Marriage Certificates and Walker Cards: Nigerian Migrant Labor, Wives, and Prostitutes in Colonial Fernando Pó

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article focuses on Nigerian labor migration to the Spanish colony of Fernando Pó during the colonial era. The Spanish Labor Office recruited Nigerian men and encouraged them to bring their wives so that they could provide men some 'comfort' while in the colony for the duration of their contracts. Women—legitimate and fictitious wives, traders, and prostitutes—saw this opportunity as a way to improve their autonomy and money-earning capacities. I argue that Spanish authorities opened up spaces wherein Southeastern Nigerian women successfully strategized their way into the colony by recognizing the administration's desire for wives to join husbands. Through the use of marriage certificates and declarations, women gained access to economic and social mobility through migration. This article unveils the ideological and real tension between secular migrant recruiters who lured men with the promise of professionalized work and large incomes, Spanish and British authorities who temporarily legalized prostitution, and the Catholic colonial regime that denounced prostitution and demanded the repatriation of sex workers in clear objection to the colonial ethos, which had become embedded in presence of the sexualized female body.