Convenor(s)
Tati Gabriel / University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Globally, immigration is restricted and selective in terms of quality. Yet to circumvent barriers to entry and stay, migrants deploy collective strategies of resistance often under life-threatening circumstances. Collective resistance, operated either in group or in chain, takes different forms in the departure area: taking the high sea to enter by boat the destination country, travelling hidden in trucks, crossing hostile and dangerous border points, studying abroad and escape educational systems in crisis. At destination, collective resistance takes various forms: establishing associations to politically lobby and voice claims for right to stay, resorting to human rights protection activists, sharing tactics to legitimate the stay or tacitly trading skills abroad to avoid unemployment at home. All these forms of resistance are context specific, generational, gendered and cut across nationality divide. The questions to be investigated are: to what extent is resistance to restrictive measures a response to increased inequalities? To what extent is resistance linked to human insecurity and what are the specific linkages? How do individuals, candidates for emigration and established immigrants, organise themselves in groups to carry out their migratory projects? How does informality participate in the social construction of such forms of resistance? The panel discusses these questions from the perspective of intra-African migration and that of Africa-rest of the world.
Migrations internationales et formes organisées de résistance collective contre les barrières à l’entrée et au séjour : perspectives à partir de l’Afrique
Mondialement, l’immigration est entravée et sélective en qualité. Néamoins pour contourner les entraves à l’entrée et au séjour, les migrants déploient des stratégies collectives de résistance souvent dans des conditions perilleuses. Au depart ces strategies, pratiquées en groupe ou en chaine, prennent différentes formes: prendre la mer par embarquement de fortune pour entrer dans le pays de destination, voyager en cachette dans des camions des marchandises, traverser la frontière en des endroits hostiles et dangereuses ou étudier à l’étranger. A destination, la résistance collective à des formes variées: établissement des associations pour le lobbying au droit de séjour, recours aux activists des droits de l’homme, partager les informations sur les tactiques qui légitiment le séjour, ou commercialiser les qualifications pour éviter le chômage dans le pays d’origine. Les questions examinées sont: dans quelles mesures la resistance aux mesures restrictives est-elle une réponse à la montée des inégalités? Dans quelle mesure cette résistance est-elle liée à l’insésurité humaine? Comment est ce que les personnes, aussi bien candidates à l’émigration que celles déjà installées, s’organisent en groupe pour mener leur projet migratoire? Quelle est la place de l’informalité dans la construction sociale de cette résistance? Le panel éxamine ces questions dans une perspective couvrant aussi bien la migration intra-africaine que celle entre le continent et le reste du monde.
Degorce Alice / IMAF, IRD
Resisting together to (re-) integrate: an association women in Ouagadougou
Les migrants burkinabè de retour de Côte d’Ivoire au moment de la guerre civile du début des années 2000 ont souvent connu des problèmes d’intégration. Surnoms aux consonances péjoratives, stigmatisation de leurs façons de parler ou de s’habiller, ou encore reproches ciblant un présupposé manque de participation au développement du pays sont autant d’éléments qui ont rendu ces retours au Burkina Faso difficiles. Beaucoup sont par ailleurs rentrés dans un état de grande précarité. Cette communication porte sur une association de femmes rapatriées à Ouagadougou. Alors que de nombreux migrants sont repartis dès que la situation l’a permis, il s’agit d’interroger les stratégies mises en place par les actrices de cette association pour s’insérer malgré tout dans la capitale burkinabè et opérer de la sorte une forme de résistance à un contexte social peu favorable à leur installation. Plus de dix ans après leur retour, ces femmes ont en effet su créer les conditions nécessaires à leur insertion dans une ville en plein changement et dans un contexte économique et social qui reste fragile, en mettant tour à tour au premier plan et selon les situations leur identité de migrantes, religieuse ou de genre.
Zack Tanya / The School of Architecture and Planning, University of Witwatersrand
Managing entry and stay in “Jeppe” – 4000 kilometres from home
Since the late 1990s, thousands of Ethiopian political asylum seekers and economic migrants have moved to Johannesburg. Many find their way as traders and shop assistants in the inner city of Johannesburg in an area colloquially known as ‘Jeppe’ (Zack, 2014). While some research has documented the spatial and economic nature of this trading community, little exploration has been undertaken into the social strategies that Ethiopian migrants employ to navigate their entry and their stay in the ethnic entrepreneurial cluster they occupy. How Ethiopian economic migrants to Johannesburg manage their connections ‘here’ and ‘there’ offers important insights into these strategies. And the particular barriers to entry that individuals have to manage within this entrepreneurial community in inner city Johannesburg are at once economic and social. Through interviews with Ethiopian migrant entrepreneurs in inner city Johannesburg this narrative non-fiction paper will focus on the experience of ten individuals who are navigating their entry and stay in the host society while managing their connectedness to their source community. The work is based on interviews conducted during 2014 and 2015. It explores disconnection and connection, social institutions and social capital in a work dominated environment, managing life events in absentia, social freedoms and constraints in the host society.
Bonfiglio Ayla / UNU-MERIT, Maastricht Graduate School for Governance
Student migrant, refugee or both? Exploring refugee agency and mobility through tertiary education
This research seeks to move beyond characterizations of displacement as spontaneous and lacking agency by understanding how tertiary education shapes forced migration processes in Kenya and Uganda. Using Kunz’ (1973) framework on refugee movements and a comparative qualitative research design, this study will ask: 1) What are the displacement patterns (i.e., the stages, routes, and timing of movement) of refugees who become tertiary level students? 2) What are refugees’ norms, aspirations, and routine practices surrounding tertiary education and how have they evolved over the course of refugees’ displacement, and 3) How have the dimensions of refugee agency related to tertiary education shaped and been shaped by refugees’ displacement patterns? While an innovative lens to analyze agency, examining refugee tertiary education is crucial for furthering the refugee development field, given its positive implications for integration and reintegration and the protracted nature of most refugee situations.
Costantini Osvaldo / Sapienza-University of Rome
“My work is mesawati, a sacrifice made to help my brother to come here… Now it is his turn”. Familiar and individual strategies among Eritrean refugees in Europe.
Eritrean migration is a wide migration phenomenon in this time. UNHCR estimates that about 300.000 Eritrean refugees have been recognized in the world in the last 15 years, an impressive number for a country with a population of 4-5 million of habitants.
They are leaving the country because of the living conditions under Afewerki’s regime that forces every citizen between age 18 and 40 (50 for men) to endure endless military training, in a country where all freedom have been suppressed in the name of the defense of the home country. Their migration could be defined as “forced migration”, but this label does not reflect the reality at all: firstly, they elaborate a “desire of elsewhere” based on an image of western life widely spread in all diasporic contexts; Secondly, their decision to migrate often does not come suddenly, but it is the outcome of a process and/or of a family strategy. These strategies, created to entry and stay in European countries, encounter various barriers that are built to limit the entrance of migrants.
Through the strategies acted by an Eritrean refugee in Rome, I would like to show how individuals, families and groups, organize themselves to realize their migratory projects. I will focus on the way how they use their family network to avoid the obligation to claim asylum in Italy and how they try to reach northern-European countries that are considered to be a better place to live than Italy.
Setrana Mary Boatemaa / University of Ghana
Transnational Political Participation of Ghanaians in the Netherlands: a Contribution to Ghana’s Democratic Governance
This paper examines the impact of transnational political practice of immigrants on the democratic governance of the home country. Using mainly questionnaires, information was solicited from fifty Ghanaian immigrants in the Netherlands. Findings show that Ghanaian political party branches in the Diaspora support their counterparts financially in Ghana during internal elections and national electoral campaigns. Political party branches in the Diaspora educate and inform Ghanaian immigrants about the day to day governance of their home country through radio and Television programmes. These immigrants are also offered the opportunity to share their opinions through those programmes. Others also take part in deciding on the leadership of the political party. However, immigrants’ transnational political practice, are seldom rewarded by the political environment in Ghana. Therefore, the paper suggest that the Representation of the People Amendment Law (ROPAL) should be implemented to allow Ghanaian immigrants exercise their full right by voting in national elections abroad.