‘They’re my Contacts, not my Friends’: Reconfiguring Affect and Aspirations Through Mobile Communication in Nigeria

Abstract

In Calabar, Nigeria, young women envisage their futures to be full of possibilities. By contrast, their present realities often see them stuck in the house enduring long periods of waiting. Restricted by failing institutions, family and church pressures, and the fear of others' jealousy, young women find that there is no clear route to realising their aspirations. As they wait alone in the house, they constantly communicate with others on mobile phones and BlackBerries. This paper examines how young women in Calabar use mobile phones as a way of reconceptualising issues of trust, affect and intimacy. It argues that where they employ methods of concealment to chat with othersrevealing neither their true identity nor personal detailsmobile communication enables distance, becoming an invaluable means for creating new forms of sociality and future opportunities. Illuminating 'feminine cultures of waiting', this paper furthers recent analyses of youth, time and productivity. KEYWORDS Young women; Calabar; mobile phones; aspirations; intimacy When I first met NK in the summer of 2010, she was studying Accountancy at one of Calabar's two universities and had recently started baking and selling cakes on her compound. By the time I returned to Calabar for doctoral fieldwork a year later, she had finished her studies. Besides some periodic travel to family in Port Harcourt, she had spent the intervening months in her rented room in Calabar. In her late twenties, she was looking to finding a well-paid office job before getting married and settling down. Yet, as I rounded off my doctoral fieldwork at the end of 2012, she was still 'working on' marriage possibilities and, with her university results still not released months after finishing her degree, was happy just to find any odd work to get money. Assuring me that God would be faithful in delivering her aspirations, NK

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“…The focus on female youth in this article goes against the grain of recent work in this field, which has seen male youth as most directly affected by the conditions that facilitate waithood: economic decline and high unemployment (for a recent exception, see Gilbert ). According to this view, young women are affected only indirectly as their potential spouses fail to establish themselves in the role of provider, such that they must remain on the proverbial shelf (e.g.…”

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