Joseph Mensah
Biographic Data
| ID | 803427 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Mensah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Mensah |
| SIGNATURE | MENSAH J |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2501-528X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Diplomatic Disparities and Mobility Bias: Structural Inequalities in the Migration‐Development Nexus
This paper interrogates the structural inequalities underpinning global mobility by introducing the concept of mobility bias, the systemic privileging of Global North citizens and diplomatic infrastructures in transnational movement. Drawing on Doreen Massey's Power Geometry and informed by the works of Foucault, Mbembe and Cortina, the study positions mobility as a spatially governed hierarchy shaped by geopolitical power, economic status and in…
Diaspora tourism and homeland development: Exploring the impacts of African American tourists on the livelihoods of local traders in Southern Ghana
While a bourgeoning literature exists on how African Americans are using tourism to connect with Africa, only a handful of studies have examined the nature of African American tourists’ spending on the continent. This study identifies popular Ghanaian handicrafts that are produced for African American tourists; examines the spending patterns of these tourists; and analyses how handicraft traders use the incomes derived from their craft sales. We …
Socio-structural Injustice, Racism, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Precarious Entanglement among Black Immigrants in Canada
As several commentators and researchers have noted since late spring 2020, COVID-19 has laid bare the connections between entrenched structurally generated inequalities on one hand, and on the other hand relatively high degrees of susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 on the part of economically marginalized population segments. Far from running along the tracks of race neutrality, studies have demonstrated that the pandemic is affecting Black p…
Dialectics to the rescue: Critical insights into Africa’s (under)development
That dialectics, as a mode of reasoning, is routinely used to explain the worlds of both nature and society per their inherent complexities, contradictions, and states of flux makes it quite amenable to robust theorizations of development. However, since many are those who see Africa(ns) in simplistic and wholly pessimistic terms, it is unsurprising that there is a conspicuous dearth of dialectical analysis of Africa’s development challenges and …
Social (In)justice and Rental Housing Discrimination in Urban Canada: The Case of Ethno-racial Minorities in the Herongate Community in Ottawa
In 2015, the predominantly visible minority immigrant community of Herongate, in Ottawa, Ontario, was slated for redevelopment by its landlord, Timbercreek Asset Management. This redevelopment involved mass eviction of the incumbent tenants, demolition of the existing affordable housing and its replacement with luxury rentals, which, by all indications, are beyond the financial reach of the former Herongage tenants. This paper seeks to problemati…
Reflections on return migration: Understanding how African immigrants in Canada contemplate return
Even though research on return migration has flourished in the last decade, we still know very little about how immigrants contemplate the decision to return to the homeland. Using multinomial logistic regression, we examined the variables underpinning the return intentions of African immigrants in Canada—specifically, Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto and Vancouver. Our key independent variables included immigrants’ socioeconomic characteristics,…
Home Sweet Home: Understanding the Geographies of Return Migration Intentions among Black Continental African Immigrants in Canada
Until the 1990s, scholars of international migration generally assumed that most immigrants from the global South make a permanent move to settle in rich countries and thereby sever ties with their homelands. More recently, however, a burgeoning literature has emerged on the transnational and return migration experience of immigrants, with several analysts touting the benefits of these trends to the socioeconomic development of countries of origi…
Seeing/being double: How African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities
With increased transnational ties to their homelands, immigrants' ontology now verges on being double – and, consequently, on seeing double – most of the time. This double consciousness, and the attendant dearth of fixity in identity among immigrants, has led some to wonder where the allegiance of minority immigrants, in particular, lies. Can these immigrants be loyal to both their ethno-racial identity and their host national identity? Is the id…
Cultural Dimensions of African Immigrant Housing in Toronto: A Qualitative Insight
This qualitative study examines the lived experiences of Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto, highlighting the multifaceted interplays between their cultures, housing problems, and coping strategies. We found that, unlike the situation in their homelands where many were involved in communal living out of desire, in Toronto many are driven to live communally for reasons of cost. Also, some respondents have to either improvise, or totally forgo, vario…
The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada
How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canad…
Ghanaian and Somali Immigrants in Toronto's Rental Market: A Comparative Cultural Perspective of Housing Issues and Coping Strategies
Starting from the premise that "culture" has generally been overlooked in the analysis of immigrant housing in Canada, this study examines the housing experiences of Ghanaian and Somali immigrants in Toronto, by exploring the instrumentality of these immigrants' cultures in the complex dynamics of the city's rental market. The study relies on a mixed-methods approach, entailing a questionnaire survey and qualitative in-depth interviews and focus …
Doing Religion' Overseas: The Characteristics and Functions of Ghanaian Immigrant Churches in Toronto, Canada
While the importance of immigrants' transnational economic activities is readily acknowledged, the cultural factors that facilitate their initiation and sustenance of memberships in multiple locations have been overlooked.It is this lacuna that the present study addresses, using Ghanaian immigrant churches in Toronto as a case study.Th e paper examines how Ghanaian immigrant churches were founded; how they are organized; and the kinds of social s…
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa
Since the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of academic discourse on globalization emanating from virtually all visages of the social sciences and humanities, with disciplines such as sociology, economics, political science, geography, and cultural studies taking the lead in this intellectual project (Held et al. 1999; Waters 1995). Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the sprawling literature is neither the enormous size, nor the diversit…
Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa: Contestations from the Embattled Continent
This book looks at Africa's involvement in contemporary neoliberal globalization, paying particular attention to the social, economic, political, and cultural cost of the unbalanced structure of globa
Religious transnationalism among Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto: A binary logistic regression analysis
Thanks to pioneering work within anthropology, students of international migration acknowledge that most immigrants do not sever their ties with the homeland, but rather maintain them through a variety of cross‐border relationships. While scholarly work has proliferated, since the early 1990s, over the transnational economic and political activities of immigrants, to date, only few analysts have examined the religious practices with which immigra…
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global
The final two articles addressing neoliberalism and globalization in Africa also make important theoretical contributions to the literature. In Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global, Joseph Mensah provides a critical discussion of the debates about the cultural effects of globalization on Africa. Supplementing the general tendencies among analysts to examine only economic or pol…
Reflections on Indigenous Women's Organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Study in Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana
This paper explores the activities and problems of indigenous women's organisations in Ghana. The survey data that form the basis of the analysis were collected in 1998 from a sample of 66 women's organisations in the districts of Atebubu and Techiman of Brong Ahafo Region in Ghana. The results suggest that despite the debilitating impacts of patriarchy, poverty and illiteracy, the women in both districts have managed to use their grassroots orga…
Georgetown, Guyana
Exploring the Impacts of Structural Adjustment on the Provision of Selected Economic and Social Services in Rural Sri Lanka
Journey to work and job search characteristics of the urban poor: A gender analysis of a survey data from Edmonton, Alberta
Low Income Housing, Employment Opportunities, and Perceptions of the Urban Poor
Complex socio‐economic and spatial relations combine uniquely in different locations within the city to create variable employment prospects for the poor. Drawing on a survey conducted among low income housing residents of Edmonton, this article investigates the spatial variations in employment‐related problems faced by the urban poor, and explores their views on the causes of poverty and unemployment. The study found that low income residents of…
Urban environmental perception and behaviour in Africa: What gender engenders
This paper presents empirical evidence of gender differences in environmental perception and behaviour regarding urban waste in the context of Africa, using samples drawn from Techiman, Ghana. The study found that females were less likely than males to litter, more bothered by urban waste, and conditioned by culturally imposed gender roles to be more responsible for cleaning up. Our investigation revealed that the African urban waste problem and …
Some Third World Environmental Perceptions and Behaviours Concerning Urban Waste: A Survey of Techiman, Ghana
Third World solid and semisolid urban wastes may contain human faecal matter, which is particularly hazardous to health. A survey of a typical West African city revealed five behaviours and five attitudes or perceptions associated with public and domestic refuse and its disposal, and some relationships with gender, educational level, and ethnicity. Actual health hazards were not generally perceived, nor was urban waste considered one of the three…
Ghanaian and Somali Immigrants in Toronto's Rental Market: A Comparative Cultural Perspective of Housing Issues and Coping Strategies
Starting from the premise that "culture" has generally been overlooked in the analysis of immigrant housing in Canada, this study examines the housing experiences of Ghanaian and Somali immigrants in Toronto, by exploring the instrumentality of these immigrants' cultures in the complex dynamics of the city's rental market. The study relies on a mixed-methods approach, entailing a questionnaire survey and qualitative in-depth interviews and focus …
Seeing/being double: How African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities
With increased transnational ties to their homelands, immigrants' ontology now verges on being double – and, consequently, on seeing double – most of the time. This double consciousness, and the attendant dearth of fixity in identity among immigrants, has led some to wonder where the allegiance of minority immigrants, in particular, lies. Can these immigrants be loyal to both their ethno-racial identity and their host national identity? Is the id…
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global
The final two articles addressing neoliberalism and globalization in Africa also make important theoretical contributions to the literature. In Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global, Joseph Mensah provides a critical discussion of the debates about the cultural effects of globalization on Africa. Supplementing the general tendencies among analysts to examine only economic or pol…
The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada
How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canad…
Doing Religion' Overseas: The Characteristics and Functions of Ghanaian Immigrant Churches in Toronto, Canada
While the importance of immigrants' transnational economic activities is readily acknowledged, the cultural factors that facilitate their initiation and sustenance of memberships in multiple locations have been overlooked.It is this lacuna that the present study addresses, using Ghanaian immigrant churches in Toronto as a case study.Th e paper examines how Ghanaian immigrant churches were founded; how they are organized; and the kinds of social s…
Socio-structural Injustice, Racism, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Precarious Entanglement among Black Immigrants in Canada
As several commentators and researchers have noted since late spring 2020, COVID-19 has laid bare the connections between entrenched structurally generated inequalities on one hand, and on the other hand relatively high degrees of susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 on the part of economically marginalized population segments. Far from running along the tracks of race neutrality, studies have demonstrated that the pandemic is affecting Black p…
Reflections on return migration: Understanding how African immigrants in Canada contemplate return
Even though research on return migration has flourished in the last decade, we still know very little about how immigrants contemplate the decision to return to the homeland. Using multinomial logistic regression, we examined the variables underpinning the return intentions of African immigrants in Canada—specifically, Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto and Vancouver. Our key independent variables included immigrants’ socioeconomic characteristics,…
Georgetown, Guyana
Cultural Dimensions of African Immigrant Housing in Toronto: A Qualitative Insight
This qualitative study examines the lived experiences of Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto, highlighting the multifaceted interplays between their cultures, housing problems, and coping strategies. We found that, unlike the situation in their homelands where many were involved in communal living out of desire, in Toronto many are driven to live communally for reasons of cost. Also, some respondents have to either improvise, or totally forgo, vario…
Religious transnationalism among Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto: A binary logistic regression analysis
Thanks to pioneering work within anthropology, students of international migration acknowledge that most immigrants do not sever their ties with the homeland, but rather maintain them through a variety of cross‐border relationships. While scholarly work has proliferated, since the early 1990s, over the transnational economic and political activities of immigrants, to date, only few analysts have examined the religious practices with which immigra…
Some Third World Environmental Perceptions and Behaviours Concerning Urban Waste: A Survey of Techiman, Ghana
Third World solid and semisolid urban wastes may contain human faecal matter, which is particularly hazardous to health. A survey of a typical West African city revealed five behaviours and five attitudes or perceptions associated with public and domestic refuse and its disposal, and some relationships with gender, educational level, and ethnicity. Actual health hazards were not generally perceived, nor was urban waste considered one of the three…
Social (In)justice and Rental Housing Discrimination in Urban Canada: The Case of Ethno-racial Minorities in the Herongate Community in Ottawa
In 2015, the predominantly visible minority immigrant community of Herongate, in Ottawa, Ontario, was slated for redevelopment by its landlord, Timbercreek Asset Management. This redevelopment involved mass eviction of the incumbent tenants, demolition of the existing affordable housing and its replacement with luxury rentals, which, by all indications, are beyond the financial reach of the former Herongage tenants. This paper seeks to problemati…
Some Third World Environmental Perceptions and Behaviours Concerning Urban Waste: A Survey of Techiman, Ghana
Third World solid and semisolid urban wastes may contain human faecal matter, which is particularly hazardous to health. A survey of a typical West African city revealed five behaviours and five attitudes or perceptions associated with public and domestic refuse and its disposal, and some relationships with gender, educational level, and ethnicity. Actual health hazards were not generally perceived, nor was urban waste considered one of the three…
Urban environmental perception and behaviour in Africa: What gender engenders
This paper presents empirical evidence of gender differences in environmental perception and behaviour regarding urban waste in the context of Africa, using samples drawn from Techiman, Ghana. The study found that females were less likely than males to litter, more bothered by urban waste, and conditioned by culturally imposed gender roles to be more responsible for cleaning up. Our investigation revealed that the African urban waste problem and …
Journey to work and job search characteristics of the urban poor: A gender analysis of a survey data from Edmonton, Alberta
Low Income Housing, Employment Opportunities, and Perceptions of the Urban Poor
Complex socio‐economic and spatial relations combine uniquely in different locations within the city to create variable employment prospects for the poor. Drawing on a survey conducted among low income housing residents of Edmonton, this article investigates the spatial variations in employment‐related problems faced by the urban poor, and explores their views on the causes of poverty and unemployment. The study found that low income residents of…
Exploring the Impacts of Structural Adjustment on the Provision of Selected Economic and Social Services in Rural Sri Lanka
Reflections on Indigenous Women's Organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Study in Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana
This paper explores the activities and problems of indigenous women's organisations in Ghana. The survey data that form the basis of the analysis were collected in 1998 from a sample of 66 women's organisations in the districts of Atebubu and Techiman of Brong Ahafo Region in Ghana. The results suggest that despite the debilitating impacts of patriarchy, poverty and illiteracy, the women in both districts have managed to use their grassroots orga…
Georgetown, Guyana
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global
The final two articles addressing neoliberalism and globalization in Africa also make important theoretical contributions to the literature. In Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa: A Dialectical Interpenetration of the Local and the Global, Joseph Mensah provides a critical discussion of the debates about the cultural effects of globalization on Africa. Supplementing the general tendencies among analysts to examine only economic or pol…
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization in Africa
Since the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of academic discourse on globalization emanating from virtually all visages of the social sciences and humanities, with disciplines such as sociology, economics, political science, geography, and cultural studies taking the lead in this intellectual project (Held et al. 1999; Waters 1995). Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the sprawling literature is neither the enormous size, nor the diversit…
Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa: Contestations from the Embattled Continent
This book looks at Africa's involvement in contemporary neoliberal globalization, paying particular attention to the social, economic, political, and cultural cost of the unbalanced structure of globa
Religious transnationalism among Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto: A binary logistic regression analysis
Thanks to pioneering work within anthropology, students of international migration acknowledge that most immigrants do not sever their ties with the homeland, but rather maintain them through a variety of cross‐border relationships. While scholarly work has proliferated, since the early 1990s, over the transnational economic and political activities of immigrants, to date, only few analysts have examined the religious practices with which immigra…
Doing Religion' Overseas: The Characteristics and Functions of Ghanaian Immigrant Churches in Toronto, Canada
While the importance of immigrants' transnational economic activities is readily acknowledged, the cultural factors that facilitate their initiation and sustenance of memberships in multiple locations have been overlooked.It is this lacuna that the present study addresses, using Ghanaian immigrant churches in Toronto as a case study.Th e paper examines how Ghanaian immigrant churches were founded; how they are organized; and the kinds of social s…
Ghanaian and Somali Immigrants in Toronto's Rental Market: A Comparative Cultural Perspective of Housing Issues and Coping Strategies
Starting from the premise that "culture" has generally been overlooked in the analysis of immigrant housing in Canada, this study examines the housing experiences of Ghanaian and Somali immigrants in Toronto, by exploring the instrumentality of these immigrants' cultures in the complex dynamics of the city's rental market. The study relies on a mixed-methods approach, entailing a questionnaire survey and qualitative in-depth interviews and focus …
Seeing/being double: How African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities
With increased transnational ties to their homelands, immigrants' ontology now verges on being double – and, consequently, on seeing double – most of the time. This double consciousness, and the attendant dearth of fixity in identity among immigrants, has led some to wonder where the allegiance of minority immigrants, in particular, lies. Can these immigrants be loyal to both their ethno-racial identity and their host national identity? Is the id…
Cultural Dimensions of African Immigrant Housing in Toronto: A Qualitative Insight
This qualitative study examines the lived experiences of Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto, highlighting the multifaceted interplays between their cultures, housing problems, and coping strategies. We found that, unlike the situation in their homelands where many were involved in communal living out of desire, in Toronto many are driven to live communally for reasons of cost. Also, some respondents have to either improvise, or totally forgo, vario…
The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada
How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canad…
Home Sweet Home: Understanding the Geographies of Return Migration Intentions among Black Continental African Immigrants in Canada
Until the 1990s, scholars of international migration generally assumed that most immigrants from the global South make a permanent move to settle in rich countries and thereby sever ties with their homelands. More recently, however, a burgeoning literature has emerged on the transnational and return migration experience of immigrants, with several analysts touting the benefits of these trends to the socioeconomic development of countries of origi…
Dialectics to the rescue: Critical insights into Africa’s (under)development
That dialectics, as a mode of reasoning, is routinely used to explain the worlds of both nature and society per their inherent complexities, contradictions, and states of flux makes it quite amenable to robust theorizations of development. However, since many are those who see Africa(ns) in simplistic and wholly pessimistic terms, it is unsurprising that there is a conspicuous dearth of dialectical analysis of Africa’s development challenges and …
Social (In)justice and Rental Housing Discrimination in Urban Canada: The Case of Ethno-racial Minorities in the Herongate Community in Ottawa
In 2015, the predominantly visible minority immigrant community of Herongate, in Ottawa, Ontario, was slated for redevelopment by its landlord, Timbercreek Asset Management. This redevelopment involved mass eviction of the incumbent tenants, demolition of the existing affordable housing and its replacement with luxury rentals, which, by all indications, are beyond the financial reach of the former Herongage tenants. This paper seeks to problemati…
Reflections on return migration: Understanding how African immigrants in Canada contemplate return
Even though research on return migration has flourished in the last decade, we still know very little about how immigrants contemplate the decision to return to the homeland. Using multinomial logistic regression, we examined the variables underpinning the return intentions of African immigrants in Canada—specifically, Ghanaians and Somalis in Toronto and Vancouver. Our key independent variables included immigrants’ socioeconomic characteristics,…
Socio-structural Injustice, Racism, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Precarious Entanglement among Black Immigrants in Canada
As several commentators and researchers have noted since late spring 2020, COVID-19 has laid bare the connections between entrenched structurally generated inequalities on one hand, and on the other hand relatively high degrees of susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 on the part of economically marginalized population segments. Far from running along the tracks of race neutrality, studies have demonstrated that the pandemic is affecting Black p…
Diaspora tourism and homeland development: Exploring the impacts of African American tourists on the livelihoods of local traders in Southern Ghana
While a bourgeoning literature exists on how African Americans are using tourism to connect with Africa, only a handful of studies have examined the nature of African American tourists’ spending on the continent. This study identifies popular Ghanaian handicrafts that are produced for African American tourists; examines the spending patterns of these tourists; and analyses how handicraft traders use the incomes derived from their craft sales. We …
Diplomatic Disparities and Mobility Bias: Structural Inequalities in the Migration‐Development Nexus
This paper interrogates the structural inequalities underpinning global mobility by introducing the concept of mobility bias, the systemic privileging of Global North citizens and diplomatic infrastructures in transnational movement. Drawing on Doreen Massey's Power Geometry and informed by the works of Foucault, Mbembe and Cortina, the study positions mobility as a spatially governed hierarchy shaped by geopolitical power, economic status and in…
Political science (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Economics (15 works) · Geography (10 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Immigration (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Development economics (7 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (7 works)