Nenna Orie Chuku (UCL) - 2020-21 Students
nenna.chuku.17@ucl.ac.uk

Pathing a Return to Salone: Localised and Globalised Views on Sierra Leonean Movement

Public discourse on African migration to Europe is often negatively presented with an over emphasis on poverty and conflict. European policy agendas are split between assimilation and/or prevention agendas enacted through a range of tracking, surveillance and monitoring systems. Such approaches ignore the reasons that explain why these migration links exist and neglect the numerous attempts made by Africans in the diaspora to return. By exploring the information environments that address the notion of returning to Sierra Leone found within the UK-based Sierra Leonean communities, and the information systems between Sierra Leone and the UK, this study seeks to understand the social and cultural implications of return migration. Through doing so, this study will address its guiding question of: How do the information experiences of those that return to Sierra Leone from the Sierra Leonean diaspora, challenge the conceptual framework and deployment of Eurocentric information systems used to understand human movement?

Primary supervisor: Oliver Duke-Williams, UCL
Secondary supervisor: Annemaree Lloyd, UCL