Framing and conflict: the case of the Asante Akyem North district’s farmer-herder conflict in Ghana

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how framing of conflict in different phases is constructed and how the specific framing affects the development of the conflict and its management in the farmer–herder conflict in the Asante Akyem North District of Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The study area is Agogo which falls within the Asante Akyem North District in Ghana. The study used a qualitative approach whose philosophical ontology and epistemology believe that meaning is constructed (interpretivism). It further used a case study design using in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and observation guide. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select the respondents. The data were analysed using the thematic analysis approach. Ethical considerations such as informed consent, willingness and anonymity of respondents were duly respected. Findings The findings highlighted that the conflict actors formed frames such as identity-relational, affective-intellectual and negotiation-win frames as the drivers of the conflict. In this conflict, the farmers who are indigenes and custodians of the land feel more potent over the transnational migrants who are pastoralists and argue that the herdsmen be flushed out without negotiation. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the papers that bring to light the psychological dimension of the causes of the farmer–herder conflict in Ghana.

In Good Company? Personal Relationships, Network Embeddedness, and Social Inclusion

How do individuals’ networks of personal relationships affect their social in‐ and exclusion? Researchers have shown that micro‐level, informal relationships can be highly consequential for social inclusion, but in complex, contradictory ways: Personal networks reflect the degree of relational exclusion and protect against (other forms of) exclusion, but they also erode in conditions of exclusion and reproduce exclusion. While network researchers have widely studied some of these mechanisms, they have yet to embrace others. Therefore, this thematic issue reconsiders the complex relationship between personal networks and social inclusion. It offers a unique vantage point by bringing together researchers who work with different marginalised social groups, typically studied separately: refugees, transnational migrants, indigenous people, older people, people experiencing poverty, LGBT people, and women who have experienced domestic violence. This combination allows us to detect commonalities and differences in network functioning across historically excluded groups. This editorial lays the theoretical groundwork for the thematic issue and discusses the key contributions of the seventeen articles that compose the issue. We call for more attention to relationship expectations, the reciprocity of support flows, and contextual embeddedness, and question universally adopted theoretical binaries such as that of bonding and bridging social capital.

Migration, Farmer-Herder Conflict and the Challenges of Peacebuilding in the Agogo Traditional Area, Ghana

Recently, communities in Agogo Traditional Area (ATA) have witnessed an increasing spate of violence leading to loss of lives, loss of livelihoods, insecurity and severe injury among others. This article explores the “local” in peacebuilding by addressing the following research questions: first, how do Agogo indigenes in the diaspora contribute to peacebuilding in Agogo Traditional Area? Second, in which ways do the engagement of Fulani herders and indigenous farmers influence the process of peacebuilding in Agogo Traditional Area? The article employed in-depth interviews, participant observation, key informant interviews and focus group discussions in the data collection process. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the research has introduced the activities of transnational migrants into the discourse of peacebuilding as it positions Ghanaians in the diaspora as local actors engaged in the farmer-herder conflict in ATA. This study has shown that in the case of ATA, despite the potential benefits of the local peacebuilding including the contribution of the diaspora, it is bedeviled with challenges such as mistrust and inadequate resources. The article recommends that local peacebuilding be detached from adjudication in the court of law because the local actors perceive the court as external and ambivalent to the cultural context of local conflicts.

Diaspora-Homeland Connection in Bharati Gautam’s Vigata ra Baduli [Past and Hiccups]

This article aims to explore the way Bharati Gautam’s memoir Vigata ra Baduli [Past and Hiccups] (2020) connects the writer with her homeland. Home and homeland are out of some major loci of diasporic life and the discourse. Diasporic writings deal with homeland both as a real place to return and an imaginary reality for those transnational migrants who have no chance of physical return to the place left back. To study the writer’s homeland connection as expressed in the book, this study uses qualitative methodology with its interpretative approach for analysis. The theoretical input is the diasporic discourse related to home and homeland. For the diasporans, homeland is the root of their life, culture, language and in total the life they live in the hostland. The time a diaspora loses its physical, imaginary or emotional connection with the homeland, it stops being a diaspora. Thus, every diasporic writing has some kind of homeland connection. The study finds that Gautam’s memoirs deal with her love and respect for the root. These feelings are expressed through her nostalgia, symbols and culture she follows in the USA. Similarly, her own and her children’s critical thoughts on Nepal and Nepali socio-cultural praxis also highlight their connection with the homeland. It is hoped that this study is useful to find how Nepali Diaspora connects itself with Nepal. It may encourage the researchers to work in this field.

Institutionalization of transnationalizing political parties: the case of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia

While party institutionalization research has advanced notably in the recent years, the institutionalization of political parties that extend their organizations abroad (i.e. transnationalizing parties) has remained an academically uncharted territory. This article draws on party institutionalization literature and analyses the particularities of institutionalization in transnationalizing parties. The findings suggest that transnational institutionalization takes place simultaneously on multiple levels (local, national and transnational) and is distinctly interactive, placing crucial importance on the activities and responsiveness of both the central party organization as well as the extraterritorial branches. The internal dimensions of institutionalization can be notably affected by the territorially and temporally scattered nature of emigrant communities and by the sense of inclusion provided to the activists. The external dimensions of transnational institutionalization involve a wider variety of actors than institutionalization on the national level and can also be more challenging due to the more contingent socialization patterns and interest in politics of transnational migrants. Transnational institutionalization of political parties is relevant to the parties and their continuous electoral success, but also for transnational migrant communities and impact of their political participation.

Getting to the Pink Picket Fence: How LGB Migrants Negotiate Same-Sex Marriage

Despite the increasing legalization trend, same-sex marriage remains inaccessible to couples in most countries. Such exclusions, however, can be circumvented by migrants who, in the process, also negotiate diverse and even divergent meanings of marriage embedded in different socio-institutional contexts. This study examines such diverse meanings of marriage among LGB transnational migrants based on biographic narrative interviews with nine individuals married to same-sex partners in Belgium and the Netherlands and coming from Central and Eastern European countries with constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage. The study highlights the negotiations of intimate relationships in the context of the new institutional opportunity of marriage and stresses how the similarities between migrants and non-migrants testify to the strengthening of same-sex marriage as a social institution. Focusing further on migrants' unique experiences of marriage in divergent socio-institutional contexts, this study also shows how same-sex marriage empowers LGB migrants even where it is (still) not available.

Kindergartens in Northern Norway as semiotic landscapes

Educational institutions have a responsibility to ensure that all children receive care and equal possibilities for development, independent of their linguistic and cultural background. However, there is little knowledge about how kindergartens ensure a welcoming and inspiring place for both transnational migrants, Indigenous children, and children from the majority population. Through a semiotic landscape analysis from two kindergartens in Northern Norway, this article contributes to this knowledge gap. Our starting point is that educational spaces are social, cultural, and political places. Applying a Bakhtinian perspective on semiotic landscapes as dialogues, the analysis focuses on two discourses. The first concerns diversity as an individual or shared value, and the second concerns balancing the ordinary and the exotic. We find that diversity related to transnational migration seems to be more integrated into the semiotic landscape, while the minoritised Indigenous Sámi people is stereotypically represented in kindergartens.

PROBLEMATIZING HOME, BELONGING AND IDENTITY IN BINA SHARIF’S MY ANCESTOR’S HOUSE: A TRANSNATIONAL APPROACH

Since the 1990s, transnationalism, a as recent field of enquiry, has emerged as another theoretical lens through which we can look into the changing, evolving meanings of home, homeland, and belonging for international migrants. Studies of transnational migrants have focused upon varying aspects of the migrants’ lives: their ties with their kin; laws of naturalization in the host country, involvement in political organizations, the place of cultural iconography such as food, music, tradition in their daily lives. Because these transmigrants neither cut the ties to their countries of origin nor fully assimilate into the new culture of the host country, these immigrants fall under the rubric of transnationals However, transnational studies focusing upon the cross-border lives and activities of transnational subjects ignore the cross-cutting variables of gender, class, age, religion, ideology, period of immigration, citizenship status, different local sending contexts, which play a mediatory role in shaping notions of home, identity, community within even a single transnational community. In order words, it is not possible to talk about the transnationalism of a certain migrant group but of the heterogeneous make-up of transnationalisms, which differ even among the members of a transnational community at any given point in time. To understand the relationship between transnational migrants, and their conceptions of home and belonging, it is of vital importance to explore the specific circumstances of migration and how they influence conceptions of home. Secondly, the celebratory overtones of the transnational conditions of international migrants overlook the negative consequences of transnational lives such as the feelings of loss and dislocation inherent in cross border movements of transmigrants. Reading Pakistani-American Bina Sharif’s play My Ancestor’s House through a transnational lens, I would argue, brings a new insight into the literature on transnationalism by way of highlighting the non-homogenous, non-celebratory, and historically specific aspects of transnationalism in a global age.

State of normality: Transnational migrants’ shifting views of state institutions and their obligations

The power of nationalism is evident in how people perceive the world around them as ‘normal’. A national normality is constituted through education and media but also in everyday encounters with the state or state-regulated institutions in the fields of education, welfare provisions, medical care, finance and others. When people migrate between countries, their sense of ‘normality’ can become disturbed. Migration might impact how people think of their relationship to the state and its institutions. This article is based on analysis of 120 interviews with Polish migrants in the UK and Germany. It asks if migration creates a ‘post-national situation’ in which national categories are questioned and negotiated anew. The contexts of Poland, which is undergoing a return to conservative national identity, the UK and its struggle over Brexit, and Germany in its claim to European leadership, provide an instructive case for the discussion of intersections between nationalism and post-nationalism.