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Paper short abstract:

This paper contends that entrepreneuring a sense of belonging can be understood as a practice of place-making at the intersection of territoriality and taste-making. The novelty of the paper lies in conceptualizing belonging as an entrepreneurial endeavour that is place-bound yet imaginative.

Paper long abstract:

Where we decide to live and locate our bodies is a political and performative act, especially when the place of conscious dwelling runs counter to conventional narratives of Africa as a continent of migration and displacement. This paper tells the story of a group of Ghanaian returnees choosing to live in Accra, sometimes against all odds, where they develop a sense of home through entrepreneurial projects. Using Accra’s creative industries as a case study, the paper examines these entrepreneurial projects as deliberate practices of place-making in a city that signifies home, but where returnees often feel or are made to feel ‘other’. The paper analyses practices of place-making in Accra’s central district Osu where returnees erect cultural venues and creative hot-spots such as a concept store, an open-air theatre, and a so-called decolonised library. Physical spaces that all, albeit in different ways, cultivate a sense of familiarity and belonging. The analysis is informed by an understanding of entrepreneuring (the verb) as a creative process and societal force (Steyaert 2007; Hjorth and Holt 2022) and of belonging as constantly asserted, negotiated and performed (Bell 1999) yet situated and physically bounded (Anthias 2020). The findings discuss belonging as an entrepreneurially attained endeavour through physical structures that foster translocal diasporic relations and invoke imaginaries of a future Africa. The paper concludes that processes of place-making become performative when returnees affirm their spatial existence mobilizing a narrative of potentiality reminiscent of life in the diaspora and speculative of imagined futures.