Date of Submission

Spring 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Sociology; Africana Studies

Project Advisor 1

Yuval Elmelech

Abstract/Artist's Statement

As the Child of Brain Drainers ( Highly educated immigrants that moved from a developing country to a developed country) and a soon to be highly educated African immigrant, I often ponder the effects of immigration on the families of those who immigrated as well as countries within the African continent. Oftentimes, African countries are perceived as stagnant places where progress may seem impossible because of corruption, poverty and their failing economies. Therefore, for an African to immigrate to a western country is not something unusual; this seems to be a common pattern. The narrative seems to be that if you have a chance to leave the continent, you should. It seems to be something so normal that we rarely question why people immigrate.

The objective of this paper is to explore the push and pull factors of the emigration to the United States of highly educated Nigerian immigrants and their families, a subgroup of African immigrants. Push factors are the reasons why immigrants are leaving their countries of birth. Pull factors are the reasons why immigrants move to the receiving civilizations or the destination countries. This paper will also describe the experiences of highly educated (People with a bachelor's degree or more) Nigerian born citizens living in the United States, speak of the effects of the increasing immigration of African immigrants or the brain drain (Void created in developing countries when many highly educated and skilled people immigrate out), highlight some of the expectations of highly educated immigrants, and speak of the effects of the increasing immigration of African immigrants on Nigeria's brain drain.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Share

COinS