Migration

The ABI research cluster “Patterns of (Forced) Migration” in association with the Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT), organised a symposium on Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Great Lakes Region on the 25th of September, which provided an opportunity for researchers from the region, as well as those working there, to offer their insights. 

The keynote speaker, Dr. David N. Tshimba (Uganda Martyrs University) shared valuable insights from his research and hands-on experience working with refugees in Uganda, focusing on current challenges in funding and recent research developments in the region.

Dr. Kalyango Ronald Sebba (Kyambogo University, Uganda) and Dr. Franzisca Zanker (ABI) complemented this by presenting a paper on the political discourse around refugees and Uganda and how that has influenced local and national responses. 

After this, the symposium turned its focus to the challenges, but also successes of humanitarian and non-governmental work with refugees. Prof. Dr. Dennis Dijkzeul (Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict) shared outcomes of organisations working with South Sudanese refugees in the Gulu region of Uganda. He emphasized how different organizations learned to collaborate and improve the outcomes of projects ranging from agricultural training to soap production and cash transfers. 

Volker Gerdesmeier (Caritas International, Germany) was then able to expand the focus by relaying Caritas International’s work with refugees in the Eastern Congo. The dynamics of the conflict there are also changing the refugee situation in the region, but Caritas International has been able to continue providing valuable assistance because of its long-term presence and close cooperation with local agencies. 

The diverse group of 14 participants engaged in lively discussions with the presenters, covering topics such as ethnicity, funding, local responses, impacts on host communities, and the political implications of hosting refugees. Despite the many challenges that were discussed, the symposium also revealed the good work being done on the ground and the opportunities for improving the lives of refugees. The symposium offered participants a valuable opportunity to engage with experts who have extensive experience working with refugees in the Great Lakes region, facilitating meaningful discussions and the exchange of ideas.

ERC Grant: “The Political Lives of Migrants: Perspectives from Africa”

The European Research Council (ERC) will fund a new research project on migration in Africa, led by Dr Franzisca Zanker. The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute will receive 1.5 Mio Euro for the project in the next five years. 

The project is among the 14.2% of the applications that was selected for the ERC-Starting Grant 2024. Besides its pertinent research question and the important inclusion of perspectives from the Global South, the evaluation panel found the innovative research methods especially convincing. These include participatory theatre workshops and the analysis of migrant agency diaries. 

The reception of refugees and other migrants, their long-term perspectives and their lives in a new home are among the most pressing political questions of our time. What do migrants think about this? How do they see their lives, their role and their political agency? A four-person research group based at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, headed by Dr Franzisca Zanker, will work on these questions. 

The research context

The project seeks a new perspective beyond the dominant Eurocentric migration research by focusing on the political agency of refugees and other migrants in Africa. The research will consider various postcolonial spaces and conditions. The project aims to further a self-defined understanding of migrants' political agency in interaction with state and non-state institutions and actors. In the spirit of critical knowledge production, the ERC-funded project follows a collaborative research approach, for example by collaborating with Africa-based colleagues and translating the research results into local languages. 

The research project will shed light on the effects of different migrant trajectories, i.e. their legal status or whether in their country of origin, transit or destination, on their political agency. Empirical research will be conducted in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia and Malawi.

Dr Franzisca Zanker about her success:

‘I am delighted about the opportunity to bring new perspectives to such an important social issue with this project. What can migrants tell us about their own role, needs and desires in society? What can we learn by adopting an Afrocentric perspective? This prestigious and substantial grant will allow my team and I to push methodological boundaries, further our understanding of migrant agency and ultimately knowledge production.’

About Dr Franzisca Zanker

Dr Franzisca Zanker is a researcher on conflict and (forced) migration. After completing her doctorate at the University of Tübingen in 2015 and a position at the GIGA Research Institute in Hamburg, she has headed the Cluster on Patterns of (Forced) Migration at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg since 2017. She was Principal Investigator on several research projects on the political interests of African states in migration and refugee protection, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research and the Mercator Foundation. She is co-coordinator of the research group ‘African Mobility, Migration and Displacement’. 

Dr Zanker has an extensive publication record and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Refugee Studies. She has carried out fieldwork in Kenya, Liberia, The Gambia, Uganda and South Africa. 

The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute

The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute (ABI) is one of the most important research institutes in Germany in the fields of comparative areas studies and transregional studies. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, the institute cooperates with the University of Freiburg. The ABI conducts research on issues of migration, conflict and governance in countries of the Global South. 

About the European Research Council (ERC)

The ERC was founded by the European Union in 2007 and is the most important European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of all nationalities and ages who carry out projects throughout Europe. More information at www.erc.europa.eu 

Dr Zanker and Ms Taxis are happy to answer any press enquiries.

Dr Franzisca Zanker 
franzisca.zanker [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Tel: +49 (0)761 888 78 31

Clara Taxis
Science Communication 
presse.abi [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Tel: +49 (0)761 888 78 14

Rwanda is not the first country to be addressed by European states in the matter of accepting third-country asylum seekers. The current debate is rather the most recent endeavour in an ongoing externalization effort that tries to convince African countries by various carrot and stick methods to take back their own “rejected” nationals, and ideally, even third-country nationals. The difficulty of successful cooperation pinpoints the unlikelihood of outsourcing asylum ever becoming a viable option for potential African partner countries. 

Franzisca Zanker discusses the humanitarian and legal dimensions of this as well as the role of the different interests of the institution of the EU compared to african states.

The full article can be found on Externalizing Asylum in English. It was re-published in German for the iz3w.

From 26 to 28 June 2024, a workshop funded by the DFG on "Postpandemic Remnants: Long-term Covid-19 Impacts on Migration/Mobility in the Global South" took place at the ABI in Freiburg with 20 participants from various social science disciplines. The workshop was organised and conducted by the DFG Network: Migration and Imm/mobility in the Global South in Times of a Pandemic.

As a kick-off to this last of four workshops, Dr Gunjan Sondhi from The Open University (UK) gave a public keynote speech at the University of Freiburg. In the lecture entitled "Repairing Infrastructures of (Im)Mobility - Lessons from the Covid-19 Crisis", Dr Sondhi addressed the question of the extent to which crises, which should be seen as moments rather than events, reveal internal contradictions in society and the underlying system. The focus here was on the infrastructure failure concerning the (im)mobility of international students and other vulnerable migrants. Although these migrants have always faced weak infrastructures, the pandemic has exacerbated the intensity of this experience of spatial and temporal insecurity. Although the pandemic as an active moment of crisis is over, the repair work started on these migrant infrastructures is not yet sufficient.

The second day of the workshop was initially dedicated to analysing the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on migration and mobility in the Global South. The inputs were based on a research project Franzisca Zanker (ABI) coordinated in 2021. Joyce Takaindisa from the University of Witwatersrand focussed in her presentation on exemptions granted to Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa during the pandemic. She focussed on the post-pandemic interplay between xenophobia and constantly changing political migration regulations.

Luisa Gabriela Morales Vega from the Autonomous University of Mexico State presented her research on Mexico's national migration controls in the wake of the post-pandemic. She showed that the tightened state migration controls in Mexico are a remnant of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The participants then split into smaller groups and went on an interactive walk to discuss their own experiences and observations on the after-effects of the pandemic on migration in the countries they are researching. This walk was the prelude to a writing workshop in which the participants prepared short texts for a joint publication to be published following this workshop.

The last day of the workshop gave the participants another opportunity to work on their texts and exchange ideas. Finally, the next steps for the network group and other possible publications were discussed in plenary and invitations to various academic conferences were extended.

20 June is World Refugee Day. The UNHCR writes:

"It is the day that reminds us that millions of people are forced to leave their homes. The United Nations Refugee Agency publishes the annual "Global Trends" report, which summarises the dramatic situation worldwide in sober figures. At the same time, the UNHCR recognises the strength, courage and resilience that refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless people demonstrate on a daily basis. There are currently 120 million people on the move - the largest number of displaced persons ever recorded."

Franzisca Zanker published her analysis "Outsourcing Asylum to African States? An endeavour destined to fail" on the recently launched platform www.externalizingmigration.info. The platform offers contributions from academics on the topic, in text and video form and as podcasts. 

Franzisca Zanker's contribution looks at the European strategy of outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries and uses previous attempts at cooperation to show that the political interests of African partner countries are not being sufficiently taken into account: 
 

"Rwanda is not the first country to be addressed by European states in the matter of accepting third-country asylum seekers. The current debate is rather the most recent endeavour in an ongoing externalization effort that tries to convince African countries by various carrot and stick methods to take back their own “rejected” nationals, and ideally, even third-country nationals. The difficulty of successful cooperation pinpoints the unlikelihood of outsourcing asylum ever becoming a viable option for potential African partner countries."

Read the full entry here.

Global academia is in the midst of renewed debates and interventions against the persistent inequalities in African and Africanist higher education following calls for decolonising academia. Migration patterns and policies, as well as research on them, are often deeply informed by post-/colonial relations, and migration research has been slow in exposing and addressing its post-/coloniality.

The collaborative Research Group AMMODI therefore hosted a virtual roundtable in December 2023. The recordings of this event are now available online as a video!

The roundtable seeked to address the structural inequalities embedded in Africanist migration research through a set of dialogues between researchers, journal editors, and librarians who confront these issues in different ways. It aimed to diagnose the persistent inequalities in the field, and offer inspiration for ways to work towards more equity and inclusivity.The roundtable also briefly introduced the AMMODI database of over 200 Africa-based scholars working on migration, mobility and displacement and their work, which aims to be one step towards increasing the visibility of African migration research.

For Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, a recent decision to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has thrown up questions about how they will navigate regional mobility in future. Ecowas covers a variety of sectors, but migration is a major one. The bloc’s protocols since 1979 have long been seen as a shining example of free movement on the continent. They gave citizens the right to move between countries in the region without a visa, and a prospective right of residence and setting up businesses.

As multidisciplinary scholars, Franzisca Zanker, Amanda Bisong, and  Leonie Jegen have previously researched migration governance in west Africa, at the regional level, and in particular contexts like Niger. In an article for The Conversation, they argue that Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have much to lose if their departure from Ecowas curtails mobility. But it is likely that informal mobility will continue anyway.

You can find the full article on the website of The Conversation.