‘Prohibited Migrants’: Nigerian Labour Diasporas in Liberia in the 1930s

Abstract

This article interrogates the conditions of Nigerian labour diasporas and intending migrants to Liberia in the inter-war years in the light of the global economic crunch of the late 1920s and early 1930s. While highlighting the necessity of an intra-West African labour highway during the period, the article assesses the conditions which Nigerian labour diasporas and intending migrants found themselves in, the responses of the Nigerian authorities to the pressure from the Liberian government, and the impact of those responses on the migrants.