Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the changing ways of WoDaaBe migrant workers to manipulate global forces. WoDaaBe use new ways of being mobile to take advantage of certain features of globalizsation both by manipulating global images of themselves and by traveling temporarily to Europe to sell WoDaaBe jewellery.

Paper long abstract:

Globalization can be seen as controversial and conflicting processes, involving reorganization of space, enforced boundaries and increased flow of people between places. As such it simultaneously creates windows of opportunities and causes increase marginalization. Global media often portrays African people as victims - be it victims of tradition, modernization or globalization - seeing them as passive recipients of goods and assistance. The paper emphasizes creativity, focusing on how marginalized people manipulate and strategically use variously processes of modernization. The paper focuses on changing ways of WoDaaBe migrant workers to manipulate global forces. Mobility has always been important for nomadic people to make use of various spaces, even though often being seen in the globalization literature as negative and as a sign of poverty. WoDaaBe use new ways of being mobile to take advantage of certain features of globalization, both by manipulating global images of themselves and by traveling temporarily to Europe to sell WoDaaBe jewelry. Simultaneously, these migrant workers conceptualize themselves as poor and marginal, wishing for more participation in the pastoral economy. In the paper, I emphasize the importance of locating agency within power structures, as well as exploring these paradoxes of globalization.