How second-generation Nigerians in the UK see “home”

A dark UK winter morning can smell like two places at once. The radiator clicks on, someone’s scraping ice off a windscreen outside, and from the kitchen comes the sweet heat of fried plantain. A parent is already on a WhatsApp voice note, laughing loudly at news from Lagos, while you’re scanning emails for work in Birmingham, London, Manchester, anywhere that feels like your normal.

For many second-generation Nigerians in the UK, “home” isn’t a single dot on a map. It can be the street you know by heart and the country your parents still call “back home” without thinking. It can be a feeling, a rhythm, a set of people who hold you steady.

This piece is about that push and pull: why the UK can feel like home in practice, why Nigeria can feel like home in identity, and how people build something liveable in the space between.

What “home” means when you grew up in the UK with Nigerian roots

Second-generation Nigerians in the UK are usually people born in Britain, or raised here from a young age, with Nigerian parents. You might have a British accent that gives you away in one sentence, and a Nigerian upbringing that shows up in a thousand small ways.

When people talk about “home”, they can mean different things at once:

• Place: where you sleep, work, study, and pay rent.
• People: the family who raised you, the friends who shaped you.
• Routine: habits that make life feel stable.
• Identity: what you claim, and what others allow you to claim.
• Safety: where you can relax without translating yourself.

Research on Nigerians of the second generation in Britain has found a pattern many recognise: the UK can feel like home in practice, while Nigeria can feel like home in identity. In Onoso Imoagene’s work on identity among second-generation Nigerians in the US and UK, many respondents describe “British” as something official (passport, rights, daily life), while emotional attachment is more complicated (and often shaped by whether they feel welcomed) (Being British vs. Being American (PDF)).

That split doesn’t mean someone is confused. It can mean they’re honest. Home is doing the school run and also knowing how to greet elders properly when you walk into a living room full of aunties.

Home as the UK day-to-day, habits, friends, and the life you know

The UK becomes home through repetition. The bus you always miss. The same Tesco meal deal. The corner chicken shop that knows your order. The jokes that only land if you grew up here, the kind where you barely move your face but everyone understands.

It’s also the big systems that shape your week: commuting, GP appointments, the NHS text reminder, work emails, rent increases, bills that make you squint. These are not “paperwork” details. They are the texture of a life.

Belonging shows up in small, ordinary switches. With friends, you might speak in fast British slang, chopped up and playful. At home, your tone changes. You soften your voice for “Mummy” or “Daddy”. You hear your name said with the right Nigerian music in it, not the clipped version you accept at school or work.

And if you grew up in a place where your neighbours were also from somewhere else, home can be the whole mix. One academic study on place and identity in British neighbourhood life captures how people attach pride and meaning to specific areas over time, not just to a flag (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies article). For second-generation Nigerians, that can mean your postcode is part of your story, even when your surname points elsewhere.

Home as Nigeria in the heart, family stories, food, faith, and culture

Nigeria can feel like home even when you haven’t lived there. Sometimes it’s carried into the UK in loud, loving ways: jollof rice debates, pepper that makes your eyes water, Nollywood playing in the background, parents switching into Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or pidgin when they’re excited or annoyed.

Often, Nigeria arrives through expectations. Education is not a casual topic in many Nigerian households. Neither is respect. Titles matter. Greeting matters. The way you dress for a wedding matters. Even if you don’t agree with every rule, you still feel the weight of them.

Faith can be part of it too, whether that’s church, mosque, or a family prayer before leaving the house. It can make a UK home feel like a Nigerian one, not because the walls changed, but because the atmosphere did.

Trips to Nigeria can deepen that feeling. You arrive and your body knows certain things, the heat, the noise, the way family fills space. At the same time, you might feel lost when everyone’s laughing at slang you don’t know, or when “quick trip” means three hours in traffic. Nigeria can feel like home and unfamiliar in the same afternoon. Both can be true.

Living in-between: belonging, racism, and feeling “not enough” in two places

There’s a particular ache in being told, directly or indirectly, that you don’t fully belong in either place. In Britain, you might be treated as permanently foreign. In Nigeria, you might be treated as a visitor playing dress-up.

A lot of second-generation Nigerians learn early that identity is not only what you say it is. It’s also what people reflect back at you. When the reflection is warped, “home” can start to feel conditional.

Public discussions and research on race and belonging in Britain keep returning to a simple point: when people face inequality and exclusion, it changes how safe the word “home” feels (Race in Britain: Inequality, Identity & Belonging). For UK-born Nigerians, that can land as a quiet question: if I was born here, why do I still have to prove I’m from here?

When Britain questions your place: race, names, and the feeling of being watched

It can start small. A teacher stumbles over your name and never tries again. Someone pulls a face at the smell of your lunch. A classmate jokes about Africa like it’s one place, one story, one stereotype.

Then it keeps going. The question that follows you into adulthood: “Where are you really from?” People often ask it like it’s friendly curiosity. It doesn’t always feel friendly. It can feel like a door being half-closed, even as you stand on your own street.

At work, it might show up as surprise at how “well-spoken” you are, like competence is unexpected. Or bias dressed as “culture fit”. Or the sense that you’re being watched more closely, judged more harshly, given less room to be messy and human.

Some people also carry a sharper fear, shaped by policing, headlines, and politics that heat up whenever migration is in the news. Even if you’re not an immigrant, the mood can still catch you. A personal story shared during Black History Month by a UK worker who moved from Nigeria as a child captures how race can shape your view of Britain, even while you build a life here (Seeing Britain through an immigrant’s eyes).

This is part of why “British” can feel like a legal fact, but not always like a warm identity. If the country treats you as a guest, you may stop trying to feel at home in it, even while you’re living your whole life here.

When Nigeria tests you too: being called “oyinbo”, “ajebo”, or “diaspora”

Then you land in Nigeria and get humbled in a different way.

Family members might laugh at your accent. Someone calls you “oyinbo” (white person, often meaning “foreigner” in this context), or “ajebo” (soft, privileged), or just “diaspora” like it’s your first name. You’re Nigerian until you open your mouth. Then you’re “not that Nigerian”.

You may not know the latest slang. You might dress a bit too neat, or too casual, for the setting. You might be direct in a way that reads as rude, or polite in a way that reads as stiff. You can love Nigeria and still feel like you’re moving through it with an invisible “visitor” sticker on your chest.

That can hurt, because it hits a tender place. Nigeria is often the identity you hold tight when Britain feels cold. Being told you don’t fit there either can feel like losing a second home.

Yet it can also spark curiosity. Some people start learning language properly as adults, not just the household phrases. They ask grandparents for stories. They piece together family history that wasn’t explained, only assumed. They stop chasing “authentic” and choose something more real: belonging that grows with effort.

For more background on Nigerian second-generation identity patterns (mostly focused on the US, but useful for context and comparison), the Center for Migration Studies summarises related research here: Second-Generation Nigerians in the United States and….

How second-generation Nigerians build a sense of home across two worlds

After a while, many people stop treating “home” as a test with one right answer. They build it instead.

They do it with friends who get it without long speeches. They do it with food and music. They do it with boundaries. They do it by choosing what to keep from each place, and what to leave behind.

Since 2020, the tools for this have been loud and constant. Afrobeats doesn’t feel far away when it’s on every playlist. Nollywood clips travel on TikTok in minutes. WhatsApp family groups keep Nigeria close, even when you haven’t visited in years.

Home is people and places: family networks, Nigerian churches, and community hubs

Community can make “home” feel physical. Not an idea, but an actual place you can go.

For some, it’s Nigerian churches where you can wear your best outfit on a random Sunday and still get asked if you’ve eaten. For others, it’s a mosque community that feels familiar in tone and rhythm. It might be the African food shop where the cashier calls you “my dear” and you hear the same languages your parents speak.

It can also be weddings, naming ceremonies, and birthday parties that run late and feed everyone twice. The UK venue might be in a business park, but the spirit is Lagos. You learn that “community” is not just people you like. It’s people who will show up, loudly, even when life is hard.

There’s a softer truth too: these spaces can come with pressure. Gossip travels. Everyone knows someone who knows your mum. Success can feel like a requirement, not a hope. Some people love that structure. Others need distance from it. Many feel both at once.

Still, when you’re tired of explaining yourself, being around your own can feel like taking your shoes off after a long day.

Home is also a choice: hybrid identity, new traditions, and online connection

A lot of second-generation Nigerians choose a label that fits their real life: British Nigerian, Nigerian British, or simply Nigerian depending on the room they’re in. Not because they’re hiding, but because identity is contextual. You speak to what’s in front of you.

Hybrid home shows up in new traditions:

Christmas: British stockings and Nigerian rice, with family arguments over whether jollof belongs on the table (it does).
Style: ankara with trainers, gele for the big day, hoodie the next.
Language: British humour outside, Nigerian respect at home, pidgin online for fun.
Food: Sunday roast one week, egusi the next, both feeling like comfort.

Online life has made the in-between feel less lonely. You can learn recipes from aunties you’ve never met. You can watch skits that sound like your childhood. You can follow Nigerian news without waiting for a relative to summarise it on a call.

And visiting Nigeria as an adult can change everything. You notice the country differently when you’re not a child dragged from house to house. You might meet other diaspora Nigerians who are also trying to work out what “home” means. You might even see that the Nigeria in your parents’ memories is not the Nigeria in front of you. That gap can be painful, but it can also be freeing. It means you’re allowed to make your own connection.

Conclusion

“Home” for second-generation Nigerians in the UK is often layered. It can be Britain, where life happens daily, and Nigeria, where identity is fed by family, culture, and memory. It can also be the space in-between, where you build a way of living that doesn’t need permission.

The strongest forces shaping that feeling are simple: everyday life in the UK, roots carried from Nigeria, and how much acceptance you meet in both places. When either side pushes you away, you learn to make home in people, not just in countries.

Picture a suitcase by the door, two passports in a drawer, one family table that holds two kinds of laughter. That’s not confusion. That’s a life. If you’ve ever held more than one place in your heart, share what home means to you.