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| Homesick. (Reuters/Alex Lee) |
When Lamin Ceesay, an energetic 25-year-old from
Gambia, arrived in Guangzhou last year, he thought his life had made a
turn for the better. As the oldest of four siblings, he was responsible
for caring for his family, especially after his father passed away. But
jobs were few in his hometown of Tallinding Kunjang, outside of the
Gambian capital of Banjul. After hearing about China’s rise, his uncle
sold off his taxi business and the two of them bought a ticket and a
paid local visa dealer to get them to China.
“It was very developed—the tall buildings,
everything was colorful. I thought, okay my life is going to change.
It’s going to be better. Life is good here,” Ceesay tells Quartz,
describing his first impressions of Guangzhou, a hub for African
migrants in China.
Gambia, a small country of a just under 2 million people in West Africa, has been losing entire villages
to migration mostly to Europe, but also to China. Chinese border
restrictions have been easier than in Europe or North America and the
southern city of Guangzhou has become a hub for African migrants,
traders, and businesses. In Gambia, youth unemployment is high, almost 40%, encouraging people like Ceesay to look east.
“All I knew is that China was a world-class country and the economy is good,” he said.
But
Ceesay’s new life didn’t turn out quite how he imagined. The job that
visa dealers promised would help him pay off his debts in three months
didn’t seem to exist. Ceesay struggled to even feed himself. When he
tried to move to Hong Kong where he heard work was better, he was
escorted back to Guangzhou by police. He ended up in Thailand for three
months, unsuccessfully looking for work, before eventually coming home.
Determined
not to let his experience be in vain, Ceesay has turned into a
campaigner against the myth of China as a promised land for Africans
seeking work. “I told my uncle, I’m going back to Gambia, and I’m going
to tell this story and explain what’s happening.”
Ceesay went on local radio shows answering questions from callers about life and work in China. He started a Facebook page, “Gambians Nightmare in China”
detailing the frustrating and dangerous situations that he and other
Gambians in China found themselves in. Now, his story along with those
of other returned Gambian migrants, is the basis of a new website called
Uturn Asia, done
in collaboration with migration researchers, Heidi Østbø Haugen and
Manon Diederich, from the University of Oslo and the University of
Cologne.
“The
project came about because they had a strong wish to warn others
against coming,” says Østbø Haugen. “They thought they could do so more
effectively as a group than as individuals, as individual accounts of
failure are often written off as attempts to justify ineptness.”
On the website, Ceesay and others detail the full
circle, or U-turn, they completed: the decision to leave home—a
calculus that often involved taking on heavy loans and families spending
years of saving or selling off their few assets—optimism replaced by
desperation as they ran out of money in China, and humiliation as they
tried to scrabble enough money together to go home.
“The
dream that you hoped for—the better job, better life— is not there.
It’s just a dream that is nowhere to be found in Asia,” Ceesay says.
Ceesay’s warning is for other African
communities, many of whom have had similar experiences. “What happened
to them has happened to Africans of other nationalities earlier,” says
Østbø Haugen, “but their desire to prevent others from ending up in the
same situation is unique.”
In fact, China’s African population may already be shrinking.
(Researchers say the concentration of Africans in Guangzhou better
known as “Chocolate City” is dispersing.) Estimates for the number of
sub-Saharan Africans in Guangzhou range from 150,000 long-term residents,
according to government statistics last year, to as high as
300,000—figures complicated by the number of Africans coming in and out
of the country as well as those who overstay their visas.
As China’s economy slows and stricter visa requirements have been put in place, researchers say more African migrants are opting to go home. Others experience everyday racism like taxi drivers who won’t pick them up.
The Gambian accounts on Uturn Asia depict a hard
life for Africans in China. They describe living in cramped apartments
where they have to take turns sleeping because there aren’t enough beds.
Many spent their days hiding inside, afraid of being caught by the
police with expired visas. Several detail struggling to get enough water
and food in one of the most developed cities in China.
There
were also examples of people coming together. Ceesay helped organize
food supplies for a group of 20 Gambians, all in similar situations as
him, by asking each to contribute 5 yuan (about $0.75) a day for food
supplies. Africans from other countries also showed solidarity.
“The
solidarity of West Africans never stops to amaze me,” says Østbø
Haugen.”They shared the food and water someone had money to buy, and
African cooks of other nationalities gave them left-overs after their
informal restaurants closed.”
It’s unclear whether the project will do much to
change what Østbø Haugen calls the “combination of desperation and
hopefulness” that motivates many to emigrate. Several of those
interviewed for the project went on to migrate “the back way” to Europe,
as in by crossing the Mediterranean, a dangerous sea journey that
killed 4,000 migrants last year. One of the interview subjects
considered moving back to China but decided to go to Europe instead. He
died during the crossing, according to Østbø Haugen.
Despite years of arguing with his younger brother
and describing his own experience in China, Ceesay’s younger brother
also left home for Europe two weeks ago, traveling to Libya where Ceesay
last heard from him.
http://qz.com/720816/gambian-migrants-are-returning-from-china-and-telling-their-compatriots-not-to-go/
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