"Homegoing" : Mobility, Diaspora, and Ghana's Year of Return

Abstract

In January 2019, Ghana launched its Year of Return program to mark 400 years since the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia. The year-long event was described as a spiritual birth right journey for members of the Black diaspora and aimed to boost tourism and migration to the country by posing Ghana as a key destination for the Black diaspora and African Americans in particular. As the Ghanaian state encourages the diaspora to travel and migrate to Ghana to help boost its economy, Ghanaian citizens are looking for opportunities to migrate out of Ghana for better education and employment opportunities. Considering this dichotomy, this thesis explores the differing and often contrasting mobilities apparent in the Black diaspora through the context of the Year of Return program. It is informed by fieldwork conducted via information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the COVID-19 pandemic through participant observation, interviews, and media analysis. This thesis first explores how Ghana's historical relationship with the Black diaspora laid the groundwork for the success of the Year of Return. It then explores how different understandings of Blackness were used by the Ghanaian state to promote connections across the Black diaspora. Finally, it focuses on the differing mobilities characterizing the phenomenon of return to Ghana to inquire into the state of global Black mobility.