Paper short abstract:

This study examines how Igbo Hometown Associations in Nigeria serve as examples of local groups with ties to transnational migration dynamics and their diasporic networks, and how these ties allow them to act as alternative spaces of governance and providers of public goods, despite state weakness.

Paper long abstract:

Non-state actors have been gaining recognition for their ability to provide public goods in areas where formal state structures in post-colonial Africa have fallen short. However, what sustains the agency exercised by these actors has not been fully examined in existing literature. This paper contributes to this gap by examining how migration and migrants' linkages and their places of origin transform social groups into alternative spaces for governance and the distribution of development. It specifically explores how Igbo Hometown Associations (HTAs) serve as examples of social groups that operate locally but have ties to transnational migration dynamics and their diasporic networks, and how these ties allow them to act as non-state governance actors that self-organize to provide public goods to compensate for the shortcomings of formal state structures in eastern Nigeria. It will draw on conceptual framings of belonging and social identity, to explore how Igbo migrants' notions of belonging and the various forms of exclusion they experience as migrants, within and outside Igboland, influence their participation in hometown affairs through HTAs. It will ask how these participations enable HTAs to act as alternative sites of governance and distributive development, and how the emergence of HTAs as alternative spaces for governance allows them to negotiate statehood in tandem with formalized structures of the state. In engaging with this line of inquiry, the study, aims to highlight how the everyday operation of Igbo HTAs transforms the Nigerian state in ways that allow us to better theorize statehood in Africa.