Temple Run

Dreams of Migration in the Making of the Political Imagination in Freetown

Bibliographic Data

ID12955391
AuthorsL Enria (0000-0002-6336-6531, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume13
Issue1-2
Pages43-65
Publication date2021-11-04
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Diaspora (BOOK_SERIES)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1872-5457 • E-ISSN: 1872-5465
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/18725465-bja10017
OpenAlexW3213292590
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited35

Amongst young people in Freetown, ‘Temple Run’, a mobile phone game that requires the player to run for their life across treacherous obstacles, is used as code for the perilous journey that an increasing number of young Sierra Leoneans made to Europe via Libya. Through ethnographic accounts, the article discusses the role of dreams of migration in Freetown youths’ articulations of a distinctive political imagination through which they at once critique and re-imagine their relation to the state and assert their identity and expectations as Sierra Leonean citizens. These narratives are rooted in everyday experiences of neglect and state violence but also embody a long history in the region of intersections between migration, insecurity, and contestations of power. Exploring migration as discourse, separate from practice, the paper shows how migration imageries become incorporated into expressions of presence rather than simply longings for absence and into normative ideas of citizenship

Aesthetics · Art · Citizenship · Ethnography · Ethnology · Identity (music · Narrative · Normative · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sierra leone · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Tools

Open DOI