Search for other papers by Gabriel O. Apata in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
The United States boasts the largest Nigerian diaspora, a group reputed to be among the most educated and highest achieving diasporans in that country. In explaining the Nigerian successes in the US, this article identifies Nigerian exceptionalism as a key factor, here framed around the concept of national narcissistic grandiosity. Although Nigeria is not a nation-state but a state of many nations, Nigerians in the US are constructing the nearest thing to an ideational national identity outside Nigeria. This identity formation is based on the idea that diaspora, which means dispersing or scattering, often undergoes a three-way evolutionary process of shedding, retaining and acquiring identity, which creates interstitial spaces for the emergence of new identities. The discussion draws mainly on secondary literature to support the thesis and the arguments presented.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Achiume, T. 2019. ‘Migration as decolonization’, Stanford Law Review, 71 (6).
-
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
-
Appadurai, A. 1993. ‘Patriotism and its futures’, Public Culture, 5 (3): 411–429. DOI:10.1215/08992363-5-3-411
-
Appadurai, A. 2004. ‘The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition’, in Rao, V. and Walton, M. eds. Culture and Public Action. Washington DC: The World Bank.
-
Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press
-
Arthur, J., J. Takougang and T. Owusu, eds. 2012. Africans in Global Migration: Searching for Promised Lands. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
-
Balibar, E. and I. Wallerstein. 1991. ‘Is there a Neo-Racism?’, in Balibar, E. and Wallerstein, I. eds. Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities, London: Verso, pp. 17–28.
-
Bartram, D., M. Poros and P. Monforte. 2014. Key Concepts in Migration. London: Sage.
-
Bell, R. 2021. ‘Nigeria: The country that loves to overachieve’. BBC, 25 January. https://www.bbc.com>travel>article>20210124
-
Benedict, R. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
-
Bhabha, H. 1990. ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins’, in Bhabha, H. ed. Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, pp. 292–321.
-
Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
-
Bhabha, H. and K. Stierstoffer. 2017. ‘Diaspora and Home. An Interview with Homi Bhabha’. DeGruyter Conversations, 7 December. https://blog.degruyter.com>diaspora-amd-home-inter …
-
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. London and New York: Routledge.
-
Brettell, C. and J. Holifield. 2023. Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines. Oxford: Routledge.
-
Cai, H. and P.H. Gries. 2013. ‘National narcissism: Internal dimensions and international correlates’, Psychology Journal, 2 (2): 122–132. https://doi.org/10.1002/pschj.26
-
Clifford, C. 1994. ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology, 9 (3): 302–338.
-
Deane, S. 1999. ‘National character and the character of nations’, in Deane, S. Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Oxford: Oxford Academic, pp. 49–99.
-
De Hass, H. 2021. ‘A theory of migration: Aspirations-capabilities framework’, Comparative Migration Studies, 9 (1): 8. DOI:10.1186/s40878-020-00210-4
-
De Landa, M. 2016. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
-
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
-
Desai, K. 1986. The Inheritance of Loss. London: Hamish Hamilton.
-
Durkheim, E. 2001. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Carol Cosman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Echeverria-Estrada, C. and J. Batalova. 2019. ‘Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the United States’. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/sub-saharan-african-immigrants-united-states
-
Fanon, F. 1961. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press.
-
Gehlen, A. 1988. Man: His Nature and Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
-
Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
-
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.
-
Gramlich, J. 2020. ‘Fast facts about Nigeria and its immigrants as US travel ban expands’. Pew Research Center, 3 February. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/02/03/fast-facts-about-nigeria-and-its-immigrants-as-u-s-travel-ban-expands/
-
Hall, S. 1992. ‘“The West and the Rest”: Discourse on Power’, in Gieben, B. ed. Formations of Modernity, Oxford: Polity, pp. 276–314 and 325–329.
-
Harrison, L. and P. Huntington. 2000. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York: Basic Books.
-
Henderson, J. 1988. ‘The cultural unconscious’, Quadrant: Journal of the CG Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, 21 (2): 7–16.
-
Hume, D. 1994. Political Essays. Edited by Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Kedourie, E. 1966. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson.
-
Knowles, R., S. McCarthy-Jones and G. Rowse. 2011. ‘Grandiose delusions: A review and theoretical integration of cognitive and affective perspectives’, Clinical Psychology Review, 32 (4): 684–696. DOI:10.1016/j.cpr.2011.02.009
-
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Livesey, T. 2016. ‘Imagining an imperial modernity: Universities and the West African roots of colonial development’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 44 (6): 952–975. DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2016.1210305
-
McCrae, R. and A. Terraccioano. 2006. ‘National character and personality’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15 (4).
-
Mennell, S. 2008. ‘History, national character and American civilization’, Sociologie, jaarang, 4 (2–3): 285–303.
-
Migration Policy Institute (MPI). 2015. ‘RAD Profile: The Nigerian diaspora in the United States’. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, Rockefeller Foundation-Aspen Institute Diaspora Program (RAD). https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/RAD-Nigeria.pdf
-
Muehlenbeck, P. 2014. Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Leaders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
NADECO. 2023. ‘Why should we care about Nigeria?’ NADECO Press conference. YouTube, 8 March. www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DqlIS4RhsNIg
-
Nelson, C. 2003. ‘Carriers of globalization: Loss of home and self within the African diaspora’, Florida Law Review, 55 (1). https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vo55/iss1/23
-
Nwauwa, A. 1997. Imperialism, Academe and Nationalism. Britain and the University Education for Africans 1860–1960. London: Frank Cass.
-
Obadare, E. and R. Patel. 2023. ‘The Nigerian conundrum’. Council on Foreign Relations, blog post, 14 June. https//www.cfr.org>blog>nigerin-conundrum
-
Ogbaa, K. 2003. The Nigerian Americans. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press.
-
Olsen-Medina, K. and J. Batalova, 2020. ‘College-educated immigrants in the United States’. Migration Policy Institute, 16 September. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/college-educated-immigrants-united-states
-
O’Reilly, C. and N. Hall. 2021. ‘Grandiose narcissist and decision–making: Impulsive, overconfident and skeptical of experts—but seldom in doubt’, Personality and Individual Differences, 168: 110280. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110280.
-
Oyebamiji, S and A. Adekoye. 2019. ‘Nigeria’s migration to the United States of America: A contemporary perspective’, International Relations, 6 (1): 165–180. DOI:10.31920/2056–5658/2019/V6n1a9
-
Pincus, A. and M. Lukowitsky. 2009. ‘Pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder’, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6 (1): 421–446. DOI:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.121208.131215
-
Ploner, J. and C. Nada 2020. ‘International student migration and the postcolonial heritage of European higher education: Perspectives from Portugal and the UK’. Higher Education, 80: 373–389. DOI:10.1007/s10734-01900485-2
-
Pressley, J. 2022. ‘Nigerian immigration to the United States. A Historical Analysis of postcolonial Nigeria’, Mundi, 2 (1): 86–99.
-
Realo, A. and J. Allik, J. 2020. ‘National character’, Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Cham: SpringerLink, pp. 3099–3100.
-
Renan, E. [1882] 1990. ‘What is a nation?’ Translated by Martin Thom, in Bhabha, H. ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, pp. 8–22.
-
Restad, H. 2015. American Exceptionalism. An Idea that Made a Nation and Remade the World. Oxford: Routledge.
-
Rosenthal, S.A., J.M. Hooley, R.M. Montoya, S.L. Van der Linden and Y. Steshenko. 2020. ‘The narcissistic grandiosity scale: AS measure to distinguish narcissistic grandiosity from high self-esteem’, Assessment, 27 (3): 487–507. DOI:10.1177/1073191119858410
-
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
-
Skeldon, R. 1990. Population Mobility in Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation. London: Belhaven.
-
Stathis, G., E. Brummelman, M. Back and J. Denissen. 2020. ‘The “why” and “how” of narcissism: A process model of narcissistic status pursuit’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15 (1): 151–172. DOI: 10.1177/1745691619873350
-
Tocqueville, A. de. 1840. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. London: Saunders and Otley.
-
Tölölyan, K. 1991. ‘The nation state and its others: In lieu of a preface’, Diaspora, 1 (1).
-
Yang, H. 2018. ‘Study on the cultural self-confidence of socialism with Chinese characteristics’, Open Journal of the Social Sciences, 6: 235–239. DOI: 10.4236/jss.2018.68019
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 54 | 54 | 54 |
| Full Text Views | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 133 | 133 | 133 |
Search for other papers by Gabriel O. Apata in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
The United States boasts the largest Nigerian diaspora, a group reputed to be among the most educated and highest achieving diasporans in that country. In explaining the Nigerian successes in the US, this article identifies Nigerian exceptionalism as a key factor, here framed around the concept of national narcissistic grandiosity. Although Nigeria is not a nation-state but a state of many nations, Nigerians in the US are constructing the nearest thing to an ideational national identity outside Nigeria. This identity formation is based on the idea that diaspora, which means dispersing or scattering, often undergoes a three-way evolutionary process of shedding, retaining and acquiring identity, which creates interstitial spaces for the emergence of new identities. The discussion draws mainly on secondary literature to support the thesis and the arguments presented.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 54 | 54 | 54 |
| Full Text Views | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 133 | 133 | 133 |