An Examination of the Online Transnational Networks of the Nigerian Diaspora

Abstract

Diasporic discourses reflect the sense of being part of an ongoing transnational network that includes the homeland not as something simply left behind but as a place of attachment in contraptual modernity (Clifford, 1997: 256).

The paper contends that in moving, seeking integration, trading across borders, acquiring properties abroad, and visiting the homeland, Nigerian Diaspora members are active in transnational spaces. They are found in different locations, and they interrelate from those locations. Modern media like the Internet facilitates these interactions. The paper maps how online media enhances the transnational activities of the migrants, by discussing how the migrants’ cross border activities have become banal, and how the Internet makes this possible. In this context, transnationalism is discussed as being made possible by the larger framework of globalisation, and the inevitable role of communication in its processes.