Transnational Simultaneity: An Emerging African Perspective of Cross-Border Lifestyle

This study basically examines the implication of dual identity cleavage for Nigerian immigrants in Cote d’Ivoire. Ostensibly, various studies have attempted to explain the phenomena of trans-border relation and identity construction as separate concerns, none is observed to have established a formidable relationship between them in recent past. As such, the specific impact of simultaneous attachment to two nations by a migrants’ group is explored in this research. The study’s specificities are situated within the confines of Charles Tilly’s ‘Urban Sociological Postulate’ in which communities of participants are treated as social networks, while the research design combines four principal qualitative methods, that is, non-participant observation, focus group discussion (FGD), in-depth interviewing (IDI) and case study. Information from archival sources complemented the primary data. Data are subjected to content and ethnographic analyses. Two communities in West Africa (that is, Ejigbo, Nigeria and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire) serve as the study locations. Although vagaries of colonial rule had tended to discourage interactions across the borders, especially along the Anglophone-Francophone dichotomy, (uncensored) pre-colonial interactive pattern had outwitted such tendencies. Often time, cross-border interactions are considered as one taking place within the same geo-political space by the people. Routinely, two identities are kept alive by the immigrants (that is, an Ivorian-propelled image; for sake of acceptance within the host community and a Nigerian-propelled image; for sake of interaction with ‘home’ and for convenient re-integration). In Ejigbo, Nigeria, most of Ivorian goods are freely retailed using the Ivorian CFA; so also in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, many Nigerian goods are sold using the Nigerian Naira. This study surmised that the implication of related cross-border processes is the production of a people engaged in a kind of transnational subsistence dualism (that is, transnational simultaneity) in which border, distance, language, government and associated variables are no longer barriers to interpersonal and intergroup relations.