Migrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi: The Pressure of being a Man in an African City (Making & Remaking the African City: Studies in Urban Africa)

Examines how young male migrants in urban Nairobi navigate the tension between expectations of success and repetitive failure by establishing, frequenting, and maintaining masculine spaces. Pipeline is a low-income, high-rise-tenement settlement in Nairobi's marginalized East and one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated estates. An aspirational place where fleeting forms of capitalist consumption reassure migrants of an upward trajectory, it is also a place where their ambitions of long-term economic success and stable romantic relationships are routinely thwarted. This book explores how men who migrate to Nairobi from Western Kenya navigate this tension that is generated by the contrast between their view of Pipeline as a launching pad for their personal and professional careers and the fact that they face constant economic, romantic, and personal backlashes. Drawing on over two years of fieldwork, the book reveals that many male migrants design their future on trajectories of personal and economic growth but have to adjust or indefinitely postpone their plans once they arrive in Kenya's capital. Under the pressure to succeed from romantic partners, spouses, rural kin, and children, they create and participate in homosocial spaces where a sense of brotherhood emerges and their experience of pressure is attenuated. Alongside a deep ethnographic exploration of how male migrants model their financial, physical, and mental well-being in three different masculine spaces - an ethnically homogenous investment group, an interethnic gym, and the semi-digital sphere of self-help books, workshops, and motivational trainings on man- and father- hood, this book brings a new perspective to our understanding of urban African life and the nature of masculinity. This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. Publishing the book under the terms of the open access Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND was generously funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Open Access Fund, and supported with a minor grant by the German Research Foundation (Grant number: SCHM 3192/2-1). Pipeline is a low-income, high-rise-tenement settlement in Nairobi's marginalized East and one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated estates. An aspirational place where fleeting forms of capitalist consumption reassure migrants of an upward trajectory, it is also a place where their ambitions of long-term economic success and stable romantic relationships are routinely thwarted. This book explores how men who migrate to Nairobi from Western Kenya navigate this tension that is generated by the contrast between their view of Pipeline as a launching pad for their personal and professional careers and the fact that they face constant economic, romantic, and personal backlashes. Drawing on over two years of fieldwork, the book reveals that many male migrants design their future on trajectories of personal and economic growth but have to adjust or indefinitely postpone their plans once they arrive in Kenya's capital. Under the pressure to succeed from romantic partners, spouses, rural kin, and children, they create and participate in homosocial spaces where a sense of brotherhood emerges and their experience of pressure is attenuated. Alongside a deep ethnographic exploration of how male migrants model their financial, physical, and mental well-being in three different masculine spaces - an ethnically homogenous investment group, an interethnic gym, and the semi-digital sphere of self-help books, workshops, and motivational trainings on man- and fatherhood - this book brings a new perspective to our understanding of urban African life and the nature of masculinity. This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, with funding from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Open Access Fund and the German Research Foundation. Front cover 1 Contents 6 Illustrations 7 Acknowledgements 8 Abbreviations 11 Introduction 12 Part 1: Experiencing Pressure 34 1 The History and Infrastructure of an Aspirational Estate 36 2 Economic Pressure and the Expectation of Success 61 3 Romantic Responsibilities and Marital Mistrust 81 Part 2: Evading Pressure 102 4 Investing in Male Sociality and Wasteful Masculinity 104 5 Lifting Weights and the Performance of Brotherhood 122 6 Masculinity Consultants and the Threat of Men’s Expendability 139 Conclusion: Pipeline to Nowhere 158 Bibliography 165 Index 181