A History of Lagos and Migration

Few issues have raised more global concern in recent time than the issue of migration—the movement of people and goods within and across borders. Migration trends have shaped politics—as seen in the 2016 United States elections; determined economic directions—in financial trends following the UK’s Brexit referendum; and exacerbated geopolitical tensions—Nigeria-South Africa relations in the aftermath of xenophobic attacks in South Africa being an instance. Yet, often under-discussed is how migration trends can be traced to a capitalist root cause.

Capitalism is an economic and political system characterized by the private ownership of factors of production and, more importantly, an overarching profit motive. The word itself, ‘Capitalism’ is a derivative of the Latin word ‘Caput’, which literally translates to ‘head’ and was once a figurative expression for ‘leader’ or ‘being vital’: as a Roman legal expression, the term caput was used to indicate the significance of an individual’s status. One of the earliest references to capitalism in literature was in Hollandsche Mercurius, the yearbook published by Haarlem bookseller, Pieter Casteleyn, as early as 1633. The idea of capitalism is simple: factors of production create goods and services, which create wealth that is then used to procure more factors of production. The owners of these factors of production, and consequently, the wealth generated, are the capitalists.