Orí Across Oceans: Intercultural Identity Reconstruction, Destiny Consciousness, and the Yoruba Diaspora in the Global North

This article examines how Yoruba migrants in the Global North navigate intercultural identity reconstruction through the indigenous concept of Orí (destiny consciousness). Drawing on a framework termed the Human Ontological Framework (HOF), which theorises human existence as a quadripartite structure of Orí, Spirit, Soul, and Body, the paper argues that conventional migration theories – whether assimilationist, transnational, or segmented – fail to account for the ontological dimension of migrant identity. Through analysis of Yoruba diasporic communities in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, the paper demonstrates five Orí-based identity strategies: spiritual anchoring, narrative resistance, entrepreneurial manifestation, generational transmission, and linguistic Orí-maintenance. The article contends that identity-before-behaviour – the principle that ontological alignment must precede behavioural adaptation – offers a corrective to integration models that prioritise external conformity over internal coherence. By foregrounding indigenous African epistemology within migration studies, this paper contributes to decolonial approaches to diaspora scholarship and proposes that destiny consciousness constitutes an undertheorised resilience resource for migrant populations navigating emerging cultural formations in the Global North.