In the wake of the 2016 national elections in Ghana, the issue of cross-border voting triggered a nation-wide debate. But who exactly constitutes the electorate? Who is a national, who is a foreigner, and how are these distinctions identified in the Ghana-Togo borderlands? This study analyses how political belonging is constructed and how it interacts with the nation-state in the region, especially where communities lie across borders, or at another level than the nation-state. Based on archival research, interviews, oral tradition and newspaper analysis, Nathalie Raunet discusses a pattern based on legitimating narratives of indigeneity at local, regional and transnational scales. In doing so, this study offers a new interpretation of the relationship between the Ewe-speaking people (located across the south of the Ghana-Togo border), the Ghanaian and Togolese Republics, and their colonial predecessor states. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Nathalie Raunet connects the history of the region with contemporary power struggles and issues of belonging and citizenship since the turn of the twentieth century.
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978-1-009-67437-9 (9781009674379)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Nathalie Raunet is an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham and focuses on Africa with an interdisciplinary perspective. She has published in leading journals on political and cultural questions from a transnational perspective and her research interests include citizenship, belonging, borders and migration.
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University of Birmingham
1. 'Nation' in the Ghana-togo borderlands; Part I. The Colonial Encounter and the (Re)making of Political Communities: 2. Space and history: palimpsestic political communities in the border region; 3. 'We are all from notse': from the remnants of ewe nationalism to a transnational political community; 4. Regional and local political belonging: recognition or contestation of authority in the Southeast of the Gold Coast from the 1910s to the 2010s; Part II. Legal Citizenship, Indigeneity and the Nation-state: 5. 'Sons and daughters of the soil': the convergence of citizenship towards indigeneity in Ghana; 6. Belonging less to the nation: rumour, contestation, and the politicization of precarious belonging in the volta region; Part III. Cross-border Voting and its Impact on Ghana-Togo Relations and Elections: 7. Wooing the vote in the borderlands: local gatekeeping in national elections; 8. The enemy within, the enemy next door: Eyadema's attempts to neutralize the transnational 'ewe threat'; 9. Conclusion: palimpsestic political communities; Annex: List of interviews; References; Index.
