Typical Migration Stories: Comparing Trajectories of African Migration

Abstract

This chapter explores the existence of typical and diverse migration journeys through the lived experiences and personal testimony of a selection of participants from across the three studies. Migration is a growing phenomenon worldwide and the host countries vary according to migrants’ motivations to migrate. By leaving their home countries migrants are either pushed into searching for alternative opportunities to what is available in their home countries in order to sustain their own and their families’ survival, or pulled to pursue promising possibilities in a new country. Whatever prompted the migration, migrants embarked on unknown journeys with many difficulties; this challenges them to sustain friendships and family bonds, and to maintain cultural values and traditions in a new country.