ABSTRACT
Until recently residents of the twin communities of Kaasa and Zogsa in the Builsa North District of Northern Ghana accessed the regional road network via a narrow and seasonally impassable footpath. In 2017 this footpath was upgraded to a motorable road. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 15 residents of Kaasa between the ages of 18 and 35 years, this chapter examines young adults’ understandings of the implications of this new mobility platform for their own lives and the community as a whole. Conversations with young people indicate that the new road has reduced the community's remoteness in terms of connectivity, accessibility, and opportunities for extra-local interaction and has inspired in some youth a rejection of remoteness as a disposition or aspect of self-understanding. Disassociation from remoteness as an aspect of self is more available to some young people in Kaasa than to others, because some are more able to practice or imagine practicing modernity, connectedness, and mobility than others, according to various axes of social difference. In this sense, remoteness is a descriptor not only of differential geographical positioning among places but also of differential social and identity positionings among people within places.
