ABSTRACT
Our case study in a coastal area of southeastern Ghana analyses a region that has experienced migration and mobility for generations and at the same time has been affected by socio-economic and environmental changes for decades. In a context where migration is part of everyday life and deeply embedded in local and regional knowledge systems, materialized through contacts with those who have migrated already and kept alive by those who still aspire to move, migration is a reaction to socio-economic change and environmental threats as well as a motor of social change; for example, return migration contributing to local development.
Combining quantitative data from a household survey with qualitative data from the study area, Keta, we analyse migrant trajectories in this context of social-economic and environmental change. How do social change, for example economic and political decline, and environmental change translate into migrant trajectories? What is the role of ‘traditional’ forms of migration, and how do regional mobility regimes come into play? By combining a life course perspective with the concept of migrant trajectories, we aim to elucidate the role of different factors bearing on migration decisions and migrant trajectories, in relation to a household’s life cycle.
