National Identity and Boundaries

Cameroon has been significantly affected by immigrants over the years since Cameroon does not have as much unrest as other African countries therefore people go to Cameroon to seek safety. Also, the national identity is changing because many of the students are going to Germany to study and doctors and nurses are leaving the country to find better paying job than in Cameroon.[1] As a result, the Cameroonian government started giving teachers raise if they would come back to Cameroon to teach, the stipend depended on their level of schooling.[2] “Cameroon had a long internal migration history, with one of the highest rates of internal migration in Central Africa.”[3] A program called Ndop was created in the rural area to “bring the benefits of modern agriculture… [and to] launch the region on the trajectory of sustained economic and social development”.[4] It was “Credited to a large extent with reversing the exodus of the youth from the division, increased rural incomes, the higher standard of living of the rural population, and increased rice production to meet the area’s consumption needs.”[5] It seems to have benefited the rural area not only socially but financially and in their nutritional state as well. When migrants choose a home-town they get “access to to land and social security upon retirement.”[6] Immigrants were accepted by Cameroonians but after “disputes over land; rapid success of the foreigners in agriculture, trade and other entrepreneurial activities; an alleged lack of respect for local authorities and customs by migrants; as well as the belief that strangers were only interested in exploiting an dominating the local population -led to…conflicts”[7] Just like the United States is coming to understand, Cameroon understood foreigners were welcome but when they start to completely take over the nationals they need to be limited.

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[1] Blessing Uchenna Mberu and Roland Pongou, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” International Migration, 54, no. 1 (February 2016): 109, accessed March 8, 2017, Wiley Online Library.

[2] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 110.

[3] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 104.

[4] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 106.

[5] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 106.

[6] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 106.

[7] Blessing, “Crossing Boundaries: Internal, Regional, and International Migration in Cameroon,” 107.