African Diasporas in the Making: a Nigerian Case-study
Based on a Nigerian case-study, this article aims at understanding the complexity and the limits of an African diaspora in the making. It reviews the various historical phases that contributed to shape exile identities. The objective is to analyse the trans-national links with the homeland from a global and empirical perspective. Hence the paper focuses first on the trade slave and the making of a black diaspora in the classical meaning of the word. After colonisation and independence, it then appraises the political and economical factors that explain a modern emigration. As compared to the trauma and the deportation of the slave trade, the article raises the issue of the coercive dimension of contemporary dispersion. Today’s Nigerian migrant communities are based on ethnic identities and not so much on a common national suffering ; yet they keep very much in touch with their homeland, to which they often remit money on a regular basis.