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Mobility, Empowerment and Precarity in African Migration (International Field) Competition at the Social Science Research Council

The-Social-Science-Research-Council

Open to doctoral students at universities based within the U.S. and first-year doctoral students based at universities within the following countries: Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 

Workshop dates:

Spring - May 19-24, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

Fall - September 25-29, 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa

This field focuses on migration as a form of individual and collective empowerment in contexts of economic and physical precarity. Examining movements primarily within and from Africa, it considers mobility as both a response to and transforming agent of acute socio-political and economic uncertainty in sending and receiving sites. Whereas predominant framings of displacement underscore disempowerment, our premise is that whatever its motivation — ecological uncertainty, violence, poverty, or persecution — human mobility fundamentally represents an 'empowerment strategy' through which people actively work to ameliorate their condition. Mobility from and within situations of precarity can transform opportunity structures, redistribute resources across time and space, and generate new meanings that are both intended and unforeseen. The consequences are often far reaching, not only for migrants, but also for dependents left behind and for those with whom they live near and interact where they settle.

This field is a direct response to a literature on African migration and displacement which conceptualizes movement almost exclusively as a 'rupture' that disconnects people from broader socioeconomic and political processes and objectives. While our field draws from research on transnationalism, integration/incorporation, and labor migration, it embeds these processes and patterns within environments characterized by on-going violence, harassment, social fluidity and economic uncertainty. Such precarious contexts may include urban or rural Africa, or more broadly the diasporas within which undocumented and socio-economically marginalized African migrants live. At root here are questions of how migrants mobilize at the individual and collective levels to negotiate and transform these conditions towards their initial or emerging objectives.

We invite applications from students who wish to investigate how migrants transform political, economic, social and/or cultural fields of power and relations. We are especially interested in projects that explore how migrants mobilize through family and community networks, political organizations and unions, alliances between themselves and with natives, and other forms of organization. Such research can focus on how migrant activism intersects spheres of social and institutional regulation on multiple levels, taking into account: inter-ethnic and racial identities; nationalisms, class, gender, and inter-generational relations; national and local policies and political power structures; relations between markets and polities; public debates about ethnic and racial diversity and the politics of memory; or other aspects of markets and polities affected by migrant empowerment. Through workshop discussions we will explore how recognizing mutually generative relationship between mobility and power can provide grounds for a critical re-interrogation of concepts useful in understanding mobility, empowerment, and transformation, such as identity, place, community, law, social capital, and power.

Africa provides the backdrop that informs much of the organizers' own empirical research and we seek participants whose work focuses primarily on mobility in and from Africa or on comparative research referencing African cases. We seek projects based on the collection or analysis of empirical data, especially those that include both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Although we anticipate that the disciplines most relevant to this seminar will be sociology, political science, anthropology, history, and geography we welcome the perspectives of other social science and humanities disciplines. Priority will be given to projects that marshal either cross-national comparisons or single case studies that are cast against a broader empirical literature, in order to speak innovatively and critically to theoretical debates and themes that draw attention from a multi-disciplinary audience.

Field Directors

Loren LandauAssociate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, Political Science and Sociology [ bio ]Stephen LubkemannAssociate Professor, George Washington University, Anthropology and International Affairs [bio ]For more information, please visit: http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/subcompetitions/dpdf-fellowship/7A830%20765-EF37-E211-8EAC-001CC477EC84/520005B2-F137-E211-8EAC-001CC477EC84/

Related Program

Africa Program

The Africa Program works to address the most critical issues facing Africa and US-Africa relations, build mutually beneficial US-Africa relations, and enhance knowledge and understanding about Africa in the United States. The Program achieves its mission through in-depth research and analyses, public discussion, working groups, and briefings that bring together policymakers, practitioners, and subject matter experts to analyze and offer practical options for tackling key challenges in Africa and in US-Africa relations.    Read more