Conclusion

This book has identified how sites of political and economic power regulate patterns of migration and mobility in contemporary global capitalism. It has approached the phenomenon panoramically and, in so doing, it has delinked mobility from an empowering globalism. It has, instead, placed the concept of unfree labour mobility at its core, a theory that shows how expansively labour is cheapened in the global era. Consequentially, we are asked to reconsider which trajectories truly challenge west Africa's established role in global capitalism, and which ones further entrench its underdevelopment. State political economies, global security and labour regimes have thereby been examined in a dynamic relationship to the actions of migrants, households and middlemen (Papastergiadis 2000: 35).