Trans-Atlantic migration : the paradoxes of exile

This book argues that a new cadre of African immigrants are finding themselves in the New World-mostly well educated, high-income earning professionals, and belonging to the category termed "African brain drain," they constitute the antinomy of those Africans who were forcibly removed from Africa during slavery. Along with this sense of freedom and voluntary migration comes a paradox-that of living in two worlds and negotiating the pleasures and agonies that come with living in exile. For the new African immigrant, the primary factor motivating migration is the desire for a better life whether fleeing political persecution, economic crisis, refugee crisis, or a combination thereof. The overall consequences include displacement, alienation, and the not so enchanting reality of exile. In its encompassing structure and multivalent perspectives, Trans-Atlantic Migration sets in motion the shifting theoretical and pragmatic verity that the new African diaspora and transatlantic migrations are paths laden with paradoxes that only time, negotiations, compromises, and sense of identities can ultimately resolve.

1. Introduction: Prospero's Ripples, Caliban's Burden Part 1: Paradoxes of (Im)Migration and Exile 2. Paradoxes of Immigrant Incorporation: High Achievement and Perceptions of Discrimination by Nigerians in Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas (USA) 3. Nigerian Exiles, Democratic Struggles and the Notion of Sacrifice: Interspatial Activism and the Proactive Discourses of Liberation 4. Immigrants' Pilgrimage and Imaginations: The Cinematic Portrayals of African Immigrants in Movies Part 2: Migration, Labor Conflicts, and Development 5. 'The Uprooted Emigrant': The Impact of Brain Drain, Brain Gain and Brain Circulation on Africa's Development 6. Walking For Land, Drinking Palm Wine: Migrant Farmers and the Historicity of Land Conflict in Brong Ahafo, Ghana 7. Migrants in French Sudan: Gender Biases in the Historiography 8. The Impact of the Relationship between Migrants and Traditional Authorities on South African Mining Communities Part 3: Migration and Survival Politics 9. Cultural and Ethnic Accommodation of New-Comers in South Africa 10. Pan-Africanism: The Impact of the Nkrumah Years 1945-1966 11. African Political Instability and the Search for an Inclusive Society 12. A Critical Analysis of the Social and Economic Impact of Asian Diaspora in Kenya. Conclusion: The Moral Ambiguity of Trans-Atlantic Migration