The challenges and conflicts male migrants encounter in Nairobi are not unique to the Kenyan context.
1 Confirming to prevailing notions of masculinity was also perceived as challenging in different historical epochs, as shown by Paul Ocobock’s An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya (2017). (See also Blunt 2020, Callaci 2017, Epstein 1981, Mutongi 2000). As the growing literature on masculinities in sub-Saharan Africa testifies (Lindsay and Miescher 2003, Ouzgane and Morrell 2005), African men are confronted with new and increasingly challenging relations between money and social interactions (Boulton 2021, Mains 2011, Smith 2017). These challenges are further aggravated by changing notions of love, marriage, and sexuality (Cole and Thomas 2009, Spronk 2012); new technologies for negotiating intimacy (Archambault 2017); rural expectations of success, remittances and, ultimately, physical return (Cohen and Odhiambo 1992, Smith 2019: chapter 4); the effects of racial capitalism (Matlon 2022); the economics, politics and aesthetics of male violence and paranoia (Hendriks 2022, Pype 2007); non-heteronormative notions of masculinity (Meiu 2020, Vorhölter 2017); the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics (Baral 2021, Van Klinken 2013, Wyrod 2016); the ordeals of modern fatherhood (Richter and Morrell 2006); the so-called ‘neglect of the boychild’ (Pike 2020); and societal discourses about the proper upbringing of children (Fay 2021). Journalists and scholars sometimes subsume these challenges under the so-called ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Amuyunzu-Nyamongo and Francis 2006, Perry 2005) that is deemed responsible for outbreaks of violence, war, and protests organized by young men who see themselves as members of sub-Saharan Africa’s rising ‘surplus population’ (Trapido 2021).
Voices from several disciplines have protested this simplification and the colonial stereotypes it perpetuates, such as images of aggressive, impulsive, and instinct-controlled black men who stick to archaic notions of masculinity. Scholars have deployed two main strategies to counter this narrative that deprives African men of agency by assuming that dire circumstances compel them to become violent and delinquent. On one hand, we have witnessed a rise in articles, monographs, and edited volumes exploring non-heteronormative notions of masculinity on the continent (Spronk and Nyeck 2021, Van Klinken 2019). On the other hand, scholarly studies on the roles of men in Africa (and elsewhere) increasingly call for heightened attention to the multiple forms in which heteronormative masculinity becomes manifest in different contexts (Gutmann 2021). The authors of the introduction to a themed section of the journal Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography tellingly entitled ‘Masculinities in Africa beyond crisis: complexity, fluidity, and intersectionality’ summarize these research trends by stating that their primary goal is ‘to counteract the tendency to deny pluralistic representations of masculinities in Africa’ (Amman and Staudacher 2021). Among the explorations of other types of masculinity across Africa, we find work on ‘post-crisis masculinity’ (McLean 2021), ‘African-centred masculinities’ (Mfecane 2018), ‘precarious masculinity’ (Kovač 2022), ‘aspirational masculinities’ (Izugbara and Egesa 2020), and ‘divergent masculinities’ (Bolt 2010).
As much as this research has produced important insights by highlighting alternative ways in which masculinity is enacted, it also entails some risk. By pluralizing masculinity and focusing on non-heteronormative practices, we could overlook the ongoing influence and ‘stickiness’ (Berggren 2014) of the ever-prevalent global image of a successful man being an economically capable, physically strong, well-educated, independent, pious, and prudent provider (Crompton 1999, Ehrenreich 1984, Komarovsky 2004 [1940], Koppetsch and Speck 2015). The ‘crisis of masculinity’ hypothesis not only obscures the existence of diverse forms of masculinity but also makes it difficult to analyze practices perpetuating the narrative of the male breadwinner as being deliberately chosen by both men and women (Mojola 2014). For example, instead of understanding incidents of gender-based violence against women as an effect of male migrants’ economic circumstances, it might be more fruitful to interpret them as men’s attempts to restore their challenged authority, with the ultimate goal being to reap the ‘patriarchal dividend’ (Connell 2005 [1995]: 79). As shown by the omnipresence and ‘ordinariness’ of gender-based violence during my fieldwork, many migrant men in Pipeline, like many men elsewhere in the world, felt their masculinity was becoming increasingly fragile and their traditional privilege under attack (Kimmel 2019). Losing their status as the breadwinner frequently led to scathing criticism, and sometimes outright mockery and derision. Deemed ‘useless’ by their friends, girlfriends, wives and rural kin intensified their feelings of inadequacy and expendability.
This book explores how the persistent influence of the narrative of the male breadwinner impacted discussions, decisions and practices of male migrants in Pipeline. It illustrates how migrant men both contested and tried to emulate this ideal form of masculinity in their everyday lives. Despite agreeing to the narrative of the male provider in principle, they felt that women had begun to focus exclusively on a man’s economic wealth when assessing his value. Men criticized this distortion of the narrative of the male breadwinner by, for example, emphasizing the evil nature of fast and illicit money-making activities or contrasting the sexual prowess of poor yet young and muscular men with the vanishing virility of old and feeble Nairobians known as wababa, who had to resort to material favours in order to have sex with young women (see Groes-Green 2009, Silberschmidt 2001). As a consequence of their inability to fulfil what they perceived as the excessive economic expectations of their intimate others, migrant men had begun to lessen this pressure by pretending to be wealthy already or by spending more and more time with other male migrants outside their marital homes. While almost everyone I met in Pipeline agreed that men had to provide and perform, it was far from clear what this exactly entailed.