ABOUT THIS BOOK

In the West African nation of Togo, applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery is a national obsession, with hundreds of thousands of Togolese entering each year. From the street frenzy of the lottery sign-up period and the scramble to raise money for the embassy interview to the gamesmanship of those adding spouses and dependents to their dossiers, the application process is complicated, expensive, and unpredictable. In The Fixer Charles Piot follows Kodjo Nicolas Batema, a Togolese visa broker—known as a “fixer”—as he shepherds his clients through the application and interview process. Relaying the experiences of the fixer, his clients, and embassy officials, Piot captures the ever-evolving cat-and-mouse game between the embassy and the hopeful Togolese as well as the disappointments and successes of lottery winners in the United States. These detailed and compelling stories uniquely illustrate the desire and savviness of migrants as they work to find what they hope will be a better life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Charles Piot is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University; editor of Doing Development in West Africa: A Reader by and for Undergraduates, also published by Duke University Press; and author of Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War.

REVIEWS

"Extremely well written, The Fixer is a must-read for those striving for a more equitable world: their advocacy efforts around global mobility and migration cannot be understood divorced from global inequalities. The Fixer would be a great read for general readers, migration experts, policymakers, folks involved in advocacy for immigrants and displaced people, and students of immigration and transnational studies, as well as in courses on the challenges and ethics of ethnographic field research. Just a gentle warning — once you start the book, it is hard to put down."

-- Faranak Miraftab International Migration Review

“Scholars of Africa will appreciate how Piot combines his deep regional knowledge of Togo and his ethnographic expertise to highlight the larger global forces that shape the lives of migrant-refugees.”

-- Marius Kothor African Studies Review

"The Fixer demonstrates how skillful ethnography can help us better grasp the current political, economic, and cultural dynamics of migration as impacted by understandings of kinship, legitimacy, and local improvisation."

-- Dubie Toa-Kwapong Transforming Anthropology

"While the key theoretical interventions of the book are spelt out in the introduction, the rest of the book is written in clear prose accessible to academic and non-academic audiences. The book makes a fine contribution to migration studies, economic and legal anthropology, African studies, and US studies; it would be a great case study for graduate and undergraduate courses in these fields."

-- Smoki Musaraj Anthropological Notebooks

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Business of Dreams 1
1. Border Practice 27
2. The Interview 45
3. Kinship by Other Means 63
4. Trading Futures 85
5. Embassy Indiscretions 109
6. Protest 124
7. Prison 134
8. America, Here We Come 148
9. Lomé 2018 171
Notes 179
Bibliography 195
Index 207

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