My parents migrated to the United Kingdom to attend college in the 1980s. Due to this migration, my sisters and I were born in the UK but have lived in Ghana most of our whole lives. The 1980s in Ghana was a decade with a spur events and social developments. There were two coups; one successful and one attempted in that decade alone. More than one million Ghanaians returned to Ghana after being expelled from Nigeria. There were also a lot of widespread bushfires that badly effected crop production. Ghana was in its Third Republic led by a military coup leader who was infamous for eliminating opposition. That environment was rendered unsafe, however my parents also used it as an opportunity to achieve higher education abroad.
Linking their story to this week’s lectures, my parents migration story can be referred to the reversal migration due to the fact that they immigrated to Europe from Ghana, an ex British colony. Ghana was still largely used as an economic system in the 1980s due to the successful harvests of the fruit cocoa and other spices. Cocoa prices on the world market were not high at the time and therefore did not favour Ghanaian farmers. At that time also, there were a lot of semi-skilled workers in Ghana who wanted to expand their work skills and they . knew that could be done abroad. This was the case of my parents who were not married at the time. My father was the first to migrate in 1982 and then my mother followed in 1984. Research shows that males were likely to migrate more than females due to their educational level being higher than women so this could explain why my father went first.