BC Professor Organizes Symposium on Transnational Africa and Globalization

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, professor of political science and former coordinator of the Brooklyn College Women's Studies program (2006-2008), has organized a symposium to bring together scholars to discuss the topics of African immigration and globalization.

Okome hopes the symposium, held at Maine's Bowdoin College in early December, will launch a plethora of scholarly activities focused on the latest wave of African migration to the United States.

"Many people look at African migration to Europe, but not as many at migration to the U.S.," explains Okome. "It's important that we have a more serious analysis of transnationalism, that we make connections and encourage a dialogue that speaks to people of African descent here."

Okome coordinated the Bowdoin symposium with leading Africanist scholar, Olufemi "Femi" Vaughan, the Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies and History and director of African Studies at Bowdoin. The symposium brought together scholars from across the country and from Canada to explore topics from how African dress and how religions factor into migration to the Nigerian film industry and African philanthropy. Okome said the idea for the project came about after she did a panel presentation on transnational Africa at last year's African Studies Association meeting held in New York.

Okome is currently taking a year of sabbatical to coordinate the symposium, among other scholarly pursuits. She hopes that traction from the gathering will lead to a rejuvenation of such efforts as the floundering scholarly journal on African migration, Ìrìnkèrindò (which is Yoruba for perpetual wandering), that she co-edits with Lehman Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Director of the Women's Studies Program Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum. The scholars also hope to publish a book based on the papers presented at the symposium.

Okome, who has been researching African immigration since 1996, pointed out that the current wave of immigration from Africa is markedly different than generations before.

"In the 1970's, people like Barack Obama's father came here to get an education but they always intended to eventually go back home and many of them did," she explains. But when the economies of many African nations began to crumble in the '70s and '80s, and their political situations became unstable, "many people left and never looked back," she says. "This wave has had a significant affect on politics, globalization, and the ways in which people assert their identity."

Okome, who migrated from Africa herself when she was in her early twenties, says her research becomes very personal. She came to the United States reluctantly and always planned to return to her native country of Nigeria.

"Twenty-seven years later, I'm still here," she says, sitting in the dining room of her Midwood home. "But I'm also very motivated to find out why people come from the continent, why they stay and how they meet the challenges of immigration. My research has helped me work out some of my own angst and understand my American children's issues with identity and the continent of Africa."