- Social integration outcomes of university students under urbanization in the Wa Municipality, Ghana.   311 kb by    Derbile, Emmanuel | derbile_uds@hotmail.com    Short Outline This paper underscores that both positive and negative social outcomes are associated with the social integration of temporary university student immigrants in the Wa Municipality of north western Ghana and this requires a holistic approach to planning for dealing with the emerging issues. Abstract Over the past decade, the Wa municipality has experienced an unprecedented rate of urbanization, partly attributed to the immigration of a temporary university student population of the University for Development Studies (UDS). Most of these students are accommodated in shared private residential accommodation in the city and its suburbs. This has brought students close to the indigenous people, the Waala, leading to close social and economic interactions. In the context of social integration theory, the issue this paper explores is the social outcomes arising from the integration of university students in indigenous Waala communities in the Municipality. Drawing primarily on qualitative data from in-depth interviews of landlords, students, staff of the University and traders, this paper underscores that social integration outcomes have been both positive and negative, the latter being predominant. In the positive domain, most university students (over 4000) with varied ethnic backgrounds who do not gain residence in University student hostels are accepted to live in shared rental accommodation arrangements by indigenous Waala families annually across the city. In addition, many young indigenous Waala people, particularly, young girls have been inspired to attain higher education by their exposure to university students who they consider as role models in higher education. In the negative domain, the Waala community frown on the general life style of students and this lead to tensions and conflict between the students and their Waala host families. What is even worrying to the Waala community is that their children are adopting [simplequote]un-Islamic[simplequote] and or unacceptable life style of students, including [simplequote]fashionable dressing styles[simplequote] that encourage some extent of nudity. Furthermore, these social tensions and conflicts have led to threats of ejection of students from shared tenancy arrangements and or ejection of students without appropriate compensations per rental agreements. Also, landlords take advantage of the situation of students and apply higher rent to them while at the same time apply lower rates to indigents and or non- students for the same type of residential accommodation. In extreme cases, landlords apply even much higher rents to targeted students when rent renewals are due simply as a means to ejecting them for social behaviours they don[simplequote]t like. In addition, retailers in the market profile students and apply higher market prices that are above the prevailing market prices in the sale of vegetables and general foodstuff. Another key outcome is that there is an increasing trend in teenage pregnancies resulting from relationships between male university students and teenagers in school. Similarly, married men, including Alhajis are falling in love with the female university students and this is causing social tensions at homes and leading to an increasing hostility towards the students by married women. The paper advocates an integrated approach to planning within the context of decentralization and in particular, District Development Planning (DDP) in the municipality. The approach should engender community and multi- stakeholder engagement involving the University for Development Studies and Wa Municipal Assembly (WMA) for the promotion of the following: education of students and communities on issues of social integration; creation of platforms for interactions and building bridges between communities and university students; strengthening the Rent Control Board (RCB) to discharge its function of regulating rent and resolving conflicts to avoid exploitation of students; and working effectively with the District Health Management Team to design and implement reproductive health services targeted at the indigenous youth and university students. Keywords social integration urbanization Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper