Mobility and Africa’s Emerging Urban Subjectivities.
Coordinated on behalf of the the African Research Universities Alliance’s (ARUA), this is a scholarly response to unprecedented levels of urbanisation and mobility driven by conflict, ambition, and respatialising economies. This initiative brings together five African universities dedicated to cultivating a generation of African scholars dedicated to reshaping global social theory and scholarly conversations on mobility, cities, and social change. It promises to open novel scholarly frontiers and enhance pedagogy and partnerships in ways that positively transform the continent’s universities. It is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinarity, engagement with the arts, and creative research and outreach methodologies. This project is a collaboration with The University of Nairobi, The University of Cape Town, The University of Ghana, and the Centre for Applied Social Science at the University of Zimbabwe.
Relevant Themes
Mobility, Temporality, and Africa’s Future Politics
This project asks what politics emerges in the continent’s urban spaces where spatial futures and boundaries are being renegotiated by actors largely disinterested in realising spatially bound, state-centred citizenship. Working in Accra, Johannesburg, and Nairobi, it uses an innovative mixed of surveys, ethnography, mapping, and humanistic representation to reflect on mobility and future making in three of Africa’s most dynamic and migrant rich urban centres.
This project is being conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana, Samuel Hall in Nairobi, and the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University.
Relevant Themes
Economic Integration and Inclusive Migration Policies in the SADC Region
This research project works to foster economic integration and inclusive migration policies and practices that safeguard human rights and advance the free movement of people, goods and services, focusing on South Africa and the SADC region. The project’s overall objective is to demonstrate the current state of the landscape of migration and economic integration opportunities in SADC in order to inform and support advocacy, movement building and policy making efforts that advance socioeconomic integration and migrant rights protection in the region. This work is a collaboration with Frame45.
Relevant Themes
Xenowatch
Xenowatch is an open-access tool to monitor xenophobic threats and violence across South Africa. It is an open-source system for information collection and sharing. A non-proprietary platform, it collates, visualizes and makes publicly available data and analysis on xenophobic violence incidents in the country. In the coming years, Xenowatch aims to expand elsewhere to develop an original data set on xenophobic violence across sub-Saharan Africa.
Relevant Themes
Welcoming Cities
Welcoming Cities: addressing inclusion, discrimination, and social cohesion : Working with civil society and local government, the project aims to contribute to efforts towards building inclusive, welcoming cities across South Africa by:
- providing research data and evidence-base that can inform more effective programmes and interventions, and
- by facilitating engagements to rethink and improve modes of intervention and stakeholder engagement. The project intends to improve efforts to address xenophobic discrimination, protect refugee and migrant rights, and strengthen local level governance and social cohesion in South Africa.
Relevant Themes
Re-temporalising Africa: European externalisation and the governance of mobility
Re-temporalising Africa: European externalisation and the governance of mobility. Through ongoing monitoring of Europe’s response to African migration, this project explores the emerging regime of ‘migration management’. It documents the making of ‘the responsible migrant’ and the discursive blurring of exclusion and self-protection. In doing so, it emphasises temporal forms of socio-spatial governance as Europeans seek to construct futures for Africans outside of global time. Drawing on interviews, archives, and engagements with policy makers and advocates, this work is developing an emerging archive and critical review of African-European relations and territorial configurations in the twenty-first century.
