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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Building up belonging: diasporic 'homecomers', the Ghanaian government and traditional rulers: a case of return
Author:Delpino, GaiaISNI
Year:2011
Periodical:African Diaspora: a Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World (ISSN 1872-5457)
Volume:4
Issue:2
Pages:163-184
Language:English
Geographic term:Ghana
Subjects:African Americans
traditional rulers
local politics
External link:https://hdl.handle.net/10.1163/187254611x606409
Abstract:This essay analyses the political dynamics involved in the construction of belonging in the case of African Americans' 'return' from the diaspora generated by the Atlantic slave trade to a town in Southern Ghana. Given the articulated belief of common ancestral origins, such arrival was initially welcomed by all the three groups of actors involved: the returnees, the local authorities, divided by a chieftaincy dispute, and the Ghanaian government that was supporting homecoming policies. The concepts of origins and kinship and the way to validate them, though, were differently conceived by the various political actors; furthermore each of them held dissimilar reasons and had different expectations behind this return. All these differences created a mutual, mutable and dynamic relation between the actors who were involved in the arrival and aimed to assert their authority. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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