The king's offer

What follows are introductory remarks and an excerpt of a conversation between anthropologist Catherine Therrien and Jackson Abena Banyomo, a Cameroonian national currently residing in Morocco, where he also works in a civil society organisation. The extract is published (in French) in the book Whoever fails becomes a sorcerer. Journey of a Cameroonian migrant who left Africa and arrived ... . in Africa 11 The title has been translated from the original French title, Celui qui échoue devient sorcier. Parcours d’un migrant camerounais parti d’Afrique et arrivé ... en Afrique (Presses de l’Université Laval, 2019) (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval), where Jackson and Catherine retrace and reflect on Jackson’s journey from Cameroon to Morocco, and on his life in the country. This piece provides a vivid first-person account of how migrant people experienced the regularization process – the encounter with the state and the NGO apparatus, the logics subsuming (il)legalization – and deconstructs ‘transit’ as a monolithic concept. The extract also provides a brilliant example of decolonial scholarship, in which the anthropologist takes a step back to act as facilitator, producing an account in which her interlocutor is not only the main character but also narrator of his own story

Art · Art history · Conversation · Facilitator · Luck · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science · Theology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Law · Migration, Identity, and Health · Philosophy