Globalization and Transnational Migrations: Africa and Africans in the Contemporary Global System
Editor: Akanmu G. Adebayo and Olutayo C. Adesina
Date Of Publication: May 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0535-3
Isbn: 1-4438-0535-1
The past three decades have proved extremely challenging for Africa and its peoples, both at home and in the Diaspora. Coincidentally, these were also the decades that globalization reached maturity and that the world became more interconnected and interdependent. The paradox of globalization for Africa has included increase in marginalization, poverty, inequality, migration and instability. This book highlights global asymmetries by interfacing the notion of “one world” or “flat world” with the challenges thrown up by transnational migration, brain drain, citizenship, identity, multiculturalism, religion and ethnicity. It presents researches and discourses on globalization across disciplines and across regions, and fosters ongoing inquiry into important assumptions, beliefs and perspectives about the implications of globalization for Africa and Africans. It covers major areas of concern—movement of refugees, xenophobia, transition from economic migration to citizenship, challenges of integration, and conflict of identity. The authors investigate the experiences of Africans in various economic sectors and geographical locations, and the trends in hegemony, inequality, cultural changes and the dynamics of social movements and struggles. Through illuminating narratives and copious explanations, this book assists readers to make sense of globalization and the position of Africa and Africans in it.

Akanmu G. Adebayo is Executive Director of the Institute for Global Initiatives, and Professor of History at Kennesaw State University, Georgia. He is author of Embattled Federalism: A History of Revenue Allocation in Nigeria (1993), co-author of Culture, Politics and Money among the Yoruba (2000), and co-editor of Instructional Technology Training for Basic Education in Ghana (2003).

Olutayo C. Adesina is associate professor of history at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He has held many distinguished academic fellowships, including Salzburg Seminar, Austria; Charles Warren Centre, Harvard University; and Rhodes Chair of Race Relations, Oxford University. He was the founding editor of the Nigerian Journal of Economic History (NJEH), and co-editor of Consolidation and Sustenance of Democracy: The United States of America and Nigeria (2002).

“Taking views from the dimly-lit basement of an allegedly "flattened" world, this book provides diverse – and sometimes surprising – perspectives on the experience of Africa and Africans in the age of globalization. It covers the experience of Africans as migrants to the North as well as in other African countries; it studies refugees and highly-qualified migrants alike. While taking seriously the analysis of socio-economic and policy dimensions of African migration, this book goes beyond it and explores aspects of the wider cultural impact of globalization on Africa and Africans. Examples extend from changes in gender stereotypes to the literary expression of the diaspora experience.

Joining together a diversity of views and perspectives, this book provides a remarkable example of fruitful collaboration between African and African diaspora academics.”

- Axel Harneit-Sievers, Director, East & Horn of Africa Office, Heinrich Böll Stiftung

“This is an important collection of essays by an impressive team of scholars who interrogate the meanings and implications of the processes of globalization for the continent and its peoples. Focusing on both transnational migrations and local transformations wrought by globalization, its dynamics as a historical process of growing interconnectedness and an ideological project of neoliberal capitalism, the authors offer fresh insights into the exceedingly complex subject of Africa’s globalization. With admirable theoretical sophistication and ample empirical data, they probe, expand, and enrich our understanding of African migrations and new diaspora formations, how these developments are affecting the constructions of and contestations over the identities and notions of citizenship, nationality, race, culture, ethnicity, gender, and class. “

- Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago; President, African Studies Association

“Globalization and Transitional Migrations provides a road map into the complex world of globalization by examining the etiology of its making, and because it is conceived and written mostly by African scholars in Africa, and African scholars who have settled in the West, there is an effect of deep intimacy, akin to eavesdropping on a conversation among family members… The book questions the necessity and investigates the sufficiency of globalization in relation to African living... It helps us to understand better the balance sheet of globalization in Africa by providing new structures and new perspectives with which to think about our world and our role in it.”

- Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, Director, Center for International Education, University of Cape Coast, Ghana

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