ABSTRACT
Migration literature has paid little attention to the factors that undergird the perpetuation of migration between two global southern countries. This chapter contributes to broadening our insights into the migration of Ghanaians to China within the Ghana-China migration corridor and the lived experiences of these migrants in China. The extant literature on social networks focuses predominantly on how such networks have the potential to facilitate as well as perpetuate migration journeys. Drawing on qualitative research methods, our application of the social network theory to our case study extends the discourses to cover how migrants’ lived experiences, even at the destination, are equally shaped by social networks. We explore the key drivers of migration from Ghana to China and how social networks mediate the lived experiences of Ghanaian migrations to China. This is essential as the lived experiences of migrants within the global southern context are often missing in the migration literature. In our view, even though all the initiation and perpetuation models are important in migration analysis, the primacy belongs to the dynamics of social network – and to some extent, institutional factors, when it comes to our understanding of South-South Migration, especially as epitomised by migration along the China–Ghana corridor.
