Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
While international migration profoundly influences governance, development, and social structures, Africa’s unique position as a sending, transit, and receiving region remains underexamined. Migration of Africans: Realities, Governance and Development offers a rigorous, contextually grounded examination of how migration intersects with governance, everyday life, and development across the continent.
Bringing together original research from across Africa, this edited volume examines international migration through multiple lenses, including governance, regional integration, labour mobility, gender, religion, digital practices, forced displacement, transnational families, and the experiences of those left behind. With empirical case studies spanning countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Namibia, and Burkina Faso, contributors analyse both voluntary and forced migration, highlighting the social, economic, and emotional dimensions of mobility. Moving thematically, from macro‑level discussions of migration governance and regional integration to micro‑level analyses of lived experience, wellbeing, online engagement with homelands, and household dynamics, this collection locates migration within broader development processes and institutional frameworks, while centring African perspectives and contextual realities often marginalised in global migration debates.
Designed for multi- and transdisciplinary audiences bridging sociology, development studies, political science, and African studies, this collection offers actionable insights for optimizing migration governance and development outcomes, making it an indispensable resource for understanding Africa’s evolving migration landscape.
Ọláyínká Àkànle is Professor of Sociology at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. His intersectional research interests include Migration and Diaspora Studies; Gender; Governance and Environment; Epistemology and Knowledge Production; Family and Sexuality; Child and Youth; Conflict, Crime and Security and Health and Medicine.
Chapter 1. International Migration Realities, Governance and Development of Africa: The Context and Structure; Ọláyínká Àkànle
Section 1. The Migration, Governance, Integration and Development
Chapter 2. Migration Governance and Development in Africa; Olaitan Tope Bada and Ọláyínká Àkànle
Chapter 3. When Borders Fade: Rethinking Migration and Regional Integration in Africa; Olusegun Israel Olaniyan
Chapter 4. Religion and In-Migrants’ Socio-Economic Integration in Cameroon; Nanche Billa Robert
Section 2. Labour Migration, Wellbeing and Online Practices
Chapter 5. Locating Namibia in Southern African Cross-border Migration Discourse: Welcoming or Keeping Out?; Kolawole Emmanuel Omomowo
Chapter 6. Understanding Senegalese Skilled Migrants’ Online Practices Oriented Towards the Homeland; Ibrahima Amadou Dia
Chapter 7. Female Labour Migration and Wellbeing of Households in Africa: Lived Experiences from Nigeria; Adefolake Olusola Ademuson
Section 3. Forced Migration, Transnationalism and the Left-behind Phenomenon
Chapter 8. Dynamics of Forced Migration in Burkina Faso: The Case of Internally Displaced Persons in the Centre-North Region; Tebkieta Alexandra Tapsoba
Chapter 9. “Migrating without my Family has been a Challenge”: Relationships of Nigerian Transnational Families; Ọláyínká Àkànle and Patience Charles Nathan
Chapter 10. International Migration and Development in Nigeria: Experiences from Left-behind Spouses; Abiodun Tunde Ojuri and Ọláyínká Àkànle
Chapter 11. Optimising the Intersectional Realities of International Migration, Governance and Development of Africa; Ọláyínká Àkànle