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Title
Mobile Matters: Social Navigation of Entrepreneurial Youth Across Borders |
Full text
http://dspace.library.uu.nl:8080/handle/1874/374172 |
Date
2018 |
Author(s)
Littooij, S.J. |
Contributor(s)
Wiegink, N.; Cremers, G. |
Abstract
Access to and usage of mobile telephony in sub-Saharan Africa has significantly increased over the past two decades. Along with the rapid expansion of mobile telephony in African countries came the establishment of small-scale mobile telephony support businesses, particularly concentrated in major urban centers, and mostly run by young people. The capital of the West African Nation of Ghana is home to a prevalent amount of young Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs who establish smallscale mobile telephony support businesses in the country s major mobile telephony hub. Drawing on a case study at Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra, and along the lines of social navigation (Vigh 2006), this thesis explores how young Nigerian immigrants shape and navigate their social worlds through entrepreneurship in the mobile telephony support sector. Despite the obstacles young immigrant entrepreneurs encounter in their everyday lives, this this thesis illustrates how some young Nigerians at Kwame Nkrumah Circle have been able to carve out a living and improve their social mobility. Ultimately, it demonstrates that the establishment of small-scale businesses both as an entrepreneurial activity as well as an imagined possibility to meet the expectations of adulthood enables Nigerian youth to overcome waithood (Honwana 2012) across borders while simultaneously reinforcing and reproducing established social structures. As such, this thesis provides a valuable counterbalance to depictions of youth in sub-Saharan Africa as being stuck (Sommers 2012) in waithood. |
Subject(s)
Entrepreneurship; Ghana; Mobile Telephony; Nigeria; Social Mobility; Social Navigation; Waithood; Youth. |
Language
en |
Type of publication
Master thesis |
Format
text/plain |
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/ClosedAccess |
Repository
Utrecht - University of Utrecht
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