This volume examines the relationship between hope, mobility, and immobility in contemporary African migration. Through case studies within and beyond the continent, it demonstrates that hope offers a unique prism for analyzing migrants' horizons of expectation and possibility in situations of uncertainty, deepening inequality and increasingly restrictive regimes of mobility.

Nauja Kleist is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

Dorte Thorsen is theme leader on gender and qualitative research in the Migrating Out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium, University of Sussex, UK and associate researcher at LPED, Aix Marseille Université-IRD, France.

1 Introduction: Studying Hope and Uncertainty in African Migration Nauja Kleist

2 How to Extract Hope from Papers? Classificatory Performances and Social Networking in Cape Verdean Visa Applications Heike Drotbohm

3 Sticking to God: Brokers of Hope in Senegalese Migration to Argentina Ida Marie Vammen

4 Zouglou Music and Youth in Urban Burkina Faso: Displacement and the Social Performance of Hope Jesper Bjarnesen

5 The Lack of Liberty Drove Us There: Spatialized Instantiations of Hope and Contested Diasporan Identity in the Liberian-American Transnational Field (1810-2010) Stephen C. Lubkemann

6 Prospective Moments, Eternal Salvation: The Production of Hope in Nigerian Pentecostal Churches in China Heidi Østbø Haugen

7 Hope and Uncertainty in Senegalese Migration to Spain: Taking Chances on Emigration but not Upon Return María Hernández-Carretero

8 The Migratory Adventure as a Moral Experience Sylvie Bredeloup

9 Death of a Gin Salesman: Hope and Despair among Ghanaian Migrants and Deportees Stranded in Niger Hans Lucht

10 Returning with Nothing but an Empty Bag: Topographies of Social Hope after Deportation to Ghana Nauja Kleist