Push-Pull Factor Theories of Migration: An Analysis of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

Abstract

People have always moved, whether from one continent to another, or from one country to another or within the same country. The motives for such movements have also always varied from one local context to another and from one individual to another. It is such motives for moving that is well captured by Everett Lee in what he calls the push-pull factor theories of migration. While such pull factors may be real at their face values, especially when considered along the line of the oddities that constitute the push factors at the place of origin, yet many diasporic literatures have proven that the usually expected “El Dorado†at the place of destination is not always the case. Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, which this work sets to analyze, also affirms this observation. It, more so, depicts that though the choice destination may be the same, the pushing factors of various individuals may vary from one person to another according to each person’s peculiar circumstance. A lot of studies have been carried out using Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street but to the knowledge of these researchers little or none has been done on the analysis of Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street in the light of Everett Lee’s Push-Pull Factor Theory of Migration. This present work, therefore, seeks to engage in a voyage of discovering how dynamic or multifaceted the push factors among migrants can be and to what extent such factors that usually pull them to their choice destinations are realistic and eventually accomplished. Our finding is that different shades of results are usually experienced by migrants as against the straight-jacket “Golden Fleece†utopia that is usually expected.