Looking for some alternative form of guarantee, the migrants turn to the antithesis of modern civilization, their own customary moral institutions founded on the identities of kinship, descent, and family, reinforced as they are by a common language and religion, by the certain obligations of birth and community. This option too is fallible. The institutions do not travel en bloc to Accra, and some of the important public sanctions of domestic hierarchy are missing: lineages, ancestor worship, the security of their homeland. The migrant community is an egalitarian brotherhood of floating young men anchored in the patronage of a few resident big men. It is not closed or powerful enough to shore up the authority and reliability of kinsmen.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2428