Events

Background Globally, as well as in the Southern Africa region, a recent rise in anti-migrant attitudes, including an increase in violent acts against migrants, has drawn increasing attention from political actors as well as civil society. While many initiatives to promote social cohesion have been implemented over the years, there is a dearth of research or evidence to understand the impact of such activities. Are media campaigns effective? If so, with which types of audience and what types of messaging have the greatest impact? Can integrating migrants into sports leagues and cultural events help reduce anxiety and promote a more positive image of migrants among the host community? Recent advances in brain and behavioral science (BBS) are now providing policymakers and practitioners with new tools to design, implement and measure more impactful social cohesion and peacebuilding programs to reduce xenophobia and violent conflict, and promote cooperation across various social divides. In this webinar, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), Prof. Linda Tropp of the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and Beyond Conflict (a USbased NGO with over 30 years of experience collaborating with local actors and behavioral scientists in building social cohesion […]

African Queer & Trans Displacements is a two-day conference bringing together scholars, policymakers, practitioners, advocates and activists working on the forced or voluntary migration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) Africans. The intersection of sexuality, gender and displacement remains understudied, especially in Global South contexts, despite the fact that the vast majority of the world’s queer migrants, refugees and asylum seekers live in these countries. At the same time, the social, legal, political and economic needs of LGBTQI+ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers remain overlooked by both queer rights movements and migrant/refugee rights movements, resulting in inadequate support services and poorly developed policies. This conference aims to foster dialogue across these divides, while also providing space to engage with migration scholarship centred on Africa and its peoples. Existing scholarship tends to elide the cultural, linguistic and social differences of LGBTQI+ individuals seeking asylum, homogenising disparate experiences and backgrounds under the broad category of ‘queer asylum seeker’. Countries of birth are largely presented as inconsequential, or as narrative elements rather than critical considerations. This provides little clarity of the specificities of leaving any one place, and even less of an understanding about the relationship between places left behind […]