A study based on five months of fieldwork finds that people’s reactions to the word track ideas about whiteness, status, and foreignness shaped by colonial history.
A paper in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies examines how privileged migrants in Nairobi responded to the term “mzungu,” and how Kenyan interlocutors understood and used it. “Mzungu” is described as a loaded label shaped by a colonial and neocolonial history.
The authors say that both cautious or negative reactions and more playful or semi-ironic uses are informative. The work also argues for more attention to migration categories in Global South host settings, to avoid a Western-centric focus in migration studies.
How “mzungu” is received
The paper is based on five months of ethnographic research in 2016 and argues that “mzungu” blends connotations of whiteness, socio-economic privilege, and foreignness. Many migrant interlocutors reported first encountering the term on arrival in East Africa and felt uncomfortable with or outright rejected it, while others mobilised the term themselves, often with semi-ironic distance. The authors contend that these different emotional responses help show how privilege operates in migration, and that the “politics” of word choice are part of migrants’ lived experience.
// Source
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2026 · DOI: 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2702666
Authors: Sarah Kunz
Institutions: University of Essex
