Overview
- Challenges assumptions about African youth migration within, to, and from Western Africa
- Explores the potential of training programs aimed at preparing youth with low levels of educational attainment for income-earning opportunities in non-traditional sectors of employment
- Sheds light on how urban school districts in the United States would benefit from more research on the heterogeneity of Black student populations, given increasing numbers of youth from West African immigrant families
Part of the book series: Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora (GCSAD)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Agency and Aspirations
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Front Matter
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Vulnerability and Well-Being
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth—ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria. Incorporating themes of migration, vulnerability, and agency and aspirations, the book conveys the resilience of African youth transitioning toward adulthood in a world of structural inequality. It thus crosses the academic divide between Youth Studies and African Studies, while challenging conventional framings of Black youth as deficient and deviant—positing instead their individual and collective creativity and assets. The contributors employ different methodological approaches, including field research and autoethnography, from varying multidisciplinary and practitioner perspectives.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Mora L. McLean is a researcher, writer, part-time university lecturer, and President Emerita of the Africa-America Institute (AAI). As a Senior Fellow with the Cornwall Center at Rutgers University-Newark, she was principal investigator for the Ford Foundation-supported 2017 Forum on West African Youth Learning and Opportunity Pathways. Her published essays include “What about the reciprocity? Pan-Africanism and the promise of global development,” in M.O. Okome & O. Vaughan’s Transnational Africa and Globalization (Palgrave, 2012).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: West African Youth Challenges and Opportunity Pathways
Editors: Mora L. McLean
Series Title: Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21092-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-21091-5Published: 04 November 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-21094-6Published: 11 September 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-21092-2Published: 21 October 2019
Series ISSN: 2946-3793
Series E-ISSN: 2946-3807
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 271
Number of Illustrations: 7 illustrations in colour
Topics: African Culture, African Politics, Cultural Policy and Politics, Children, Youth and Family Policy, African Economics, Public Policy