Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA)
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Item Town2Town: Understanding the “soft” infrastructures of transnational mobilities between secondary cities in West Africa(2019-05-15) Bjarnesen, J.Infrastructures facilitate and regulate the circulation of people, goods, capital, and information. While the hard infrastructures of roads, rails, air spaces, or waterways in West Africa generally lack the smoothness of the global North, the soft infrastructures of personal networks, brokers, and gatekeepers are fundamental to the organization of social life in the world’s poorer regions. In African cities, urban dwellers rely on such connections and alliances in their search for livelihood options. Along both regional and trans-continental migratory routes, access to transportation, labour permits, visas, and work are provided by a range of actors connecting migrants to hard infrastructures, and the formal institutions they represent. While the efforts and ingenuity required to construct and maintain such soft infrastructures have been increasingly acknowledged in research on urban Africa, the scholarly attention to the connections and alliances that facilitate mobility and migration has generally been limited to the study of clandestine migration and trafficking, which constitutes but a fraction of the movements that African migrants undertake. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, the presentation offers a set of conceptual reflections on the soft infrastructures of regional labour migration in the wider Sahel region in West Africa.Item The Underside of the Free Movement within the ECOWAS Bloc: Vulnerabilities and Policy Dimensions of Children on the Move(University of Ghana, 2019-04-10) Badasu, D.M.; Yeboah, T.; Asare, A.A.; Braimah, J.I.The ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol was enacted to facilitate intra-regional mobility and promote socio-economic development in the West African sub-region. It has an instrument titled ‘ECOWAS Support Procedures and Standards for the Protection and Reintegration of Vulnerable Children on the Move and Young Migrants’. While studies have examined different aspects of the free movement of persons and goods as well as the associated implementation challenges, little is known about the mobility trajectories of young people and children in the sub-region, including the complex underlying factors that shape their migration motives, opportunities and vulnerabilities as well as the policy dimensions of their movement. Drawing on different research works and experiences, this presentation focuses on three main inter-related issues on the movement of the young people/children within the context of free movement regime in West Africa. First, with reference to the migration infrastructures concept, we examine the different migration patterns of young people and the complex interplay of natural and demographic factors, social networks, and human agency, among other factors that account for the movement of young people within, out and into Ghana under the ECOWAS free movement regime. Second we examine the trafficking of children as a consequence of child migration and sustained socio-cultural practices such as child fostering. Ghana is often described as a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking. This means victims of trafficking, both adults and children are in the mix of the huge numbers of migrants within the country and in the sub region. Thirdly we examine the legal documents, laws and policies on migration that directly or indirectly affect young migrants. We suggest that current knowledge and perspectives regarding free movement in the ECOWAS Bloc largely exclude the dynamics of the movement of young people. While there are various migration-related policies to protect young people, there is no single comprehensive policy to facilitate, promote and protect the migration of young people with respect to the dynamics of child migration. We suggest the need for revision of existing legal frameworks and the development of innovative policies and interventions that take into consideration the dynamics of the movements, characteristics of the young people/children and the different actors involved in this migration stream instead of the simplistic and ad hoc approaches.Item Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ Exploring return migration and reintegration processes in Ghana(University of Ghana, 2019-03-20) Kleist, N.; Setrana, M.The question of return migration and reintegration are central in many migrants’ lives and in migration policies. Returning for shorter or longer periods of time, perhaps after years abroad, requires consideration and preparation. In some cases, the return has been prepared for years, in other relocation to Ghana is sudden and involuntary, enforced by migration crisis or deportation. In others again, the return is temporary, followed by re-migration or extensive transnational mobility. In this talk, two MIASA Fellows, Dr. Nauja Kleist, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and Dr. Mary Setrana, Centre for Studies, UG, bring together their extensive research on return migration to Ghana and reintegration processes. We explore the many meanings of return migration to Ghana, with focus on how different groups of Ghanaian return migrants articulate their migration, return experience and post-return life, with emphasis on the role of transnational and translocal links and networks in the return process and post-return. The paper spans several groups of returnees, from highly skilled experts who have become part of Ghanaian elite strata, entrepreneurs, and migrants who have engaged in precarious and high-risk migration projects and been forcefully relocated through deportation or flight or evacuation from migration crisis or conflict. We propose that inequality is reflected not only in the access to migration but also in the ways that migrants return and their post-return life, including ongoing mobility practices.