This work on the dynamics of migration of Igbo women to the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area is a unique and much needed academic addition to knowledge on African women and their timeless sense of duty and commitment to their society. Through careful empirical and historical study, the book highlights the unyielding activism of Igbo women in all aspects of life. The study affirms the unique...

This book is the product of some casual questions I asked the Chief Health Officer at Isu Local Government in Imo States Nigeria in 1994. Part of my responsibility as the Chairman of the Local Government Area was to oversee the maintenance of the health facilities in the ten communities. After hiring and training several nurses, a large number of them would resign and move to the United States of...

To God be the glory for His constant presence in my life. To Him I owe my deepest and heartfelt appreciation for guiding, guarding, and seeing me through this effort.

Intra-national and international migrations have been prominent features of socio-cultural change on the African continent for more than three quarters of a century.1 The predominance of men in the migration process have, over the years, greatly minimized the role women played and still play in both intra-national and international migration processes. One of the consequences of this...

The Igbo people of Southeastern Nigeria have a very rich cultural heritage. An examination of migration and the brain drain phenomenon in Igboland will be incomplete without a detailed geo-political and socio-economic history of the Igbo people of Nigeria.

Human capital is the stock of competence, knowledge, and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labor that is needed to produce economic value.1 It is the attributes gained by a worker through education and experience. It is often simply referred to as workforce. In other words, human capital represents the investment people make in...

The effects of migration on any sending nation vary greatly depending on the size of the emigrant flows, the kind of migrants, and the labor and political conditions in the country. Increase in emigration to the United States and other OECD nations have affected all classes and categories of the population and economy.1 The most crucial impact has been on the...

Today, a new breed of Africans is migrating to the New World in great numbers creating a new group of migrants classified as the New African Diaspora and for the purpose of this study, termed the “The New Igbo Women in the Diaspora.” Mostly well-educated, high-income earning professionals, and belonging to the category also termed African brain drain, they...

This chapter highlights the personal migration stories of some Igbo women who generously volunteered to share their unique stories in this book. They are also the women who completed the questionnaires distributed for the study. Their stories are as varied as they are important in identifying the push and pull factors that motivated their migrations, what they have been able to achieve since...

Data for this study was collected through interviews and completion of questionnaires which were distributed to randomly selected Igbo women in Nigeria and the United States of America. The results from the survey data collected for the study are presented in this section, using IBM SPSS Statistical Package to compute the data from the 245 respondents that participated in the survey. Descriptive...

There are currently several policy challenges in Africa but the most important one relates to weak governance structures, inadequate institutional capacity of officials, and key stakeholders to formulate and implement comprehensive migration policies that would eventually engage and integrate the diaspora into Nigerian development. Nigerian women, no matter the ethnic group of origin, have...

Sussie U. Aham-Okoro graduated from the University of Nigeria Nsukka with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. She proceeded to the University of Jos, Nigeria, where she earned a Master of Science Degree in Political Science with concentration in Political Economy and Development Studies. After migrating to the United States in 1995, she enrolled at Southeastern University and graduated...