Urbanization and Migration in West Africa

Urbanization and Migration in West Africa edited by Hilda Kuper brings together leading scholars across anthropology, sociology, history, linguistics, geography, economics, and political science to examine the transformations accompanying Africa’s rapid urban growth. Industrialization and political change have fueled large-scale movements from rural communities into cities, reshaping economies, bureaucracies, and cultural life. Yet, as the contributors demonstrate, West African urbanization is far more than demographic expansion or economic differentiation: it reorders power relations, social identities, and cultural practices, generating new forms of solidarity and conflict alike. By situating migration within both colonial legacies and postcolonial nation-building, the volume highlights how African towns serve simultaneously as arenas of continuity—where lineage, religion, and ethnicity remain central—and as laboratories for innovation in labor organization, language use, and political participation.

The volume’s interdisciplinary breadth is one of its distinctive strengths. Historians trace the long trajectories of trade, Islam, and colonial governance in shaping urban forms; linguists analyze how multilingual encounters create new idioms and social alignments; anthropologists and sociologists chart how kinship, ethnicity, and religion are reworked in city life; economists debate the efficiency of seasonal labor migration; and political scientists examine the ways urban centers generate new elites and national movements. Throughout, contributors resist simplistic tradition–modernity models, instead revealing how migration and urbanization create layered, flexible identities and uneven forms of integration. With case studies ranging from Yoruba towns to Hausa emirates, from Freetown to Zaria, Urbanization and Migration in West Africa offers both rich empirical detail and comparative insight. It remains a landmark work for understanding the interplay of mobility, settlement, and social change in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.