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The Janus face of development brokers across migration borders
Author(s) -
Marabello Selenia
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3655
Subject(s) - foregrounding , egalitarianism , accountability , power (physics) , face (sociological concept) , field (mathematics) , politics , sociology , political science , articulation (sociology) , neoliberalism (international relations) , political economy , social science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics , law
Employing an ethnographic approach, I analyse the agentive practices of a codevelopment project named Africoop , showing how it navigates the migration‐development field by blending egalitarianism rights‐based concerns with hierarchical political authority, foregrounding economic neoliberalism and translating development. Africoop advocated for migrants rights and opened up opportunities for social mobility and also reproduced gender asymmetries and power relations among Italian donors and Ghanaian recipients. By examining the organisational level of brokerage and the career trajectories of the main leaders, I unravel how social nets, aspirations and biographical paths are interwoven to reconfigure the brokers' representativeness and accountability across migration borders.