‘We are Sending the Funeral Home’: Migration and Funeral Rites in Ghana

Abstract

Funeral rites do not only serve as occasions for the living to find closure, bid farewell to the deceased, and usher them into the ancestral realm, but also, opportunities for the dispersed contemporary family to reconnect with the extended family and home community. In this study, the phrase ‘we are sending the funeral home’ is limited to post-burial rites, especially where the deceased is buried outside the home community. In these contexts, some of the migrants are not just mourners, but also ritual specialists. In rare occasions, these migrants may become the subject of attention, as the deceased within a temporal state of possession. Thus, alive or dead, migrants are increasingly influencing their communities of residence and home communities. Migration has therefore created multiple sites for funeral rites, giving rise to the transmission of indigenous religious beliefs and practices outside their indigenous religiocultural spaces, and consequently, the transformation of indigenous religio-cultural systems. Nonetheless, these dimensions of migration and funeral rites in Ghana have not gained the needed scholarly attention. Using the above phrase as a point of engagement with some 2024 qualitative interview data on funeral rites from four ethnic groups in Ghana (Akan, Ewe, Frafra and Ga), this article shows how migration has influenced and/or transformed indigenous burial/funeral rites. The study argues that the introduction of multiple funeral sites provides avenues for both the transmission and transformation of Africa’s indigenous religio-cultural systems, hence, their sustenance in contemporary society.