Student migration aspirations and mobility in the global knowledge society: The case of Ghana

Résumé 0

In a global knowledge society, progress is driven by knowledge workers. Therefore, we must analyze migration and the mobility of knowledge workers in this new light. University students are both knowledge workers and knowledge-workers-to-be. Hence, this paper examines the migration aspirations of undergraduate university students in the Global South, exemplified by the West African nation Ghana. Increased access to higher education in Ghana and the Global South in general provides many more young people the opportunity to study, but the massive demand for education is still not being met, and access is woefully inadequate from the secondary level up to higher education. In addition, although the economy is growing steadily, graduate unemployment or underemployment is a major issue. This is the context for many students in and from the Global South. I argue that having the ability to migrate—mobility—is an unevenly distributed good, and partaking productively in the global knowledge society is highly conditional on a student’s country of origin.By taking the theoretical approach that aspiration is the first stage of migration, this research draws on a survey of undergraduate university students from two campuses in Ghana (n=467) and reveals that most of the students aspire to migrate, mostly for educational reasons. However, many of these students also aspire to return, others to live transnational lives, and one in twelve students surveyed are not interested in migrating—that is, in leaving Ghana for more than one year. These results show that university students in Ghana often imagine their future at home, but their life strategies include graduate school and gaining work experience abroad. Hence, mobility, but perhaps not necessarily migration, is a central feature of their life aspirations. Keywords:Global South, student migration, mobility, knowledge society, aspiration.