Presenters: Prof. Jane Freedman and Dr Aron Hagos Tesfai
Title: Growing Up Across Borders
Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd floor), East Campus, Wits University (directions)
Zoom link: https://tinyurl.com/3dwkccpp, Meeting ID: 957 8662 4514, Passcode: 012731
RSVP: Email ntokozo.yingwana@wits.ac.za

Abstract:
Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) is a project at the Université Paris 8 that explores how migration, mobility, and urban life shape the health, wellbeing, and everyday experiences of young people across Southern Africa. Bringing together research, dialogue, and community engagement, the project focuses particularly on the ways mobile and migrant youth navigate access to healthcare, social support, education, and opportunities within contexts of inequality and precarity. By centring young people’s lived experiences across borders, the project aims to generate evidence that informs more inclusive policies, responsive health systems, and youth-centred approaches to social justice and development.

About the presenters:
Prof. Jane Freedman is the leader of the European Research Council (ERC) funded Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) project. She is a professor at the Université Paris 8 and a member of the Paris Centre for Social and Political Research (CRESPPA). Her research has focused for many years on issues of migration and borders, with an intersectional and postcolonial approach. She is particularly interested in the ways that migration and border policies create gendered and racist forms of violence and vulnerability for people on the move, and the ways in which people on the move resist this violence.

Dr Aron Hagos Tesfai is the South Africa partner in the GRABS project. He has a PhD in Psychology (Health Promotion) from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His research focuses on the migration and the psychosocial well-being of refugees. His research interests cover the social psychology of migration and explore themes such as integration, social trust, belongingness, im(mobility) and agency. He is a refugee activist and involved in refugee politics. He is currently involved in a research project on migration that looks at the intersectional vulnerabilities of young refugees and sexual and gender-based violence in the context of migration.