Displacement Stereotypes, Acculturation Orientations, and Assimilation: The Case of Mandara Mountains’ Migrants in the Northern Cameroon

This study examines the perception of the Mandara Mountains migrants by the host societies, which influences the orientations of the migrants’ culture. Between the years 1970s and 1980s, the said Mandara Mountains’ societies due to the politico-economic factors and socio-geographical crises were displaced to other regions of the northern part of Cameroon. Therefore, the settlement, insertion, integration, and adaptation of these communities outside their zone of origin present some challenges that lead to different stereotypes. To come out with this result, field studies were carried out in the zones of displaced migrants with the use of variable approaches (questionnaires to collect oral sources and document exploitations done in different libraries of the Garoua and Maroua archive centres). Though, results show, in the northern regions of Cameroon particularly the Mandara Mountains migrants did not only developed a way to integrate their zones of destinations but also readapted their culture in other to perceive better images from the host societies. Lightly, this dynamic acculturation of the migrants threatens sometimes the condition of social coexistence, which is one of the Cameroon pillars of socio-economic, socio-cultural as well as socio-political development.