Beyond Post-colonial (Formal) Citizenship: Exploring Notions of Lived Citizen-Making Among the Non-Pastoral Fulanis at Agogo, Ghana

This article adopts the lived citizenship analytical framework and employs a qualitative case-study methodology to examine the experiences of the second-generation non-pastoral Fulanis and their descendants at Agogo in the southern part of Ghana. The aim, extending beyond Ghana and informing other Global South contexts, is to understand the complex processes of informal and lived citizen-making, exploring how marginalised groups, particularly ethnic minorities who have challenges with formal recognition, construct, negotiate and enact citizenship. The study problematises and critiques post-colonial (formal) citizenship frameworks in most African states shaped by colonial epistemic and institutional legacies of constructed arbitrary identities that exclude long-settled migrants and ethnic minorities. Such state-centric conceptions fail to capture the diverse ways differentiated groups experience and perform citizenship. Thus, shifting the focus from legal status, institutional belonging and abstract legal frameworks to lived realities of everyday experiences and certain mundane practices, I argue that citizenship is not always a matter of formal arrangements of belonging and performance in institutionalised settings. More importantly, it is lived, built and enacted in non-institutionalised spaces, enabling people to live together and cooperate in an orderly social life. The findings reveal that the Fulanis construct citizenship by asserting birth and residency; integration into Agogo’s agricultural economy; land acquisition and engagement in livelihoods; socio-cultural and economic relational practices; and subjective feelings of deep connections with other dominant groups and societal acceptance.