How do migrations foster the development of imaginative strategies, and in what ways do the constraints encountered during these transitions prompt innovative approaches to navigating and reshaping our world? In this episode, we examine migration, focusing on the aspirations, economic factors, and intermediaries that have influenced transnational mobility. Our guest, Charles Piot, investigates migration within the context of the post-Cold War political economy of Togo in West Africa. 

Charles Piot is a professor of cultural anthropology, African and African American studies, and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University. His research focuses on the political economy of West Africa, addressing themes such as modernity, development, migration, diaspora, and the enduring impacts of colonialism in both rural and urban Togo. His recent ethnographic work examines how neoliberalism shapes emerging imaginaries of the future, particularly regarding aspirations for transnational mobility. He has authored several books, including Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999) and Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (2010). In this episode, we will center our discussion on his book The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles (2019), co-authored with Kodjo Nicolas Batema, which received the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in ethnographic writing.