Aspiring While Waiting: Temporality and Pacing of Ghanaian Stayer Youth's Migration Aspirations

Abstract: Many youth in Global South countries, whose parents have migrated abroad while they have stayed, i.e., "stayer youth," also aspire to migrate. While the current literature depicts stayer youth as "waiting" to emigrate, connoting passivity, recent critical youth studies suggest the importance of centring young people's agency when focusing on their aspirations and experiences. This article investigates how stayer youth in Ghana "pace" their migration aspirations while "waiting." By observing how youth change their aspirations over time, we first distinguish between different aspirations according to when youth first aim to migrate. Second, we "follow" stayer youth after their secondary school graduation to understand how they seek to fulfil their migration aspirations and the strategies they adopt therein. We use ethnographic data from 38 Ghanaian "stayer" young people. Our analyses show that stayer youth adapt their decision‐making when they realise some misalignment between their

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Social Inclusion ; 10 (2022) 4 ; 129-137

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2022
• Creator: Osei, Onallia Esther ; Mazzucato, Valentina ; Haagsman, Karlijn

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/si.v10i4.5662
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2406270920298.867719415363
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:48 PM CET