When Emigration Becomes a Social Movement

By Theresa U Michael

Once upon a time, there were family dinners, Sunday luncheons, and birthday feasts at which they were all present, exchanging loving banters as meals were shared and important family meetings followed when necessary to address pressing issues. All that seems so long ago before the phenomenon of ‘Japa’. For a widow like Mabel Bili, the change has been quite remarkable as all her children left home for foreign lands. Now, she lives alone in a large family home, built with many members in mind but now occupied solely by herself. Her relationship with her children? They are still loving albeit moderated by distance, time zones, phone calls, video calls, economic support, and brief hurried holidays intermittently spaced once in three, seven, ten or even twenty years. It is the reality of Japa-affected families in Nigeria.

The colloquial word ‘Japa’ originally derived from Yoruba language has since been added to Oxford English Dictionary in which the word means “to escape”, “to run away” or leave a situation. It has become a global short form for mass migration, a social movement of sorts undertaken to escape hardship and relocate to other lands intercontinentally or Internationally; but most often to countries of Europe and North America as the case may be. Japa thus connotes mass search of a people for greener pastures, economic wellbeing, social stability, and political peace. In Nigeria and many nations of Africa, Japa became a social movement prosecuted majorly by educated, brilliant and skilled young people in search of better amenities, peace, employment prospects, educational advancement, and security.

Snowballing the ‘Run” Command

While Japa as a word originated from Nigeria, the massive migration it infers is not unique to Nigeria. According to IOM Global Overview of Migration Routes Report (2025), “Western African Atlantic Route includes movements departing from the West African and North African coasts, arriving in the Canary Islands via the Atlantic Ocean.” It went on to state that Mauritania, Senegal, Morocco, and Guinea are the main countries of embarkation for the sea crossing. In recent years, this route has seen record-breaking numbers of arrivals to Europe, with the highest increase of arrivals from 2022 to 2023 (155%, from 16,000 to 40,000)”. It is significant that African countries including South Africa, Gambia, etc., have their youth emigrating in droves, thus showing a social movement signaling loss of hope, a survival cry to ride the tide to safety, running as it were from the very systems that ought to protect and empower them; systems ridden with economic oppression, lawlessness, and failed social services.

Japa signifies disinterest in patriotism in the face of unpatriotic leadership, sit-tight rein and reign of the ‘winner takes it all” democracy, and insensitive, unresponsive chaotic governance. Given the prevalence of insurgencies, banditry, religious conflicts, kidnappings, killings, displacements, and farmers and herdsmen eco-violence especially across West Africa and the Sahel, the formula meant real threats to life and property that could not be ignored. The aftermath of the “run” command of Japa has since seen many vibrant young people and families sell off all they have to leave the shores of Africa either temporarily or permanently for settlement in foreign lands in favor of personal and professional progress.

Reflection

As a journalist and editor on peace, education and migration beats, I’ve seen both sides of Japa phenomenon, vis a vis the joy of reunited families at International Airports on one hand, and the pain of people left behind on the other, especially the oldest of the old left alone to fend for themselves. The truth is that Africa had always depended on intergenerational care giving from younger members to the elderly such as aging parents, grandparents and great grandparents. That support system is fast eroding without new structural and infrastructural alternate systems to replace them in the face of Japa wave.

As such, while Japa often signifies renewed hope for economic and social resilience, it equally portends social isolation and helplessness of aging parents and older adults left behind. It stands as a barrier to family coalition, cultural cohesion, and physical connection that indigenously held African family members together intergenerationally, thereby hollowing out the strength of belongingness and interconnectedness. A remarkable side effect is that the offspring thus raised on different foreign soils across the world may grow with hybrid identities, distorted orientation of filial roots, and sometimes inadvertent loss of kinship, which could have been keen and well woven in the location of origin.

News coverage seldom explores these social, cultural and emotional nuances occasioned by emigration but emphasizes the economic benefits and social advantages in the main. Journalism must broaden its lens to examine emigration as not just an economic return on investment, but also as an emotional drain, filial fragmentation and cultural re-reset that affect many more than the emigrating person or persons.

The Japa movement is redefining African family relations. A single family can be spread across the world, relate by phone and video calls without physical contact for years. While some families make effort to bridge the gap, keep tab and keep in touch, others stay away for years without adequate arrangements for aging parents and oldest members left behind. That is where state action on age-responsive social policy frameworks and infrastructural upgrade of the care economy are required to address the surge in emigration. Such actions must be attended by protective machineries that are community-driven in structure and praxis to yield designed results. As it stands today, caregiving in Africa is mainly in silos, essentially devoid of systemic oversight function by the state.

Emigration as it were may be a social necessity, often a remedy to threats, perceived threats, disenchantments, deprivations or outright displacements, but unbridled, it has the potential to drain a society, jeopardize the elderly, and erase identities. Journalists must resist framing emigration solely as opportunity. It is equally a story of sacrifice, self-discovery, identity and fragility. All said and done, Japa has made African families more global today than ever before.