Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Immigrants and Their Leaders
- 3 Immigrant Exclusion from Host Societies
- 4 Alternative Explanations
- 5 Mass Immigrant Expulsions in Africa
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix A Constructing the Immigrant Attachment Index
- Appendix B Constructing the Cultural Overlap Index
- Appendix C List of Mass Expulsions and Variable Description
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Immigrants and Their Leaders
- 3 Immigrant Exclusion from Host Societies
- 4 Alternative Explanations
- 5 Mass Immigrant Expulsions in Africa
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix A Constructing the Immigrant Attachment Index
- Appendix B Constructing the Cultural Overlap Index
- Appendix C List of Mass Expulsions and Variable Description
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A Tale of Two Families
“They will kill you, so go!” Mary exclaimed as she recounted to me the events of November 1969, when she and her family were forced to leave Ghana – her birth country – and return to Ogbomosho, Nigeria. Mary was born in 1941 in Tamale, the capital of Ghana's Northern Region. Mary belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group, a group indigenous to land now located mostly in Nigeria and Benin. She has lived and worked as a petty merchant in Ghana's urban centers most of her life. A trading opportunity originally brought her parents to northern Ghana from Ogbomosho, as it did many other members of Nigeria's Yoruba community.
Mary lived a rather typical Yoruba existence in Ghana: her parents sent her back to Nigeria to attend primary school and learn the Yoruba language, but she quickly returned to Ghana upon completing her primary education. She met her husband through the Yoruba First Baptist Church of Tamale, a vibrant church where the Yoruba-only membership prays and sings in Yoruba. Soon after marrying, she and her husband moved to Kumasi, the capital of Ghana's coffee-producing Ashanti Region, home to the historically powerful Ashanti Kingdom. There they rented a house from a fellow Yoruba they met in the Yoruba First Baptist Church of Kumasi.Mary's husband provided some startup funds and she began her career as a petty trader in Kumasi. She joined her hometown union, the Ogbomosho Parapo, and regularly remitted money back to Ogbomosho through the organization to support hospitals and orphanages.
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- Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in AfricaCoethnic Strangers, pp. 1 - 38Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014