Migration, Mobility, and Belonging: Theorising the Nigerian Diaspora’s Multiple Identities in European Spaces

This doctoral study develops an original theoretical framework for understanding the multiple, fluid, and contested identities of the Nigerian diaspora in European spaces, advancing a contribution to migration studies, diaspora theory, and European Studies that recentres African migrant subjectivity. The Nigerian diaspora in Europe, estimated at over one million individuals across the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, is characterised by extraordinary diversity in migration trajectory, generational standing, professional status, and identity formation. Existing diaspora theory, including Hall's cultural identity framework, Brah's diaspora space, and Vertovec's transnationalism, provides a rich conceptual base that this study extends through an original Nigerian Multisited Belonging Model (NMBM). The NMBM theorises how Nigerian diaspora members simultaneously construct, perform, and contest identities across the axes of Nigerian ethnoreligious heritage, pan-African solidarity, European civic identity, and professional cosmopolitan status. Empirical evidence is generated through 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork across Nigerian diaspora communities in London, Rome, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, combined with 80 in-depth narrative life history interviews distributed across generations, genders, and Nigerian regional origins (South-West, South-East, North-Central, North-West, South-South, North-East). Thematic and narrative analysis of interview data applies the NMBM framework to identify patterns of identity construction and belonging. Original contributions include the NMBM theoretical model, the ethnographic dataset, and theoretically grounded findings that challenge homogenising representations of the Nigerian diaspora in EU policy discourse. Keywords: Nigerian diaspora, multiple identities, belonging, European spaces, diaspora theory.