Homelessness and mental health in Ghana: everyday experiences of Accra’s migrant squatters

This article discusses everyday experiences of transient homelessness in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Episodic interviews with individuals living in squatter settlements in the wealthy East Legon suburb explored: (1) roots of homelessness; (2) everyday experiences and coping strategies; (3) relationship between experiences and (mental) health; (4) needs and interventions. Three intersecting forms of insecurity framed participants’ everyday experience: financial, legal and psychosocial. Physical and psychological stresses were common; physical illnesses rare. Coping strategies facilitated adaptation but not transformation of everyday circumstances. We explore possibilities for intervention and discuss relevance of this study to the health psychology and African literatures on homelessness

Return migration and entrepreneurship in Ghana and Cote d'lvoire: the role of capital transfers

This paper explores the relationship between international migration and entrepreneurship, drawing on data on around 300 return migrants to two West African states, Ghana and Côte d¿Ivoire. The paper reviews existing evidence on the role of entrepreneurship and small firm formation in promoting development in Sub-Saharan Africa, before setting out a model of factors that influence whether migrants contribute to entrepreneurial activity by registering a business after their return. Factors tested for their association with entrepreneurship include a range of individual characteristics, duration of stay and reasons for return, and the acquisition of financial, human and social capital while abroad. The analysis suggests that work experience abroad is the most significant predictor of entrepreneurial activity among the return migrants interviewed, although savings accumulated while abroad, reasons for return and the frequency of visits home while abroad are also significant factors

Agency and Advocacy: Disabled students in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania

Between 10% and 15% of the world's population are thought to be disabled. The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an example of emerging global policy architecture for human rights for disabled people. Article 24 states that disabled people should receive the support required to facilitate their effective education. In research, links between higher education access, equalities and disability are being explored by scholars of the sociology of higher education. However, with the exception of some small-scale studies from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda, Namibia, Uganda and Pakistan, literature tends to come from the global North. Yet there is a toxic correlation between disability and poverty - especially in the global South. This article is based on a review of the global literature on disability in higher education and interview findings from the project 'Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: developing an Equity Scorecard', funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development. A central finding was that while disability was associated with constraints, misrecognition, frustration, exclusion and even danger, students' agency, advocacy and achievement in higher education offered opportunities for transforming spoiled identities