In Sierra Leone, Sherbro ethnic identity is socially ambivalent, as it relates both to a Krio urban lifestyle and an indigenous rural origin. It allows individuals to employ two identity registers (Krio and kɔntri) and claim an autochthonous status, while displaying the attributes of urban modernity. The ability to use different social fronts, and to display the emblems attached to each, is central to Sherbro social duality. Thus, concealment and disclosure of social ‘fronts’ constitute moments of intense dramatization of a person’s dual identity. Such strategies are highly contextual and depend both on an individual’s ability to use specific emblems (language, clothes, religious signs etc.) and the audience for which social roles are performed. This paper explores how people separate contexts, locations and audiences when using Krio and kɔntri registers, with a particular focus on religion and ritual practices. Ritual practices constitute a privileged space for making statements about social identifications. Claiming an “authentic” indigenous identity requires membership in indigenous religious institutions (secret societies). Membership is important in establishing one’s kɔntri identity. Yet, being ‘Krio’ also entails a commitment to Christian practices. The personal ability of combining two religious registers, and keep them separate in social and semiotic practices, is critical for claiming Sherbro ethnicity and performing social duality. At the same time, it tends to draw a line between “urban” individuals – who tend to reject practices of initiation and stick to Krio religious standards – and “rural” individuals, for whom initiation is a vector of social navigability.

During decades, Gaddafi's Libya was like Eldorado for thousands of economic migrants from a fragile country as Niger. After different migration flows from rural nigeriens areas, people from Niamey join the way to Libya during the 2000s. They did it with a different project, more "individualist" and conceived in a "capitalist" way. Libya's war caused their return in vulnerable conditions, as well as circular rural movements. However, the migrants from the capital assumed the failure of their migration plan with certain privileged circumstances, as a result of their urban feature and experience in Libyan cities. This new collective worked as a workforce in multinationals and public companies during their life in Gadafi's country. It is a flow with specific characteristics and it qualifies itself as Niameyzé, which refers to "authentic" citizens from Niamey. They use their experience in Libya and their perfomative "cosmopolitism" to try to obtain the "development rent", subventions from international cooperation. This paper wants to approach to this forced return of Niameyzé, trying to treat the reconfiguration of this urban collective identity used to stratify from rural migrants. It will explain how the migration to Libya has impacted to the urban imaginarie through the main important sociable masculine space in Niger, the fada. Our fieldwork has developed in these originally urban sites, related to globalized culture, where returned migrants talk about their residence in Libya and express their emic notion of their distinction as a urban migrant.

In Calabar, a Christian city in southeast Nigeria, couples usually undertake three ceremonies to define their urban matrimony. The court marriage denotes legality in the eyes of the state, the white wedding solemnises the union in front of God, and the traditional marriage finalises an agreement between two families. Despite the tendency for urban couples to demonstrate their cosmopolitan lifestyles by throwing lavish church services and receptions, the traditional marriage remains the most significant part of the extensive nuptial process. Held in the bride's paternal village, the traditional marriage represents the handing over of a daughter from one community to another. Yet it also represents the inclusion of the rural in the urban imaginary, the necessity of village approval and participation in the reproduction of Calabar's social relations.

Focusing on the viewpoints and actions of young women in Calabar, this paper explores how the performance of three marriage ceremonies has become an important strategy for demonstrating urban femininity. Highlighting the tensions between feminine agency and the authority of elders, the paper argues that the urban feminine ideal does not exclude the rural but necessitates a certain knowledge of when and how to engage with village relations. Furthermore, as wealthy families now bring 'the village' to their Calabar compound to conduct traditional marriages, thus allowing urban dignitaries to attend, this paper considers how evolving urban-rural imaginaries create stratifications even within urban feminine ideals.