The argument that a process of “making tribes” has invested Africa from early colonial times has been used to explain the emergence of some ethnicities which appear not to have existed before colonialism. This emergence was often accompanied by the creation of written records of male historical discourse, thus not only giving them undue prominence but also suppressing female historical discourses which were not considered pertinent to “history.”Yet whenever history is recounted orally by either men or women, it contains messages directed to a “gendered” audience (i.e., an audience composed of people of both genders) whose participants perceive messages differently and reproduce separate but interacting discourses. Such diverse perceptions result from certain aspects in oral genres as well as small, coded markers which can evoke immensely potent but gender-specific experiences. Such instances may become public symbols and, along with more obviously historical narratives, greatly influence how people relate to their past. Thus men and women in the same audience, hearing the same story, can make connections between elements of a narrative which are obscure to outside researchers.Recently, it has become quite common for historians of Africa to deconstruct written historical sources on the basis of the agendas of both the original writer and his informants. These agendas are rarely explicit and thus hiddenly selective. Such deconstruction is a legitimate scholarly procedure; however, as female voices have rarely been recorded—the resulting analysis reinforces the omission of women's roles in the process of remaking history and creating identity.

One of the main human factors recognized in the New Classical economy of labour market explanations is that families, extended families or even groups of neighbours might be involved in designing the migration path of one or more members of the group, so that the migrant, once settled in the host country, could help the others in their original country. It is only more recently that migration studies have recognized the gender dynamics involved in the processes of human mobility. The introduction of a gender perspective has allowed an exposure of previously invisible women in the scholarly studies on migrations. Recognizing the importance of a gender perspective this introduction shall tackle some of the terminologies used to talk about human mobility and discusses the inconvenience of using terms like family to describe conjugal ties, domestic arrangements and parental care in contexts of migration.

L I 297 9 In Somalia between 1985 and 1986 I used to talk over data on Muslim issues with my colleague Giulia Olmi to whom I am indebted for many stimulating discussions on these issues.