Long-Distance Nationalism in the Global City: A Cultural History of the Malian Diaspora in Lagos

Focusing on migration within the global south, Bennett Eason Cross uses the example of the Malian trade diaspora in Lagos to argue that aspects of the original model of the transmigrant were based on labor migrations from global south to global north that are not representative of their south-to-south counterparts. In Long-Distance Nationalism in the Global City: A Cultural History of the Malian Diaspora in Lagos, Nigeria, Cross notes that the cultural and racial differences between migrant communities and their host societies in Europe and the U.S. are often narrower, or even nonexistent, in south-to-south migrations, which shapes different outcomes. As this multi-site case study reveals, however, these differences in outcome can seem counterintuitive, as immigrants in the north typically develop loyalties to both origin and host nations, whereas, among the Malians in Lagos, affinity for the host nation was virtually nonexistent, despite a common regional culture. He complicates the standard bilateral struggle for belonging between host and origin societies by examining the role of Islam, both as a parallel transnational movement and as a competing localized form. This book analyzes the deep historical structure of each society to explain the Malians' failure to develop the multiple national identities observed in other diasporas.