Identity, Migration, and Social Belonging: Developing a Theoretical Model for Yoruba Diaspora Social Integration in Non-Yoruba Nigerian Cities

The social integration of Yoruba internal migrants in non-Yoruba Nigerian cities raises fundamental theoretical questions about how ethnic identity is maintained, negotiated, or transformed in conditions of sustained geographic displacement and daily inter-ethnic contact. This doctoral study develops an original theoretical model of diaspora social integration for the Yoruba migrant experience in Kano, Port Harcourt, and Abuja, three cities representing distinct socio-political relationships with Yoruba identity. Four years of fieldwork combined network ethnography with 96 Yoruba migrant households, analysis of Yoruba community organisation records spanning twenty years, and 45 in-depth identity narrative interviews. The theoretical model, termed Bounded Ethnic Cosmopolitanism, proposes that successful Yoruba migrant integration proceeds through a dialectical process of ethnic boundary maintenance through associational life and bounded cosmopolitan engagement with host city economic and civic structures, rather than through either assimilation or cultural enclosure. The model identifies specific integration pathways differentiated by migration generation, occupational sector, gender, and host city political climate. In Kano, ethnic-religious boundary interaction generates distinct integration dynamics absent in Port Harcourt or Abuja. The doctoral model advances migrant integration theory by accounting for internal Nigerian ethnic diversity, the specificities of voluntary internal migration versus international refugee flows, and the role of host city political economy in shaping integration opportunities. The bounded ethnic cosmopolitanism concept offers an original theoretical alternative to assimilation and multiculturalism frameworks in plural African urban sociology. Keywords: Yoruba diaspora, social integration, ethnic identity, bounded cosmopolitanism, internal migration.