Abstract

This study investigates the building culture of migrant fishermen of the Ijo ethnic origin in Nigeria, who undertake prolonged sojourns in other communities as part of their livelihood. The study focuses on migrant fishermen and their socio-economic role as migrant workers. The aim of this study is to investigate if Ijo migrant fishermen operate a similar migrant labour ideology based on remittance theories as other migrant workers who invest in building houses back in their sending communities. This study adopts a mixed methods approach of quantitative and qualitative techniques in data analysis. It uses bivariate analysis method via statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) to examine the relationships between variables such as length of stay in Diaspora, income, size of family, age and frequency of visit back home, on the building-back-home culture of these fishermen. In addition, content analysis was used to examine interview narratives to reveal other possible factors affecting their building-back-home culture. Results show that some relationships exists between two of the variables and the need to build back home. In addition, other socio-economic variables such as family demands, traditional credit systems and policy and tax issues that could affect the building-back-home culture of these fishermen were also observed.

Key words: Migrant labour, home, migrant fishermen, building culture, houses.