Francis Nyamnjoh

From Bounded to Flexible Citizenship: Lessons from Africa

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Author Posting. (c) Taylor & Francis, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Taylor & Francis for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Citizenship Studies, Volume 11, Issue 1, February 2007. doi:10.1080/13621020601099880 

Abstract
This paper draws on a recently published study on xenophobia in Southern Africa, to discuss the hierarchies and inequalities that underpin citizenship. Paradoxically, national citizenship and its emphasis on large-scale, assimilationist and bounded belonging are facing their greatest challenge from their inherent contradictions and closures, and from an upsurge in rights claims and the politics of recognition and representation by small-scale communities claiming autochthony at a historical juncture where the rhetoric highlights flexible mobility, postmodern flux and discontinuity.

Cameroon: A Country United By Ethnic Ambition And Difference

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

An Edited Version of this paper was published in and copyrighted to African Affairs, Vol. 98 (390):101-118, 1999)

Abstract

This paper attempts an answer to the question: What keeps Cameroon together despite widespread instability in Africa, despite the turbulence of the subregional environment in which it finds itself, and despite its own internal contradictions? The main argument is that the politics of regional and ethnic balance, the chronic lack of vision as a country, the lack of real commitment to democracy, the propensity to vacillate on most issues of collective interest, together with an infinite ability to develop survival strategies, have acted to counter all meaningful attempts to pursue common interests and aspirations.

Autochtonie,démocratie, et citoyenneté en Afrique

Par Jean-François Bayart, Peter Geschiere et Francis Nyamnjoh

Critique internationale n°10 - janvier 2001

Yaoundé, capitale du Cameroun, le 14 février 1998. Non loin de la gare, un wagon-citerne de pétrole se couche accidentellement et déverse son contenu sur la voie publique. Devant cette aubaine, les passants et les habitants des alentours se précipitent, qui avec des bidons, qui avec de simples bouteilles. Mais une cigarette provoque une terrible explosion qui fait plusieurs dizaines de victimes. Le même jour, la rumeur court que ces dernières étaient toutes « autochtones » : les « locaux » avaient chassé les « allogènes » du lieu sous le prétexte que le pétrole était « leur » puisque Yaoundé était « leur ville ».