Constructing Identity in Virtuality: A Critical Examination of the Case of Migrant Nigerians

Abstract

Renegotiation of the self in the individual or the collective sense is a central characteristic of diasporas. The redefinition of life away from an original homeland could be physical through the construction of home and homeland, or psychological via a nascent attempt at self-presentation (Wood, et al, 2001). Both cases are continuous, but moreso, when it is of the latter. The fragility of diasporic state directly or indirectly conditions an emergent effort for survival. That struggle is witnessed in multi-sectors, including economic, political, cultural, social, and religious, amongst many others. The sectors are reflected in the real world just as it is becoming increasingly represented in the virtual world. While the real world element has been more critically examined, the virtual element is yet evolving. This is importantly because of the relative newness of the Internet space, where virtually is represented, and the fact that its infinite depth showcases intricacies that constantly require care to gauge. The diasporic element connects with the virtual at the deterritorialised or decentered level, just as we are invited to investigate these dimensions through how segments of society matter in the matrix. In this situation therefore, my concern is to examine how diasporic Nigerians as a societal segment use the Internet to represent the self, in the face of ambiguity in a distance. In itself, the word diaspora is a contested word. An old Greek phrase, implying “scattering”, and “maturing” it was originally applied to seeds. To humans, it also became a metaphor for dispersals and settlements (Cohen, 1997). The timelessness of its meaning is exemplified in its relevance, as initially applied to the old, traditional and involuntary Jewish diaspora, and to migrating people in contemporary times like the new, and voluntary Nigerian diaspora, mainly displaced for economic reasons. The intersecting concept of identity which seeks, as related to diasporas, to see how the self is presented in the flux of migrancy is also a problematic word. A social construct (Wood, Ibid), or a spatially determined affair, which changes in sameness. The problematic concepts of home and homeland are italicized in this paper, as a reflection of their fluidity. It is here assumed as an imagined place, where emotional attachment, as against physical one is prevalent.(Gilroy, 1993) argued that identity is locked in a tangled connotation. Importantly, the question of construction (Deng, 1995; 1, cited in Fearon, 1999:4; Woodward, 1997:1), reflexivity (Giddens, 1991), and conceptuality, are fundamental to its understanding. Its determination in the Internet space, through the agency of the incipient (Sheffer, 2003) Nigerian diaspora is to be investigated in the present with gazes on the conditioning impact of the past. In doing this therefore, I shall first reveal in brief the routes from a recent historical perspective, before looking at present manifestations of virtual identity construction amongst Nigerian diaspora.