University of the Witwatersrand > FMSP

RESEARCH

The Forced Migration Studies Programme is one of the leading research institutes on displacement and humanitarianism in Africa. Our research initiatives, designed to further theory, advocacy, and training, are a core component of our work and form the basis for collaborations with civil society organizations and universities in Africa, Europe, and North America.

Our current research and speaker series include the following:

FMSP Speaker Series

Recognizing that efforts to publicize and protect refugees and forced migrants living in South Africa can only be strengthened through better communication among scholars, activists, service providers, and policy makers, this series aims to strengthen networks among the various actors in the forced migration field. Events are held on the Wits Campus during the final week of each month and cover a wide range of academic, practical, and political issues related to forced migration.

Migration Research Initiatives

The programme’s primary research is divided into a series of inter-related initiatives involving collaboration among staff, students, and partners outside of the University.

Migration Working Paper Series

Our working paper series provides a forum for preliminary findings on themes broadly related to migration in Africa. Papers in the series include discussions of social, economic, and political integration; the changing nature of political community; and ethical and methodological issues in migration research.
Below is the list of all the Working Papers

  • Working Paper #40
    D. Vigneswaran, A Foot In The Door: Access To Asylum In South Africa
  • Working Paper #39
    L.B. Landau, The Meaning Of Living In South Africa:
    Violence, Condemnation And Community After 5-11
  • Working Paper #38
    A. Bloch, Gaps in Protection:Undocumented Zimbabwean Migrants In South Africa
  • Working Paper #37
    L.B. Landau and D. Vigneswaran, Which Migration, What Development? Critical Perspectives on European-African Relations
  • Working Paper #36
    T.R. Hepner, Transnational Political and Legal Dimensions of Emergent Eritrean Human Rights Movements
  • Working Paper #35
    T. Mechlinski, Factors Affecting Migrant Remittances and Return Migration: A Case Study of South Africa (Migrant Remittances and Return: South Africa)
  • Working Paper #34
    A. Perullo, Migration and the Cultural Commodity of Congolese Music in Dar es Salaam, 1975-1985
  • Working Paper #32
    L.B. Landau and I. Haupt, Tactical Cosmopolitanism and Idioms of Belongings
  • Working Paper #31
    L. Smith, A Home in the City: Transnational Investments in Urban Housing
  • Working Paper #29
    L.B. Landau, Protection as Capability Expansion: Practical Ethics for Assisting Urban Refugeess
  • Working Paper #25
    C. Kihato and L.B. Landau, The Uncaptured Urbanite: Migration and State Power in Johannesburgs
  • Working Paper #24
    D. Vigneswaran, The Importance of Place in Understanding City-State Territoriality
  • Working Paper #23
    E.H. Campbell, Urban Refugees in Nairobi: Protection, Survival, and Integration
  • Working Paper #22
    C. Coulter, The Post War Moment: Female Fighters in Sierra Leone
  • Working Paper #21
    L.B. Landau, Discrimination and Development?: Migration, Urbanisation, and Sustainable Livelihoods in South Africa’s Forbidden Cities
  • Working Paper #20
    E. Pineteh, Memories of Home and Exile: Narratives of Cameroonian Asylum Seekers in Johannesburg
  • Working Paper #19
    L.B. Landau, Transplants and Transients: Nativism, Nationalism, and Migration in Inner-City Johannesburg
  • Working Paper #18
    J.P. Misago, Responses to Displacement in Africa: The Irrelevance of Best Practice
  • Working Paper #17
    T. Polzer, Adapting to Changing Legal Frameworks: Mozambican Refugees in South Africa
  • Working Paper #16
    B. Amisi and R. Ballard, In the Absence of Citizenship: Congolese Refugee Struggle and Organisation in South Africa
  • Working Paper #15
    L.B. Landau, Immigration and the State of Exception: Nativism, Security, and Sovereignty in Refugee-Affected Africa
  • Working Paper #14
    F. Maphosa, The Impact of Remittances from Zimbabweans Working in South Africa on Rural Livelihoods in the Southern districts of Zimbabwe
  • Working Paper #13
    L.B. Landau, K. Ramjathan-Keogh, and G. Singh Xenophobia in South Africa and Problems Related to It
  • Working Paper #11
    L.B. Landau and K. Jacobsen, The Value of Transparency, Replicability, & Representativeness: A Response to Graeme Rodgers’s “‘Hanging Out’ With Forced Migrants”
  • Working Paper #10
    L.B. Landau and S. Roever, The Burden of Representation in Humanitarian Contexts: Survey Research on Mobile and Marginal Populations
  • Working Paper #9
    F. G. Mutebi, Witchcraft, Trust, and Reciprocity among Mozambican Refugees and Their South African Hosts in a Lowveld Village
  • Working Paper #8
    T. Polzer, “We Are All South Africans Now:” The Integration of Mozambican Refugees in Rural South Africa
  • Working Paper #7
    L.B. Landau, The Laws of (In)Hospitality: Black Africans in South Africa
  • Working Paper #5
    T. R. Smith, The Making of the South African (1998) Refugees Act
  • Working Paper #4
    L.B. Landau, Challenge Without Transformation: Refugees, Aid, and Trade in Western Tanzania
  • Working Paper #3
    E. Lammers, Young, Urban Refugees in Kampala, Uganda: Some Thoughts on the Ethics of Fieldwork and Issues of Representation
  • Working Paper #2
    K. Jacobsen and L.B. Landau, Researching Refugees: Some Methodological and Ethical Considerations in Social Science and Forced Migration
  • Working Paper #1
    M. Macchiavello, Urban Forced Migrants in Kampala: Methodologies and Ethical and Psychological Issues

Migration Methods and Field Notes

This series includes brief field notes providing important ideas about the application of specific methodologies, critiquing their usage in prevailing migration research, and offering guidelines for improving the conduct of research. This page also provides a forum for more in-depth methods papers that detail the parameters of a new or existing approach, engage in broader methodological debates, and bring the discussion of methodological issues into conversation with other aspects of the research enterprise.

Forced Migration Research Documents

As part of its work, the FMSP occassionally produces reports and other research related documents on issues concerning conflict, displacement, and migration in Africa.

Forced Migration Publications

FMSP Staff members and associates have a growing publishing record of both practitioner and academically oriented articles, book chapters, reports, and conference presentation.

CAGE Reports

These reports and policy briefs summarise the South African findings of an eighteen-month collaborative research project of the Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), Moi University, Kenya.

“The Forced Migration Studies Programme has become internationally established as an authority on regional and comparative forced migration issues. Through its teaching, research and public seminars, it has provided a much needed critical platform for confronting civil society, researchers and policy makers alike of the overwhelming need to develop multi-partner, participatory strategies and policies to ensure the effective protection of forced migrants.”

Jeff Handmaker
Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM),
Utrecht University, The Netherlands

NEW BOOK

“The Humanitarian Hangover: Displacement, Aid, and Transformation in Western Tanzania.”
Author: Loren Landau