The king's offer: a helping hand to try my luck

Abstract

What follows are introductory remarks and an excerpt of a conversation between anthropologist Catherine Therrien and Jackson Abena Banyomo, a Cameroonian national currently residing in Morocco, where he also works in a civil society organisation. The extract is published (in French) in the book Whoever fails becomes a sorcerer. Journey of a Cameroonian migrant who left Africa and arrived ... . in Africa 1 (Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval), where Jackson and Catherine retrace and reflect on Jackson's journey from Cameroon to Morocco, and on his life in the country. This piece provides a vivid first-person account of how migrant people experienced the regularization process - the encounter with the state and the NGO apparatus, the logics subsuming (il)legalization - and deconstructs 'transit' as a monolithic concept. The extract also provides a brilliant example of decolonial scholarship, in which the anthropologist takes a step back to act as facilitator, producing an account in which her interlocutor is not only the main character but also narrator of his own story.