1. "Afie ni Afie" (Home is Home): Revisiting Reverse Trans-Antlantic Journeys to Ghana and the Paradox Return
- Author:
- Kwame Essien
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Ìrìnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration
- Abstract:
- This article traces different waves of reverse migrations to the Gold Coast, now Ghana, which began in the early nineteenth century. The article explores external motivations for pursuing these journeys and factors internal to Ghanaian history that facilitated reverse migrations. Both contributed to the contradictions of return and the paradox of freedom or the illusion that their physical presence in Ghana would fulfil their fantasy. Part of the article chronicles the stories of individuals, family groups, and the transatlantic communities they created: Brazilian-Africans (Tabom), Caribbean Africans and American-Africans. The article focuses on themes of slavery, emancipation, abolition, reverse migrations and Pan-African activities in Ghana. This article maintains that literature on reverse migrations should extend beyond the narrow focus of the New World back to Africa. I assert that there are other reverse migratory paths from West Africa to Brazil (after liberated Brazilian-Africans settled in Africa in the early 1800s) and between Nigeria and Ghana that have been overlooked by scholars in their study of reverse migrations to Ghana and West Africa in general. In the end, this article shows similarities in reverse migrations and shared cultural kinship as members of the returnee communities in Lagos-Nigeria (the Aguda) and Accra-Ghana (the Tabom) crisscrossed the West African Atlantic and created various identities.
- Topic:
- Migration, Slavery, and Literature
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana