploring ways of deepening continental integration in Africa, and the idea of free movement of people is one of the central pillars of this engagement. Experiences of xenophobia and Afrophobia are antithetical to this goal.

Print length12 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
THEMA
  • JBFH
  • JHB
  • JHBA
  • JN
  • JBFA
BISAC
  • SOC007000
  • SOC026000
  • SOC026040
  • SOC008000
  • EDU015000
Keywords
  • migrant academics
  • academic precarity
  • academic mobility
  • autoethnography
  • postcolonial academia
  • global higher education
Locations
Landing PageFull text URLPlatform
PDFhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0508/chapters/10.11647/obp.0508.03Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0508.03.pdfFull text URL
HTMLhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0508/chapters/10.11647/obp.0508.03Landing pagehttp://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0508/ch3.xhtmlFull text URLPublisher Website
Contributors

Babátúndé Fágbàyíbọ́

(author)
Professor of International Law at University of Pretoria
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6391-4112

Babátúndé Fágbàyíbọ́ (PhD) is currently Professor of International Law at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research focuses primarily on the institutional development of the African Union (AU), in particular the process of empowering AU institutions with supranational powers. Other research interests include African politics, transnational policy analysis, critical approaches to international law, and governance and democratisation in Africa. He has written extensively on these topics. He is the author of the book “Transcending Member States: Political and Legal Dynamics of Building Continental Supranationalism in Africa” (Springer, 2022).

References
  1. Aspen Institute, The, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Conversation with Damian Woetzel’, YouTube (11 March 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0J24rTTu4&t=2s
  2. Hunwick, John, ‘Malam’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition Online (EI-2 English), ed. by Peri J. Bearman (Leiden: Brill, 2005), https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EIEO/SIM-4852.xml
  3. Adesanmi, Pius, ‘The Ya Before the Hoo’, iNigerian (16 September 2008), https://www.inigerian.com/the-ya-before-the-hoo/
  4. Selasi, Taye, ‘Don’t Ask Where I’m From, Ask Where I’m a Local’, TED, YouTube (20 October 2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYCKzpXEW6E

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