Immigration to Ghana

Abstract

The globalization of international labor migration is manifest in all countries now engaging in migration systems that are growing in size and complexity and producing an increasing diversity of flows. Furthermore, many of the processes that create and drive these systems operate on a worldwide basis, the consequence of economic globalization, capital mobility and widespread realization by governments that human resources can be traded for profit like any other resource.

This paper looks at Ghana's immigration policy in the light of its economic situation. It characterizes Ghana's immigration policy as geared towards using immigration to attract critical foreign investment, transfer of technology and human resource capital/skills for socio-economic development. Running concurrently is the policy to prevent illegal immigration, transnational crime, economic exploitation, social corruption and human trafficking.

The paper concludes that when the economic situation of Ghana was buoyant in the 1960s it attracted many immigrants especially from neighboring West African countries, however when the country's economy saw a down turn, immigrants were used as a convenient scapegoat and many were expelled. The irony though is that while the current poor economic situation of Ghana has made Ghanaians to immigrate to other countries, the political stability of the country does attract other West Africans and non-Africans and it is affording the country the opportunity to streamline its immigration and citizenship laws.     

Reconceptualizing the British State: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges to Central Government

Britain is generally perceived as having a hierarchical and unified political system with power concentrated in the central institutions of the state. This conception has not only influenced analysis but has affected the behaviour of politicians. However, in recent years both conceptions of the state and, how it operates, have been challenged. Conventional approaches concerned with the internal workings of the state have largely taken the nature of power as unproblematic. Consequently they have oversimplified the nature of power relationships within the state. In the last five or ten years the dominant conceptions of the core state have been questioned by theoretical and empirical challenges such as globalization, the core executive, the reform of government, bureau-shaping and new approaches to power. The article analyses how these challenges require a reconceptualization of the central British state.     

Persistent poverty in North East Ghana

This paper explores local poverty and wealth inequality in the Upper East Region of northern Ghana in the period from 1975–89. Land was not scarce and the social management of household membership and household labour were critical to household security, but this social management was not independent of wealth status. There was a virtuous circle between wealth and household labour supply and a vicious circle between poverty and small household size. Poverty traps existed so that those with too little labour and too little wealth engaged in strategies which entrenched them in poverty.     

Public Administrators Under Democratic Governance in Ghana

The politicization of the public service has been the subject of scholarly interest and debate. This article based on a desk study makes a contribution to this debate by examining the constitutional, legal, and political framework and environment within which public administrators operate in Ghana since the return to constitutional rule in 1993. It discusses the participation of public administrators in partisan politics and the challenges faced as well as benchmarking the Ghanaian experience against some countries. The article found that there has been growing politicization of the public service and an increase in the number of public administrators in partisan politics. The Ghanaian case reinforces the highly intense political environment within which public administrators operate and the myth of the politics-administration dichotomy.     

Access to Power Versus Exercise of Power Reconceptualizing the Quality of Democracy in Latin America

Research on comparative democratization has recently expanded its focus to issues of institutional quality: clientelism, corruption, abuse of executive decree authority, and weak checks and balances. However, problems of institutional quality are so different from those involved in regime transitions that it is unproductive to treat them as part of the same macro-process, democratization. Whereas regime transitions are changes in the form of access to power, problems of institutional quality involve the exercise of power. Abuses in the exercise of power affecting institutional quality are best characterized not as indicators of authoritarianism and deficiencies in democratization but as reflecting—in Weberian terms—patrimonialism and failures in bureaucratization. Moreover, struggles over the exercise of power involve causes, mechanisms, and actors that can be quite distinct from those at play in conflicts over access to power. The proposed analytical framework centered on the distinction between access and exercise enhances conceptual clarity and provides a stronger theoretical basis for tackling fundamental questions about politics in Latin America, including the failure of democratization to curb clientelism and foster other improvements of institutional quality, and the prospects of democratic stability under patrimonial administrations.     

Farmer resistance to agriculture commercialisation in northern Ghana

Drawing on postcolonial literature and theories of farmer resistance, this article provides an empirically based alternative explanation of African farmer behaviours to narratives that blame them for their lack of technology adoption. Based on six months of ethnographic immersion in one district in the Northern Region of Ghana^a, we identify the ways that farmers defy commercial agriculture investment, government services and non-governmental organisation (NGO) project interventions aimed at intensification, and describe their reasons for doing so. This study interprets farmers’ acts of defiance, such as side-selling or falsely weighting their products, as insights into everyday acts of resistance. We find that throughout Ghana’s postcolonial period, agriculture intensification policy and practice have produced an environment where various development actors and farmers have both a sense of entitlement and mistrust of each other. Farmers’ acts of sabotage may be spaces where they make rational choices based on experiences of historical antecedence, including decades of failed development projects, elite corruption and mismanagement, degrading ecologies and donor hegemony.     

Domestic credit and the balance of payments in Ghana

This model strives to assess the relationship between domestic credit and the balance of payments in Ghana during the 1961—75 period in an effort to guide policymakers in generating credit policies aimed at reaching a particular balance of payments objective. An equation is derived and estimated which specifies the relationship between domestic credit, exports, capital flows, and net foreign assets within a constraint imposing balance of payments equilibrium. The general conclusions of the analysis are that excessive increases in domestic credit were the principal cause for the balance of payments deficits incurred by Ghana during the period considered.     

Reconceptualizing layering—From mode of institutional change to mode of institutional design: Types and outputs

Due to its popularity, the term layering is often used generically, and it risks being transformed into a catch‐all concept. Layering has become synonymous with incremental change, thus making it a synonym for change without any specification in terms of the change and its effects. To make the term more conceptually coherent and empirically useful, this article problematizes the historical neo‐institutionalist definition of layering as a mode of change and, above all, its use in the literature. It argues that layering should be conceptualized in terms of modes of institutional design through which different types of additions to the actual institutional arrangement can be activated to pursue not only institutional and eventually policy change but also stability. As an approach to institutional design, layering can be distinguished according to that which is layered and the results that layering can achieve in terms of institutional and policy effects.     

Liberalisation and Seigniorage revenue in Kenya,Ghana and Tanzania

To inform policy, our study identifies which populations of AIDS-affected children are in need of educational assistance. Using the 2004–2005 Malawi Integrated Household Survey, multilevel models examine the association between AIDS-related impacts and educational outcomes. Double and maternal orphans are more likely to be out of school and behind in grade level; living with an adult suffering from a potential AIDS-related illness is also associated with disadvantage. These disparities are not explained by poverty status. Where both poverty and AIDS are endemic, both traditional development aid and orphan-specific programming are essential for equitable access to education.     

Women's Participation and Representation in Politics: Perspectives from Ghana

This article discusses empirical findings on issues affecting women's effective participation in politics and the public sector of Ghana. It argues that women's involvement in public life and politics has steadily declined contrary to hopeful reportage that global empowerment campaigns have increased women's political participation across Africa. The article suggests that given the deep-rooted socio-cultural hindrances women face, affirmative action policies need to be revisited to complement women's agency in contesting for, winning, and participating in politics and public service more effectively.