Not every African émigré longs for home
‘The idea that every single African who in their post-teenage years have left Africa for a life in a land which offers them more opportunity must be sad and depressed, is one that I am unwilling to acknowledge,’ Anengiyefa Alagoa writes to Pambazuka News, in response to .
I am not sure that it is the case that every single African who of his own volition departs his home country for a life in the West, necessarily envisages a return to his homeland at some point in the future.
There must be some Africans who have emigrated to Western countries with exactly the same mind-set as of the Polish, Irish and other European émigrés who arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century.
Many Africans have gone in search of a better life for themselves and their descendants, with a desire to remain in their adopted country permanently.
The idea that every single African who in their post-teenage years have left Africa for a life in a land which offers them more opportunity must be sad and depressed, is one that I am unwilling to acknowledge. The cultural and sociological ties that we as Africans have with our continent are no different from those that the south Asians or Chinese have with theirs.
Therefore if every African immigrant is unhappy, then surely the same must apply to the Asians as well, since they too would suffer the elements of racial prejudice that have been suggested.
But this clearly is not the case. There are Africans abroad who feel that they have been let down by their home countries and who as a result feel no compunction about abandoning their homeland. In some cases they have even succeeded in bringing their close relatives from Africa to their adopted country.
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