Travel and See: Status, Communication and Distrust in Ghanaian Migrant Networks

• In Event: 075 - Regular Session. Meaning and Movement across Transnational Spaces

Abstract

Although migration scholars increasingly recognize the limitations of chain migration theory, many continue to accept one of its key assumptions: that migrant social networks facilitate the exchange of useful and reliable information about experiences, opportunities, and lifestyles abroad. This is largely a result of transnational scholars’ emphasis on migrants’ continual concern with status in their home communities, which leads to more frequent communication and remittance-sending. Drawing on interview and ethnographic data from Ghana, West Africa, I highlight an empirical puzzle that these assumptions fail to explain: why do aspiring migrants continue to migrate to destinations where their own friends and relatives have had extremely negative experiences? I argue that despite the increasing ease of transnational travel and communication, African migrants face two pressures which discourage them from reporting on negative experiences. First, migrants’ intense concern with social status in their home communities incites them to represent themselves as successful, no matter the circumstances. Second, when migrants report negative experiences, their relatives often suspect them of hiding remittance money, and thus discount their stories. Together, these pressures motivate migrants to emphasize positive outcomes of migration and hide negative outcomes, thus encouraging further migration even in the face of economic uncertainty in host countries.

Author

• Lindsay Bayham, University of California-Berkeley