Papers by Christian Ungruhe
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2024
Many male and female African footballers strive for a career in leagues on other continents. How ... more Many male and female African footballers strive for a career in leagues on other continents. How has African football migration developed over time? Where do players move? Which risks do they face?
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2024
Viele afrikanische Fußballerinnen und Fußballer hoffen auf eine Karriere in Ligen auf anderen Kon... more Viele afrikanische Fußballerinnen und Fußballer hoffen auf eine Karriere in Ligen auf anderen Kontinenten. Wie hat sich Fußballmigration aus Afrika entwickelt? Mit welchen Risiken ist sie verbunden?
Bulgarian Ethnology, 2021
Anthropology and Sport. History, Methods and New Conceptual Approaches
In recent years, anthropol... more Anthropology and Sport. History, Methods and New Conceptual Approaches
In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly identified topics and facets of sport as important fields of inquiry for their discipline. Following a discussion of the rather sporadic and cursory engagement with sport in social anthropology in the German, French, British and American tradition, we discuss the changing role of an anthropology of sport by analyzing its methodological and analytical value for the study of contemporary social, cultural, economic and political phenomena. Given the ongoing processes of sports’ globalization and commercialization such phenomena are increasingly visible in and through games, events and changing local body cultures. In order to utilize sports’ increasing potential for central debates in anthropology we argue for a further consolidation and institutionalization of sport in the discipline.
Passauer Kontaktstudium Geographie 16, 2021
Migration aus ländlichen Gebieten Afrikas in urbane Zentren des Kontinents wird oft als Krisenphä... more Migration aus ländlichen Gebieten Afrikas in urbane Zentren des Kontinents wird oft als Krisenphänomen interpretiert. Während vielerorts der Klimawandel und intensive Landwirtschaft Ackerböden und Weideflächen auslaugen und starke Regenfälle und Überflutungen ganze Ernten vernichten, ist die Existenzgrundlage vieler Menschen gefährdet. Alternative Einkommensmöglichkeiten zur Landwirtschaft sind ebenso wie Bildungsperspektiven jedoch begrenzt. Es sind die Städte, die Jobs und Existenzsicherung bieten und Hoffnung auf eine bessere Zukunft verheißen, auch wenn die Lebensverhältnisse vieler Migrant*innen dort oft prekär sind. In Ghana, wie auch in anderen Ländern Afrikas, sind es insbesondere junge Menschen, die gehen. Viele migrieren saisonal oder in den Schulferien und kehren nach einigen Monaten oder wenigen Jahren in der Stadt zurück. Zunächst scheint diese Rückkehr mit dem Ziel verbunden, zur Existenzsicherung in der Heimat beizutragen und den elterlichen Haushalt an erworbenen Erfahrungen, Gütern und finanziellen Mitteln teilhaben zu lassen, um den Auswirkungen von Krisen zu entgegnen. Studien zeigen jedoch, dass diese zirkuläre jugendliche Migration für die ländlich geprägten Gesellschaften unrentabel ist: Der Rückfluss an Geld, Waren und Kompetenzen in das Heimatdorf kann den temporären Verlust der Arbeitskraft in der subsistenzbasierten Landwirtschaft meist nicht aufwiegen. Migrationspraktiken daher primär als Ausdruck von und Anpassungsstrategie an existentielle Krisen zu verorten, muss daher hinterfragt werden. Was aber sind die zentralen Beweggründe der jungen Generation, ihr Glück für einige Zeit in den Städten zu suchen? Ausgehend von einer multilokalen empirischen Forschung und mehreren Aufenthalten in Nord- und Südghana zwischen 2007 und 2016 möchte ich diese Frage am Beispiel junger männlicher Wanderarbeiter der Ethnie der Frafra im Folgenden diskutieren. Dabei werde ich den Blick weg von Krisen als vorstrukturierende Betrachtungslinse lenken, und vielmehr individuelle und soziale Motive der jungen Menschen selbst erörtern und kontextualisieren.
Sports in Africa. Past and Present. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2020
Entering a career’s “after life” is a challenging turning point in the lives of many professional... more Entering a career’s “after life” is a challenging turning point in the lives of many professional athletes. In general, lack of alternative occupational opportunities, financial difficulties and a declining social status have been identified as crucial and (often interconnected) obstacles for their post-career trajectories. While migrant athletes form a notably vulnerable group, this counts in particular for athletes from the so-called global South who have embarked on professional careers in Europe. So far, however, existing studies on the phenomenon have focused on experiences of athletes from the global North, leaving others, e.g. African athletes out of the picture.
Taking former West African footballers in Northern Europe as a case study, this paper focusses on the reasons for and experiences of occupational challenges that migrating players from the global South face after their careers conclude. It particularly highlights the impact of low salaries, the subordinate role of education, and the problem of limited job opportunities outside football. While pointing to specific precarious challenges for this group of migrants, the paper also aims to expand knowledge about the phenomenon of transnational football migration from the global South beyond the time of pre- and actual careers. It is based on multi-sited ethnographic research and 20 interviews with West African footballers who played in Northern Europe between the mid-1990s and 2016.
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 2020
While studies on transnational African football migration have increasingly attracted scholarly a... more While studies on transnational African football migration have increasingly attracted scholarly attention, little is known about the continent’s regional particularities. However, in contrast to the massive influx of footballers from West and North Africa, squads of European professional clubs seldom include players from East Africa. Yet, the concentration on West Africa in academic studies runs the risk of overgeneralizing certain practices on the African continent and, hence, of reproducing Africa’s standing as the homogeneous peripheral other. By analyzing the various historical, structural, and socio-cultural reasons for the general absence of migrant footballers from East Africa, we aim at contributing to a more nuanced picture of African football migration and further discuss the ambivalent consequences of players’ spatial immobility for East Africa’s football development.
European Journal for Sport and Society, 2020
For many young people from the Global South football labour migration to Europe fuels hopes of so... more For many young people from the Global South football labour migration to Europe fuels hopes of social mobility. However, the long-term value of an international career is uncertain. Despite the success of a few migrant role models, professional careers in Europe often go along with a number of social and economic challenges for migrants that hinder sufficient preparations for post-career life courses. In this article, we focus on retiring male West African footballers in Scandinavia and their challenges to transform accumulated physical capital into other forms of social, economic and cultural capital, such as financial resources, social relations, educational assets, language skills and rights in form of long-term residence permits or citizenship in Europe. By foregrounding the temporal and spatial dimensions of the accumulation and transformation of capital, we depict the relational character of its various forms (social, cultural and economic capital) and their changing value in the different localities of players’ origins and destinations and at different points in time. Hereby, we show how processes of capital transformation are ambivalent experiences which, nevertheless, point to problematic structures in the global football business that disadvantage migrant players and their attempts to reproduce social mobility after career ending.
UCL Medical Anthropology Blog. Available at: https://medanthucl.com/2020/05/07/a- lesson-in-composure-learning-from-migrants-in-times-of-covid-19/, 2020
Sport in Society, 2020
Taking inspiration from anthropology and migration studies our study on transnational athletes’ c... more Taking inspiration from anthropology and migration studies our study on transnational athletes’ career trajectories adds to a growing body of psychological works on cultural transitions in sports-related migration. It is based on multi-sited fieldwork in sending and receiving contexts including semi-structured interviews with 20 current and former male footballers of West African origin who have moved to Scandinavian clubs. Having met various and particular challenges abroad, these athletes have continuously engaged in border-crossing practices to negotiate and overcome these. Their ongoing transcultural activities open a discussion whether transnational athletes’ experiences over their careers can be best conceptualized as acculturation and cultural adaptation processes. Doing so, we further discuss the consequences of an analytical distinction between a ‘home culture’ and a ‘new culture’ as suggested by the cultural transition model.
Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, 2019
After more than a decade of emphasizing African children’s and youth’s agencies, possibilities an... more After more than a decade of emphasizing African children’s and youth’s agencies, possibilities and creativities in more or less challenging social, political and economic environments (see Bordonaro & Carvalho, 2010; Christiansen, Utas, & Vigh, 2006; Honwana & de Boeck, 2005; Martin, Ungruhe, & Häberlein, 2016; Spittler & Bourdillon, 2012), other recent studies increasingly highlight the young people’s powerlessness, bleak presents and uncertain futures. Doing so, the image of an enduring social, political and economic exclusion is manifested in popular conceptualizations of “being stuck” (Sommers, 2012), “persistent marginalization” (Resnick & Thurlow, 2015) and probably most prominently in Alcinda Honwana’s (2012) conceptualization of “waithood” (see Dhillon & Yousef, 2009), all implicitly acknowledging the more than twenty year old observation of Africa’s “lost generation” (Cruise O’Brien, 1996). Seemingly affected by deficiencies of various kinds and hence often forced into all sorts of problematic or dangerous engagements in order to – socially or literally – survive, today’s young generation in African settings is widely portrayed to live lives “out of place” (see Invernizzi, Liebel, Milne, & Budde, 2017) and outside social norms. It is this shift back to conceptualizations of children and youth as social problem that this special dossier aims to scrutinize and to challenge.
Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, 2019
As a response to widespread conceptualizations of street childhood in the global South as a state... more As a response to widespread conceptualizations of street childhood in the global South as a state of misery and marginalization, recent studies tend to portray street children as social agents. However, many refer to “tactical” or “thin” agency in order to point out the limited scope of those young people’s practices. Yet, the problem of acknowledging a lower degree of agency is that it separates children and youth living in environments “outside the norm” from those who stay with their parents and attend school. This constellation is particularly inadequate in the realm of street childhood in the global South, as it constructs fixed entities of different life worlds that are indeed fluid since street children frequently move between the various domains of socialization. I propose that the social, spatial and temporal mobilities of street children can best be explored through children’s biographical life stories, focusing here on street children in southern Ghana.
Berliner Blätter - ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, 2018
Dieser Artikel ist ein Beitrag, die vielfältigen Formen, Erfahrungen und
Dimensionen von Prekari... more Dieser Artikel ist ein Beitrag, die vielfältigen Formen, Erfahrungen und
Dimensionen von Prekarität unter afrikanischen Fußballmigranten im
deutschen (und teilweise europäischen) Profifußball aufzuzeigen. Der Fokus
liegt dabei auf den Erzählungen und Auseinandersetzungen der Spieler selbst.
So möchte ich ein akteurszentriertes Bild zeichnen, das sowohl die
Herausforderungen und Problematiken im professionellen Fußball für die
spezifische Gruppe afrikanischer Spieler als auch mögliche Ambivalenzen
innerhalb der prekären Erfahrungen aufzeigt. Auf diese Weise möchte ich auch
die Frage klären, inwieweit das Theorem der Prekarität die vielschichtigen
nachteiligen Bedingungen und Erlebnisse abbilden und so zur allgemeinen
Debatte um Prekarität unter Hochqualifizierten und in begehrten Berufen
beitragen kann. Grundlage dieser Studie sind 20 biographische und
themenzentrierte Interviews, die ich mit aktiven und ehemaligen afrikanischen
Profifußballern zwischen 2010 und 2016 in Deutschland und Ghana geführt
habe.
Klocke-Daffa (ed.): Angewandte Ethnologie. Springer, 2019
In den vergangenen Jahren rückte Sport in Deutschland und anderen europäischen Ländern als Mittel... more In den vergangenen Jahren rückte Sport in Deutschland und anderen europäischen Ländern als Mittel zur Förderung von Integration zunehmend in den Mittelpunkt der Maßnahmen von Politik und Praxis. Vor diesem Hintergrund dekonstruiere ich die verbreitete Annahme, dass Sport (angenommene) kulturelle und ethnische Differenzen überwinden und somit soziale Teil-habe befördern kann. Vielmehr stelle ich anhand von Fallstudien dar, dass Sport zunächst eher ein Feld der Austragung möglicher Konflikte ist als eines, das integrativ wirkt. Die Ethnologie kann jedoch produktiv eingesetzt werden, das durchaus vorhandene integrative Potential des Sports zu identifizieren und für die Praxis nutzbar zu machen. Wenn Integration als Wissenskommunikation und prozessuale Dynamik verstanden wird, ergibt sich ein Perspektivenwechsel, der erst die wertneutrale und-in einem zweiten Schritt-produktive Frage nach der Förderung sozialer Teilhabe durch Sport ermöglicht. Hieran zeige ich auf, wie sich Ethnolog * innen gewinnbringend in die sportliche Integrationsarbeit einbringen können. Zentral ist dabei eine Öffnung der Ethnologie als universitäre Disziplin nicht nur in Richtung Praxis, sondern auch in Richtung einer stärkeren Auseinandersetzung mit Sport.
Boyhood Studies, 2017
This paper examines the present-day perception among boys and young men in West Africa that migra... more This paper examines the present-day perception among boys and young men in West Africa that migration through football offers a way to achieve social standing and improve one’s life chances. More specifically, we use the case of aspirant young Ghanaian footballers as a lens to qualify recent conceptualizations of African youth, such as ‘waithood’, which have a tendency to overlook the multifarious attempts and visions of young people on the continent to overcome social immobility. Drawing on various and long-term ethnographic fieldwork among footballers in urban southern Ghana between 2010 and 2016, we argue that young people’s efforts to make it abroad and ‘become a somebody’ through football is not merely an individual fantasy; it is rather a social negotiation of hope. It is this collective practice among a large cohort of young males – realistic or not – which qualifies conceptualizations of youth transitions such as ‘waithood’. By this, we highlight how examining the contemporary fusion of sport with a desire to migrate furthers our understandings of social mobility for West African youth, and extends literature on the strategies used by young people in the region as they try to bypass the structural barriers blocking their path to ‘becoming a somebody’.
International Journal of the History of Sport, 2016
So far, academic contributions have widely framed football in Africa as a means for migration fro... more So far, academic contributions have widely framed football in Africa as a means for migration from a western point of view. At a time, they presented particular and one-dimensional understandings of transnational links in the realm of football migration between Africa and Europe. Macro-level perspectives which mostly focus on African exploitation and dependency and more recently those that take the players’ agency into account reproduce a Eurocentric view of the phenomenon, while disregarding its local perceptions in African settings. Thus, despite the recent shift from a macro- to a micro-level perspective there is still an analytical gap between the ambitions and experiences of migrating players and economic power relations at play on the one hand and the socio-cultural embedding of the transnational connections in football migration on the other. In order to understand why and how football mobilities are indeed linked to ‘the transnational’ in migration there is a need to localize the phenomenon and investigate how local understandings of migration and mobility are lived and expressed in a transnational sport like football. By taking data from fieldwork among West African football migrants, the paper thus shows the local embedding of transnational football migration practices in the West African context.
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2016
Wenige Phänomene, so scheint es, blieben für hiesige Ethnolog*innen über lange Zeit so exotisch u... more Wenige Phänomene, so scheint es, blieben für hiesige Ethnolog*innen über lange Zeit so exotisch und kulturell fremd wie der Sport. Von den Arbeiten Einzelner abgesehen, fristete die ethnologische Auseinandersetzung mit Sport daher ein Schattendasein. Andere Sozialwissenschaften haben sich dem Thema seit längerem angenommen. In Zeiten einer annähernd globalen Perzeption von Sport werden in Disziplinen wie der Soziologie oder der Politikwissenschaft insbesondere auch soziale Transformationen durch Sport sowie moderne Phänomene wie Spielertransfers oder Großereignisse untersucht – trotz eines Plädoyers des Sportwissenschaftlers Jörg Thiele (2005) in der Regel aber ohne einen ethnographischen Fokus, der sowohl die Akteurs- als auch die strukturelle Ebene beleuchtet. Was kann also Aufgabe und Mehrwert einer Ethnologie des Sports sein? Hat sie einen genuinen Beitrag zu leisten zur Sportforschung anderer Disziplinen? Sollte die Betrachtung des Sports gar ins Zentrum der Ethnologie selbst vorrücken und konzeptionelle und inhaltliche Impulse liefern, wie es Niko Besnier und Susan Brownell (2012) fordern?
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2016
African migration to Europe features various practices and pathways. In recent years, football ha... more African migration to Europe features various practices and pathways. In recent years, football has become one of them, particularly among young men. So far, academic studies have predominantly focused on structural dynamics and have widely portrayed parts of this phenomenon as a dubious business that contributes to the exploitation of thousands of young migrating players. However, since anthropological research in this context is limited, rather little is known about the players’ actual experiences in this process. Hence, we aim at shifting the perspective and showing a nuanced picture of this phenomenon. By referring to migration biographies of two ambitious (yet rather less successful) African players we investigate both how football migration relates to other forms of South-North migration and in what way it is a sport-specific practice. Given that African football migrants often experience precarious conditions during their journeys yet hold on to the hope to make it as a professional player in Europe, we further look at how the concept of “judicious opportunism” contributes to an understanding of their migration projects.
Anthropology of Work Review, 2016
Transnational migrants are often considered to be the core of the new global precariat. On the on... more Transnational migrants are often considered to be the core of the new global precariat. On the one hand, migrants are particularly likely to become precariats, due to the outsourcing of precarious work to migrant workers and the attribution of precarious citizenship status to migrants. On the other hand, labor migrants’ accounts show that this precarity is not exclusively based on oppression, misery, and exploitation, but that labor migration is also driven by hope and the imagination of a better future; hardships may even open up new opportunities. This article aims to scrutinize the ambivalence of precarity and the ways in which precarization processes also appear in highly skilled labor migration (in this case sought-after jobs as transnational athletes). The article draws on material from multisited field studies among aspiring and current soccer migrants. The experiences and conditions are described for female and male soccer players who originate from various West African settings and move to Northern European locations. The analysis finds ambivalent precarization processes at various points of the career. The temporality of precarization processes becomes apparent when comparing the large number of young men and women who strive to migrate to the few individuals who become professional players abroad but often struggle with occupational challenges after their careers. The article ends by suggesting an engagement with the ambivalences of precarious work in future studies, both in sport and other vocational sectors.
Spaces in movement. New perspectives on migration in African settings, 2014
Female labor migrants in West Africa have been widely perceived as followers of men and research ... more Female labor migrants in West Africa have been widely perceived as followers of men and research on female migration in this region has long been neglected. However, during the past decades, an increasing movement of girls and young women to cities in the region has drawn attention to the phenomenon and anthropological studies have begun to discover females as actors in the migration process. In the rural societies of the Sahel, many girls and young women nowadays migrate in order to avoid social and economical marginalization and to achieve greater personal and financial autonomy.
According to various studies, this practice evokes fears amongst elders and is often seen as challenging gender relations and hence as violating social structures. However, whether the portrayal of female migrants as rebels reflects the actual impacts of their movements remains to be analyzed.
By referring to various studies on women’s spatial mobility in the West African context and observations during my fieldwork in southern and northern Ghana, I want to analyze motives, impacts and perceptions of young females’ independent travels to urban centers in West Africa and to contribute to current debates on female migration in the region and beyond. My aim is to point out that girls’ and young women’s labor migrations do not challenge rural social structures but rather contribute to affording women and girls greater economic and social autonomy as well as retaining fruitful intergenerational relations and social structures.
Uploads
Papers by Christian Ungruhe
In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly identified topics and facets of sport as important fields of inquiry for their discipline. Following a discussion of the rather sporadic and cursory engagement with sport in social anthropology in the German, French, British and American tradition, we discuss the changing role of an anthropology of sport by analyzing its methodological and analytical value for the study of contemporary social, cultural, economic and political phenomena. Given the ongoing processes of sports’ globalization and commercialization such phenomena are increasingly visible in and through games, events and changing local body cultures. In order to utilize sports’ increasing potential for central debates in anthropology we argue for a further consolidation and institutionalization of sport in the discipline.
Taking former West African footballers in Northern Europe as a case study, this paper focusses on the reasons for and experiences of occupational challenges that migrating players from the global South face after their careers conclude. It particularly highlights the impact of low salaries, the subordinate role of education, and the problem of limited job opportunities outside football. While pointing to specific precarious challenges for this group of migrants, the paper also aims to expand knowledge about the phenomenon of transnational football migration from the global South beyond the time of pre- and actual careers. It is based on multi-sited ethnographic research and 20 interviews with West African footballers who played in Northern Europe between the mid-1990s and 2016.
UCL Medical Anthropology Blog. Available at: https://medanthucl.com/2020/05/07/a-lesson-in-composure-learning-from-migrants-in-times-of-covid-19/
Dimensionen von Prekarität unter afrikanischen Fußballmigranten im
deutschen (und teilweise europäischen) Profifußball aufzuzeigen. Der Fokus
liegt dabei auf den Erzählungen und Auseinandersetzungen der Spieler selbst.
So möchte ich ein akteurszentriertes Bild zeichnen, das sowohl die
Herausforderungen und Problematiken im professionellen Fußball für die
spezifische Gruppe afrikanischer Spieler als auch mögliche Ambivalenzen
innerhalb der prekären Erfahrungen aufzeigt. Auf diese Weise möchte ich auch
die Frage klären, inwieweit das Theorem der Prekarität die vielschichtigen
nachteiligen Bedingungen und Erlebnisse abbilden und so zur allgemeinen
Debatte um Prekarität unter Hochqualifizierten und in begehrten Berufen
beitragen kann. Grundlage dieser Studie sind 20 biographische und
themenzentrierte Interviews, die ich mit aktiven und ehemaligen afrikanischen
Profifußballern zwischen 2010 und 2016 in Deutschland und Ghana geführt
habe.
According to various studies, this practice evokes fears amongst elders and is often seen as challenging gender relations and hence as violating social structures. However, whether the portrayal of female migrants as rebels reflects the actual impacts of their movements remains to be analyzed.
By referring to various studies on women’s spatial mobility in the West African context and observations during my fieldwork in southern and northern Ghana, I want to analyze motives, impacts and perceptions of young females’ independent travels to urban centers in West Africa and to contribute to current debates on female migration in the region and beyond. My aim is to point out that girls’ and young women’s labor migrations do not challenge rural social structures but rather contribute to affording women and girls greater economic and social autonomy as well as retaining fruitful intergenerational relations and social structures.
In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly identified topics and facets of sport as important fields of inquiry for their discipline. Following a discussion of the rather sporadic and cursory engagement with sport in social anthropology in the German, French, British and American tradition, we discuss the changing role of an anthropology of sport by analyzing its methodological and analytical value for the study of contemporary social, cultural, economic and political phenomena. Given the ongoing processes of sports’ globalization and commercialization such phenomena are increasingly visible in and through games, events and changing local body cultures. In order to utilize sports’ increasing potential for central debates in anthropology we argue for a further consolidation and institutionalization of sport in the discipline.
Taking former West African footballers in Northern Europe as a case study, this paper focusses on the reasons for and experiences of occupational challenges that migrating players from the global South face after their careers conclude. It particularly highlights the impact of low salaries, the subordinate role of education, and the problem of limited job opportunities outside football. While pointing to specific precarious challenges for this group of migrants, the paper also aims to expand knowledge about the phenomenon of transnational football migration from the global South beyond the time of pre- and actual careers. It is based on multi-sited ethnographic research and 20 interviews with West African footballers who played in Northern Europe between the mid-1990s and 2016.
UCL Medical Anthropology Blog. Available at: https://medanthucl.com/2020/05/07/a-lesson-in-composure-learning-from-migrants-in-times-of-covid-19/
Dimensionen von Prekarität unter afrikanischen Fußballmigranten im
deutschen (und teilweise europäischen) Profifußball aufzuzeigen. Der Fokus
liegt dabei auf den Erzählungen und Auseinandersetzungen der Spieler selbst.
So möchte ich ein akteurszentriertes Bild zeichnen, das sowohl die
Herausforderungen und Problematiken im professionellen Fußball für die
spezifische Gruppe afrikanischer Spieler als auch mögliche Ambivalenzen
innerhalb der prekären Erfahrungen aufzeigt. Auf diese Weise möchte ich auch
die Frage klären, inwieweit das Theorem der Prekarität die vielschichtigen
nachteiligen Bedingungen und Erlebnisse abbilden und so zur allgemeinen
Debatte um Prekarität unter Hochqualifizierten und in begehrten Berufen
beitragen kann. Grundlage dieser Studie sind 20 biographische und
themenzentrierte Interviews, die ich mit aktiven und ehemaligen afrikanischen
Profifußballern zwischen 2010 und 2016 in Deutschland und Ghana geführt
habe.
According to various studies, this practice evokes fears amongst elders and is often seen as challenging gender relations and hence as violating social structures. However, whether the portrayal of female migrants as rebels reflects the actual impacts of their movements remains to be analyzed.
By referring to various studies on women’s spatial mobility in the West African context and observations during my fieldwork in southern and northern Ghana, I want to analyze motives, impacts and perceptions of young females’ independent travels to urban centers in West Africa and to contribute to current debates on female migration in the region and beyond. My aim is to point out that girls’ and young women’s labor migrations do not challenge rural social structures but rather contribute to affording women and girls greater economic and social autonomy as well as retaining fruitful intergenerational relations and social structures.