Nigerians migrate to UK, US in search of good life

Lagos: Many Nigerians are already familiar with the idea of “japa”, which means to flee from an unpleasant situation.

That many young people have left the country is a cliche; that many more people desperately want to leave is not an overstatement. A research that utilised the 2017 Afrobarometer Survey reported that the emigration intention rate was 35.3 per cent. A 2024 study found that, among healthcare workers, the rate was 80.1 per cent.

According to the two studies, the preferred destination was the west – the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada. However, among the general population in Nigeria, there is a preference for the Middle East and other countries in Africa, perhaps for socio-cultural reasons.

But many receiving countries are tightening their borders and making immigration requirements more stringent than before, especially against migrants from African countries.

The recent anti-immigrant and nationalist protests across Europe and the attention that migration garnered in the 2024 US elections show how topical and political migration is.

It hasn’t deterred would-be migrants. But is life that easy in the west?

I am a sociologist and my doctoral work investigated the integration and experiences of Nigerian migrants in the US and the UK.

My recent research investigated whether their expectations of migration matched the reality. To get a feel for this, I got data from qualitative interviews and from reactions and comments to two Instagram blog posts.

I do not, in any way, discourage migration. But it’s important for intending migrants to be aware of what life could really be like in the countries they’re going to. The research could also help governments of the host countries to understand migrants’ expectations and how to manage them.

Data sources

First, I conducted 31 interviews with Nigerian migrants in the US (17) and the UK (14) between May and August 2022. The average duration of migrants’ stay had been 5.4 years, ranging from one to 21 years. I asked them to explain their pre-migration expectations of life in the host country and the reality they met there.

I also used data from an Instagram blog based in the UK. On 22 April 2022, the blogger made a post in which she asked her followers, who are migrants in the UK, to share the same kinds of information about their expectations and experiences.