Rural Migrants And The Negotiation Of Identity In Asante: The Case Of Dadease, 1930 – 1996.

Abstract An ethnic minority ―is not the same...as a party, a trades union, or a pressure group. It is akin, rather, to a class, or an age group, or an interest group. (Crowley, 107) This thesis addresses the negotiation of Identity from the historical perspective. It seeks to show how Kotokoli, Mossi and other African migrants to Rural Asante shaped and expressed their sense of be identity from 1930 to 1996. The hypothesis to be explored by this research is that identity among migrants to a homogenous society is shaped during its negotiation by the migrants’ perception of their immediate and remote contexts, be it political, social or economic. If the perception of either of these should change, Identity can be affected. Thus Identity is ever fluid and evolving. Social Anthropologists Smith, Stewart and Winter for instance have argued this point in their work on Latvian immigrants in a small mid-west town in the United States of America after World War Two. Their research reconstructed, based on memory, the Identity their respondents assumed from their high school years through to mid-life. They concluded that people’s perception of their history – that is whether they saw themselves as the Latvian Diaspora waiting out a Soviet invasion or as economic migrants – shaped how they saw themselves. Also people characterised themselves, either as Latvian, Latvian-American or American was based on how much they felt they belonged to the large Latvian community in which they lived or the larger American community. This thesis does not seek to chronicle the collective experiences of migrants to Asante throughout the 20th Century. It rather seeks to show the how and why of Identity formation through a case study of a group of migrants who carved a niche for themselves in their host society. An understanding of the complex factors that go into Identity negotiation, belonging and exclusion would prove invaluable, particularly in nation building efforts and our understanding of the concept of a (trans)national Identity