‘We are citizens too’: the politics of citizenship in independent Ghana

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines Ghana's struggle to create a pluralistic nationality that guarantees universal rights to all citizens, including people of foreign origin. A major recipient of colonial labour migrants who considered themselves citizens of Ghana at the time of independence, Ghana provides an excellent case study for exploring the ambiguities and malleability of post-colonial citizenship. Analysing the various ways in which Ghanaian politicians have struggled to redefine the nationality status of descendants of migrants from other parts of West Africa since independence, I argue that the politicisation of Ghana's post-colonial citizenship stems not only from the country's colonial legacy, but also from struggles over diminishing economic resources between the late 1960s and early 1980s that led some indigenous Ghanaians to declare the non-autochthonous population as ‘aliens’ who should be excluded from the benefits of citizenship. Constitutional provisions that recognised citizenship by birth were contested by popular perceptions that only the autochthonous are ‘true’ citizens and are thus the only legitimate beneficiaries of political and economic rights.