‘Metema became my Istanbul’ The Complex Transit Trajectories of Ethiopian Female Migrants

Abstract

Discussions on transit migration have for long focused on presenting the experiences of migrants transiting through a given place at a specific time  in a linear manner. Accordingly, most prior research adopts a snapshot approach to examine the lived experiences of transit migrants. This paper  argues that such an approach fails to aptly capture the gist of the complex nature of transiting and the dynamics of change in the migration  trajectories. It emphasizes the need to have a diachronic approach in examining the transit migration trajectory of migrants, considering the fact  that the transit experience is not often bound to a given place and space, as it can be inferred from the case of Ethiopian female migrants presented  in this paper. Furthermore, the discourse on transit migration often portrays transit migrants as individuals stranded in a place against  their will and lacking the agency to decide about their prospects of mobility/immobility. By drawing on an extended ethnographic study conducted  over the course of six years (2017–2022) in Djibouti and in Ethiopia, this paper explores the intricate transit experiences of Ethiopian female  migrants in two different transit places and their agency in deciding about their mobility/immobility, redefining their destinations and transit  pathways, and settlement, a theme that escaped attention in prior works on female migration from Ethiopia.