Category: Research notes
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Europe’s ‘ineffective’ migration policies work well for white supremacy
This blog post describes how white supremacy works through European approaches to ‘manage’ migration from Africa. Iriann Freemantle argues that while it sometimes takes militant forms, the mainstream version of white supremacy is much more pervasive. Although still violent, it is rhetorically softer and avoids explicit racial bias. Yet, its basic premise remains: that whiteness…
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Too many nerds in one room: Theories, theorization, and deconstructing categories
This post reflects on theory-building and inequality in migration research related to African contexts, and the power of categorisations about displacement.
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Historical Migrations in Africa: From Flexible Configurations to Transgressive Mobilities
Historical mobilities in Africa challenge the conceptualisation of mobility and immobility as binaries. In this post, Rose Jaji elaborates on how contemporary migration governance on the continent can be traced back to the transplantation of Western notions of statehood and nationhood to Africa through colonialism, and how these ideas transformed migration and non-migration from continuums…
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“Inequality isn’t just ‘out there’”: Interrogating disparities in research on mobilities and inequality in Africa
Cover photo by “flowcomm”, accessed on Flickr by Hassan Ould Moctar & Heike Drotbohm At a recent Point Sud workshop that took place 15-18 March 2023 in Accra and Cape Coast, we, a group of thirty scholars from several African and European countries, gathered to exchange and reflect on migration research in and from Africa. Over…
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Border management and state sovereignty in the Sahel
Since 2015, European interventions in the Sahel have surged in response to ‘irregular’ migration to the EU and the perceived incapacity of the Sahelian states to control their own borders. In this blog post, Ekaterina Golovko scrutinises the notion of capacity building in relation to local surveillance committees in order to deconstruct the underlying logics…
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Welcome aboard KLM Air Land! Reflections on the mobilities turn
With inspiration from the rich symbolism of local transportation aesthetics in western Ghana, Nauja Kleist reflects on the mobilities turn on the basis of her keynote at the inaugural AMMODI workshop in September 2018. She summarises some of the key features of the mobilities approach and considers the perspectives it inspires and calls for, with…
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Fictional writing and migration knowledge. Reflections on Refugee in Europe by Mehaba Jemal
Talk about migration is widespread in present-day media. Paradoxically, the abundance of reports on migration does not seem to help bring the experience of migrants closer. On the contrary, the overuse of the term ‘migrant’ makes us forget that this word is much too broad to explain anything substantial about the people it denotes. Nikolay…
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The Trial of Dopé: The Modernity of Witchcraft Asylum Claims
As a professor of African History, and expert witness in US federal immigration court, Benjamin Lawrance reflects upon witchcraft accusations in asylum claims; how they are adjudicated; and why they tend to be rejected in court.
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The camp beyond the city: Kakuma and the development of a camp ecology
Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya is emblematic for the debate about the ambiguous phenomenon of the protracted refugee camp. The camp has taken on an urban-like form; a dense, non-agricultural, informal settlement, that is characterized by the meeting of both curtailing and enabling forces, and human agency – by Bram J. Jansen