Reconceptualising Social Integration: Experiences of Internal Youth Migrants in Ghana

ABSTRACT

Research on migrant social integration has focused mainly on international migration, leaving internal migration, especially in the Global South, underexplored as a site of theory‑building. This paper reconceptualises social integration through an empirical study of young internal migrants in Sunyani, Ghana, a secondary city characterised by informality and decentralised governance. Drawing on a mixed‑methods design of survey data and qualitative narrative interviews, the analysis shows that integration is not a linear or place‑bound outcome but a negotiated process shaped by material precarity, social relations, institutional mediation, and sustained connections to places of origin. While economic participation and co‑ethnic bonding networks enable survival in the informal economy, limited cross‑group trust and exclusionary encounters with local authorities constrain broader inclusion. Importantly, the paper advances translocality as a constitutive dimension of social integration, showing that ongoing obligations to origin communities function as adaptive strategies for managing risk and belonging in contexts of weak urban safety nets, while simultaneously reshaping local embedding. By foregrounding internal migration in a secondary African city, the study challenges state‑centred and settlement‑based integration models and contributes to population geography by reframing social integration as a spatially distributed, relational process within national borders.