'Life beyond the Walls of my Hometown': Social Safety Networks as a Coping Strategy for Northern Migrants in Accra

Haruna Abdallah Imam and Hardy Tamimu

Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Management Studies, 2015, vol. 2, issue 1, 25-43

Abstract: There is a persistent belief among Northern youth that urban centers, particularly Accra, offer better opportunities for them to improve their lives. These opportunities therefore serve as incentives for them to migrate in large numbers to Accra. However, these migrants are confronted with difficult conditions such as lack of suitable accommodation, lack of regular incomes, high occupational risks, poor remuneration for their services, poor health care, reproductive health problems, and harassment from city authorities among others. Given their high levels of vulnerability within the urban environment, the young migrants, both at the individual and group levels, adopt diverse coping strategies that serve as social safety nets to soften the impact of the harsh socio-economic conditions they encounter in the city. These include accommodation arrangements, job seeking strategies, income management and savings strategies, sources of food and eating habits, health seeking behaviours, disaster management and institutional support. Using mixed methods, this paper explores these social safety nets, and examines the extent to which they have helped improve the well-being of Northern migrants in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Keywords: Migration; Migrants; Kayayei; Safety nets; Accra; Sodom; Gomorrah. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://asianonlinejournals.com/index.php/AJSSMS/article/view/447/450 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoj:ajssms:v:2:y:2015:i:1:p:25-43:id:447

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Management Studies from Asian Online Journal Publishing Group
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sara Lim ().