LSA 2025 Panel - Living at the Margins : Survival, belief, care and belonging among stigmatised groups in Africa

On 18 June, Janet Ogundairo, assisted by Director Barbara Morovich and Deputy-Director Delphine Manetta, organized a panel on "Living at the Margins : Survival, belief, care and belonging among stigmatised groups in Africa".

Following a call for abstracts, Janet Ogundairo selected five papers on the subject of stigmatised groups in Nigeria to be presented at this session. She started by introducing her own work and the panel, before giving the floor to the panellists.

From left to right: Dr Barbara Morovich, Feyisitan Ijimakinwa, Cynthia Olufade, Janet Ogundairo, Joel Abah, Dr Bolarinwa Ogundeji and Dr Delphine Manetta.

Reclaiming Humanity at the Edges : Collective Care and Survival Strategies among Street Youth in Akure, Nigeria by Dr Bolarinwa Ogundeji.

Dr Bolarinwa Ogundeji, lecturer at the University of Medical Sciences of Ondo, began by addressing the negative perception of street youth as criminals, passed down from generations to generations and looked back on the history of Akure, who, like several cities in Nigeria, saw an augmentation of the urban population in the 1990s and, as a consequence, of street youth. She highlighted several problems :

• The invisibility of street youths in policies
• Their stigmatization, as they are often labelled as deviants or criminals
• Lack of scholarly attention on the subject.

Her research questions in her articles concerns the nature of the lived experiences of the street youth, how they form communal networks, how they redefine traditional gender roles and what forms of solidarity emerge among them.

Her conclusions are based on the interview of 30 street youth (ages 13 to 28 years old). She noted that creating a bond and a trustful relationship was a challenge, and she had to find ways of making them feel comfortable, and make them understand that she had their interests at heart. Dr Ogundeji uncovered innovative survival strategies, such as engaging in a variety of unskilled labour activities to survive. Within the community they created, they had a shared budget, considered themselves family, and communicated to other youths work opportunities and possible security threats.

To conclude, she noted how this research is a way to reclaim the humanity of those who are often forgotten or stigmatized. It also shifts the vision of them as only victims, to people with agency, actors creating alternative systems of care.

Healing from the Margins: Infrastructures of Care and Contested Belonging in Benue IDP Camps by Joel Abah.

Joel Abah, researcher and lecturer at Prince Abubakar Audu University, demonstrated in this paper how Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), in the face of a lack of formal health infrastructure, create their own informal, structural and communal infrastructures. The goal here is also to shift the narrative from IDPs not having any control over their fate, to showing them as resilient agents.

His research objectives were the following:

• Reimagining care beyond formal medicine,
• Mapping infrastructures of survival,
• Framing care as a political claim,
• Presenting IDPs as knowledge producers.

Regarding his methodology, he carried out his studies in three IDP camps in Benue state, conducted over 40 in-depth interviews (with IDPs, traders, health workers etc.), used GIS mapping of the camps and also organized participatory photo diaries and conducted critical analysis of policies. Mr Abah also insisted on the importance of developing a strong ethical thought in his research.

He explained that Benue camps suffered from the departure of several NGOs that were in charge of healthcare, leading to a complete collapse of medical infrastructures and worsening the situation of IDPs already marginalized and stigmatized. In response, Mr Abah witnessed the rise of vernacular care ecologies. Mobilizing the concept of "people as infrastructure" he noted how certain persons, in particular elder women with a knowledge of traditional medicine, became the new referent for health in the camp, sometimes even training others.

Here, he conceptualized the act of 'healing' as a political claim, the camp is not where life stops, but rather where it breeds innovation. He also noted the policy disconnect with the actual experiences of IDPs. He concluded by speaking on the importance of advancing epistemic justice, to integrate vernacular knowledges.

Negotiated Existence, Identity Construction, Survival and Coping Strategies Amongst Informal Waste Pickers and Sorters in Lagos, Nigeria by Feyisitan Ijimakinwa.

The rising population in cities inevitably leads to the accumulation of waste, and although Nigeria has put forth a few solutions, most of the waste still ends up in landfills. He conducted his research on the biggest landfill of Africa, situated in Lagos, the Olusosun landfill. It is estimated that around 6,000 people work there daily in perilous conditions: lack of good shelter, of healthcare and exclusion from mainstream governance. Moreover, those workers are often perceived as criminals by the general population.

His objective in this paper was to study how waste workers negotiate their right to life, and construct their socio-economical identities. Generally, he analysed what the social and environmental realities around landfills are.

Framing his research, he considered that social order isn't something stable, but is constantly renegotiated. To do this, he conducted semi-structured interviews with people working at the Olusosun landfill.

He mentioned the importance of centring their narratives, showing their losses, but also their gains. Mr Ijimakinwa presented the example of their local football club, and of the several successful sportsmen who came from the community. Generally, he noted a strong solidarity among them, that they protected each other's goals and ambitions. Overall, their narratives are ones of resourcefulness and resilience.

From Italo to Nkoro: Post-Deportation Lives of Nigerian Edo Sex Workers and the Struggle for Reintegration by Cynthia Olufade.

Cyntha Olufade, doctoral student at the University of Alberta, explores in her paper the experiences and lives of women who came back, voluntarily or not, in a community that celebrates migration. Many left Edo for Europe in hope of economic advancement, or for survival. She notes that this expectation of migration is a very gender biased one in Edo. In society, as she analyses it in this piece, return is viewed as a symbolic failure.

Her methodology involved interviewing 40 women returnees, centring their narratives. Those who came back expressed that they didn't want to be seen, and that society itself didn't want to see them, as they presented a counter example to the success model of immigration. Those women however do find ways to survive, they sell a variety of goods on the streets or by the streets. Even if society is unwilling to acknowledge them, they are seen, and they haven't abandoned all hope of social advancement. Once again, this paper allows us to shift our perception of them as victims, to see them as agents.

Negotiating Vulnerability: Contextualizing Nigerian Female Sex Workers' Violence against their male Clients by Ediomo-Ubong Nelson and Tasha Ramirez.

This paper was selected as part of the panel, but due to network issues, the authors were unable to present at the conference.

Tags: Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Lagos