Migrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi

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, a low-income, high-rise-tenement neighbourhood of Nairobi, is a liminal and aspirational place where migrants go to find success. It has one of the highest population densities in sub-Saharan Africa and is a place where consumer goods such as smartphones and laptops reassure their owners of an upward trajectory, yet where ambitions are routinely thwarted. This book explores how male migrants navigate this tension between Pipeline as a launching pad for their careers while at the same time facing constant economic, romantic, and personal backlashes. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book reveals that many migrants designed their future on trajectories of personal and economic growth but now have to adjust or postpone their plans. Under pressure from girlfriends, wives, rural kin, and children - who expect them to succeed - they create and participate in masculine spaces where a sense of brotherhood emerges and the anonymous space of Pipeline becomes a home. Focusing on how male migrants model their financial, physical, and spiritual well-being in three different masculine spaces - an ethnically homogenous investment group, an interethnic gym, and workshops, church services, and motivational training on man- and fatherhood, this book brings a new perspective to our understanding of urban African life and the nature of masculinity. This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND.