Ndubueze Leonard Mbah

This project examines how African migrants navigated colonial systems of labor, mobility, and identity across West and Central Africa between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. It focuses on migrants from southeastern Nigeria who moved across British, German, Spanish, and French colonial territories—including Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon—in pursuit of economic opportunity and social autonomy. Based on archival research conducted in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Nigeria, the study draws on colonial administrative records, missionary archives, migrant petitions, labor recruitment files, and photographic collections documenting migrant communities. These sources reveal how African migrants engaged creatively with colonial institutions and abolitionist discourses. In many cases, migrants manipulated or forged documents—including freedom papers, marriage declarations, and labor permits—to navigate colonial surveillance systems and secure access to trans-imperial mobility and labor networks. The research shows that colonial regimes designed to regulate African mobility were far more porous than colonial authorities intended. African migrants creatively reinterpreted abolitionist and colonial legal frameworks and categories to construct new identities, negotiate labor arrangements, and establish migrant communities across colonial boundaries. By highlighting African agency in the making of colonial migration networks, the project contributes to broader debates about the afterlives of slavery, colonial capitalism, and the historical formation of transnational African identities.