Events

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Why Europe should NOT serve as best practice: A critical view on how Europe tries to approach the continuous movement of refugees to Europe by Ulrich Stege (International University College of Turin). As many other regions in the world, also Europe has faced a significant growth of asylum seekers and refugees in the recent years. Often this phenomenon is referred to as the “European Refugee Crisis”. Although the growth in numbers of asylum seekers and refugees is a fact, this situation should however be better named as the “Crisis of the European Asylum System”. We can indeed observe, that the current practice in relation to asylum is characterised by a large and growing gap between the humanitarian or human rights rhetoric of the European states and their actual behaviour. While there are certainly a number of elements of the Common European Asylum System, which could be considered as best or at least interesting practices, this presentation however will focus on the demonstration of why the current asylum practice in Europe is failing to achieve its aims and therefore should not be considered a positive example […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Pentecosmopolis: Lagos and its Pentecostalisms by Dr. Obvious Katsaura (Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand). Based on an ethnography of Lagos – one of the most Pentecostal cities in the world – this presentation develops the conceptual metaphors of ‘Pentecosmopolis’ and ‘pentecosmopolitanism’ to capture the role of Pentecostalisms in the crafting of urban diversities and vibrancies. The presentation disbands the ideas of Pentecosmopolis and pentecosmopolitanism into three derivative and interconnected sub-concepts of ‘pentecosmopolitan spatialities’, ‘pentecosmopolitan lifeworlds’ and ‘pentecosmopolitan practices’. The sub-concept of pentecosmopolitan spatialities analyses the role of Pentecostalisms in the diversification and complexification of the spatial character and life of the city. That of pentecosmopolitan lifeworlds explicates the place of Pentecostalisms in the making of urban imaginations relating to domains and ecologies of spirits, beliefs and symbolisms. The translation of pentecosmopolitan lifeworlds into economic, social and political practices is analysed through the sub-concept of pentecosmopolitan practices. This study, thus, contributes to the projects of ‘religionising urban theory’ and ‘urbanising theories of religion’. Biography Dr. Obvious Katsaura is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand. He previously worked […]

The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) in collaboration with the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) will host a workshop on Wednesday, 9 May 2018 at SAIIA’s head office, during which panellists will explore how international developments related to migration are affecting the African continent and the Southern African region. Inputs will focus on the United Nations-led process of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and its attempts to create an international framework for improved and enhanced migration management. Discussions will centre on both the feasibility of such an initiative and the African response to these issues. The second half of the workshop will explore regional and domestic perspectives on migration. Panelists will discuss the similarities and differences between Africa’s regional economic blocs towards migration management, specifically the approaches of the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community. Thereafter, presenters will explore specific in-country case studies of migration management at a domestic level, while also engaging with the intersectionality between migration management and health policies. This workshop aims to bring together academics, policymakers, and stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing migration management at a domestic and international level. It will include presentations from Asmita Parshotam, representing SAIIA, […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled The effects of governing unauthorized migration on citizenship by Stefan Salomon (Institute of International Law, University of Graz). Traditional international law might be characterized by maintaining a twofold strict division: a division between aliens and citizens on the one hand, and a division between citizenship and nationality on the other. This division was doctrinal and conceptual. It materialized in boundaries of separate legal frameworks of migration and citizenship, assuming that change occurs within each framework and that they do not overlap. Citizenship and migration, however, are not two separate legal frameworks but are historically and conceptually linked. Historically, the transformation of the normative boundaries of citizenship came about by non-citizens claiming rights in the sphere of citizenship. Migration, however, is already defined by techniques of governance. Governance of unauthorized migration conceptually links citizens and non-citizens: control of the latter occurs in the name of the former. As governance of migration is spatially ‘outsourced’ to the territories of other states and ‘insourced’ into the midst of the polity, citizenship itself turns into an object of governance. Biography Stefan Salomon is lecturer at the Institute of International Law […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled The price of hope: The fortification of immigrants in Johannesburg by Simbarashe Nyuke (Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand). This study explores the nuanced ways in which the immigrant in Johannesburg uses Pentecostalism as a medium to mediate the complex “sites of struggle” existing within the city of Johannesburg. By demonstrating the complex encounter of urbanism, Pentecostalism and the immigrant, this work also raptures the dominant discourses on religion and migration, which one-sidedly present Pentecostalism as an all-empowering force to the immigrant. Relying heavily on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork on the experiences of Pentecostal immigrants in and of the city of Johannesburg, Simbarashe argues that in as much as Pentecostalism is empowering to the immigrant, Pentecostalism is in itself a “site of struggle”. He engages with Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital to understand the experiences of immigrants as they encounter the different social fields within the city. This study highlights that the city of Johannesburg presents for the immigrant a space with both physical and social obstacles, which calls for the need of the realignment of the habitus. Pentecostalism then provides the complex ways through which the […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled The role of the church and the challenge of local integration by Father Rampe Hlobo (Jesuit Refugee Services). Whether forced or voluntarily, human beings have been on the move and migration has been part of their activity. The exponentially increasing numbers of (forced) migrants and refugees in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have, however, more than ever before, arguably brought the phenomenon of migration and refugees to the attention of the international and faith-based communities again. Consequently, in trying to mitigate the challenges of those who have been forced to leave their homes, local integration has been identified as one the solutions to the many challenges posed by migrants and refugees in host communities. This presentation explores the role of the church, particularly the Catholic Church and its different agents as faith-based organisations and the challenge of local integration. The presentation looks at some of the perceptions of local integration, the doctrine of the Catholic Church on migration and refugees and the challenges of local integration. Biography Fr. Rampe Hlobo SJ is a Jesuit priest (Society of Jesus) working at the St Mary’s Catholic Church […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Repoliticizing international migration narratives? Critical reflections on the Global Forum on Migration and Development by Kudakwashe P Vanyoro (African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand). In this presentation, Kuda draws on Pécoud’s international migration narratives (IMN) as an analytical framework to examine the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s Civil Society Days (GFMD-CSD). He analyses the narratives both produced and challenged at the GFMD-CSD, suggesting that while the GFMD-CSD poses a gentle challenge to existing IMN, it falls short of meaningfully (re)politicizing predominant migration paradigms. This is partly due to how the forum is a fraught space that reflects and reproduces uneven power dynamics between the Global North and South, concealing and nullifying contestations of power. Nonetheless, the GFMD-CSD, as a hybridized, experimental and fluidly defined discourse-led ‘global’ space, still functions as an important arena through which challenges to depoliticized state-led rhetoric might slowly trickle. Therefore, Kuda concludes, a closer interpretation of self-reflexive GFMD-CSD civil society strategies might challenge Pécoud’s conceptualization of what constitutes a ‘depoliticized’ approach to migration. Biography Kuda is a Research Communications Officer and Doctoral Researcher at the African Centre for Migration […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Creating a domestic refugee regime in Kenya: The transfer of responsibility for refugee affairs from UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to Government of Kenya by Claire Walkey (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford). It is widely accepted that the protection of refugees in Africa is highly determined by host states. The everyday role and street-level activities of the African state in refugee affairs however remain under-researched. This is despite the fact the last decade has seen a move away from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as a ‘surrogate state’ and African governments are now increasingly taking over crucial bureaucratic functions related to the management of refugee affairs. This seminar focuses on Kenya where this handover process is particularly contested and drawn out. It firstly outlines the everyday practices of the Refugee Affairs Secretariat, within the Government of Kenya, in registering refugees in Nairobi and the paradoxes and contradictions this mundane and routinized activity reveals about the state’s interaction with refugees. Secondly, it discusses the impact of a UNHCR project, ostensibly to capacity build the government, had on government refugee registration practices and argue that it did […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled A hustle for profit and protection: What informal mining reveals about governance in South Africa by Zaheera Jinnah (African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand). This lecture builds on an in-progress book proposal which explores the lives and livelihoods of an informal community in Johannesburg, South Africa. In doing so it raises questions that cut to the core of post-apartheid South Africa’s economy, society, and politics. It dismantles a rights-based, rainbow coalition in which men and women embrace independence from colonial and apartheid oppression, living freely as democratic and equal citizens of a proud land. Rather it points to pervasive informality, inequality, and risks to rights and democracy. But mostly the book attempts to paint a portrait of the everyday struggles of survival for the urban poor. What happens when the poor remain poor? What happens when they are ignored and mistreated, especially by the authorities meant to protect them? How do people work in an economy strained by slow growth, jobless growth, and a labour market marked by patronage? How do we explain the relationship between land, and its riches and the poor who […]

As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Transnational motherhood and economic failure: Latina immigrant domestic workers and the children they left behind by Lorena Munoz (Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota). This presentation explores the experiences regarding family separations—a contemporary condition of transnational motherhood of Latina immigrant domestic workers as well as the children they left behind. Through well-established narratives of separation, female immigrant domestic work is understood through multiple contradicting transnational meanings of motherhood. These discourses of transnational motherhood often frame immigrant mothers as heroic; these mothers have to leave their homes to sustain their families and communities, while also negotiating the emotions of being ‘bad’ mothers for leaving their children behind. This study adds to these gender and immigration transnational motherhood processes by analyzing how emotions tied to economic failures at different scales, shape the lived experiences of transnational mothers. To elaborate, for some immigrant domestic workers and transnational mothers, the poverty wages they receive in host countries are not sufficient to economically sustain their families and communities in sending countries. The ‘failure’ to sustain their families economically often leads to resentment among their children and extended family left behind, that […]