PULL FACTORS OF MIGRATION IN CHIKA UNIGWE’S ON BLACK SISTERS’ STREET

Abstract

Over time, research on cross-border mobilities most notably: drug and human trafficking, have been interpreted as negative consequences of globalization, by theorists and critics alike. Most studies have examined issues of unhomeliness or push factors as a cogent factor in the understanding of migration. However, recent studies on the forces that lure the migrant from his home have shown a yawning gap in studies and critical appreciation of migration. Data for this paper are taken from Chika Unigwe’s novel, On Black Sisters’ Street, which empasizes the state of heightened issue of migration for clearly economic opportunities, which has been identified as one of the chief factors responsible for forced migration and the trafficking of vulnerable women into cross-border prostitution. Thus, the study employs Pull concept of migration in binary opposition with the Push concept, and its capture of the vulnerability of economically disadvantaged women into the intricate web of sexual enslavement, exploitation, bodily harm, and sometimes brutal death. In its findings, the paper concludes that the condition of vulnerability resulting from Pull factors starts with existential conditions - Push factors; the socio-economic problems created by globalization in disadvantaged countries and ends with destinations of promising livable conditions.