Through a particular focus on the politics of belonging, this article explores the extent to which London-based Nigerian organisations perform the progressive role expected of them in globalising discourses of diaspora and development.
Belonging and the Nigerian project
The interplay between national and sub-national, geo-ethnic visions of belonging and development has fundamental implications for the viability of the Nigerian state. In the ways they mobilise identity “abroad” and make transnational interventions at “home”, London-based Nigerian diaspora organisations can reproduce a pervasive and insidiously divisive politics of belonging that is widely seen to undermine the Nigerian project.
Beyond ethnic boundaries
However, these organisations and their transnational interventions can also transcend ethnicised boundaries of belonging to articulate and pursue visions of Nigeria’s national development.
Their involvement in the politics of belonging and the progress of “home” is clearly much more ambivalent than globalising discourses of diaspora and development might hope — but their potential to contribute to a unified and prosperous Nigeria should not be dismissed.
