Creating Fair Dialogue Through Cross Talks: Addressing Challenges of Integration of Immigrants in Ghana

Ghana-Togo Border Crossing

MOBILE - Mobility Law Open Lab with John Narh.

Presenter: John Narh is affiliated with the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana and is preparing to defend his PhD thesis on migration and translocality in Ghana at Universität Passau. A human geographer by training, he researches migration governance in West Africa, with a focus on the bottlenecks to free movement within the ECOWAS region. His work examines why, despite the aims of the Economic Community of West African States and the African Union's Free Movement Protocol to advance economic integration and free movement, obstacles to border-free mobility persist.

Presentation: During the seminar, John will outline his research project (Setrana et al., 2026), which takes its departure from the observation that Ghana is primarily a net emigration country and, as such, migration into the country has received relatively lesser attention. This has created a significant gap in the migration literature since Ghana hosts other ECOWAS citizens and forcibly displaced persons from across Africa. For instance, there is limited knowledge on the challenges to socio-economic integration of immigrants in Ghana. Yet, understanding the challenges to socio-economic integration is crucial for achieving the ECOWAS protocol of free movement and economic integration in West Africa. Using the Cross-Talk methodology, which provides "level telling fields" for migrants and stakeholders for fair dialogues, the authors found four key challenges to socio-economic integration of immigrants in Ghana: high cost of acquiring social services, language barrier, centralised immigration policies, and discrimination. Based on the findings, the authors proposed several policy recommendations to facilitate socio-economic integration of immigrants in Ghana.

Reference: Setrana, M. B., Teye, J. K., Narh, J. & Obeng, K. (2026). Creating Fair Dialogue Through Cross Talks: Addressing Challenges of Integration of Immigrants in Ghana, In Roy Sommer & Carolin Gebauer (Eds.), Fair Narratives: Toward a Level Telling Field on Migration, pp. 79-99.

Time: 23 October 2026 12:30-13:45

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus + ONLINE

Online participation:

For online participation, please contact MOBILE's Student Assistant Lea at lea.wuthrich@jur.ku.dk to receive a Zoom link.