MIASA Working Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://197.255.125.131:4000/handle/123456789/41285

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“Acting together”: How Non-State Actors shape migration policies in West Africa
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2019-11) Bisong, Amanda
This paper examines how non-state actors (NSAs) leverage their role in regional migration governance in West Africa. The paper focuses on the involvement of non-state actors in the migration policy process at the regional level. It unpacks the relationships between state and non-state actors, focusing on the media, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations and academia in West Africa. It examines the engagement between state and NSAs at the regional and national levels, finding that formal and informal spaces for engagement exist and linkages between these levels of governance provide avenues for transposing national solutions to the regional level and vice versa. The paper finds that NSAs leverage formal and informal mechanisms for engagement at the regional and national levels to ensure that their interests are achieved. The paper concludes that involving NSAs in regional migration governance is essential to promote the integration of migration approaches and initiatives from the ‘bottom-up’, complementing the ‘topdown’ state-centric processes in ECOWAS.
‘The cake is in Accra’: a case study on internal migration in Ghana
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2022-04) Turolla, Maya; Hoffmann, Lisa
What are the motivations for internal migration and what role does the social network of migrants play in the process of moving to a different place? In this paper, we focus on internal migration to Accra, the capital of Ghana. Previous literature has focused on either livelihood or lifestyle approaches to migration but failed to show how these dimensions are intertwined. We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with twenty migrants in different areas of Accra and analysed the interviews using a relational analysis. We find that livelihood and lifestyle dimensions matter in tandem. While the main reasons for moving to Accra are related to livelihood strategies, they are reflected and performed in culturally bound lifestyles of city-life. Furthermore, we find that different ties – such as emotional or economic ties – are differently meaningful across members of the migrants’ social network throughout the migration process. Such heterogeneity appears to depend on gender and socioeconomic status.
Conceptual Reflections on Approaches to Religious Diversity and Modes of Coexistence in Urban West Africa*
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Ibrahim, M.; Sieveking, N.
This article introduces the research of MIASA’s IFG 7 project titled “Religious Diversity in Urban West Africa: Exploring Modes of Coexistence for Sustainable Governance”. It conceptualises the methodological approach of the group by identifying three main thematic axes that emerged from the overlapping individual approaches to the study of religious diversity in urban centres, namely 1) migration, mobilities, entrepreneurship, and trans-nationalism; (2) territoriality, power, and configurations of religious minorities and majorities; and (3) urban infrastructure(s).
Migration Infrastructures in West Africa and Beyond
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2019-11) Kleist, Nauja; Bjarnesen, Jesper
Infrastructure is becoming an influential field of inquiry across the social sciences as it has been in policy related research for some time. In migration and mobility related research, the recent introduction of the concept of “migration infrastructure” represents an attempt to theorise the infrastructural approach in relation to the multifaceted mediation of migration. This MIASA working paper considers the usefulness and limitations of the concept of migration infrastructures in understanding labour mobilities in various West African contexts. This juxtaposition of West African cases with the Asian examples that informed the articulation of the concept of migration infrastructures suggests that the framework holds potential for moving beyond migrant-centred analysis, while leaving some open questions regarding the role of migrant agency, the discrepancies between intentions and uses of (migration) infrastructures, the significance of culturally embedded migrant imaginaries, and the impact of global migration governance on national or regional regulatory frameworks.
Parliamentary primaries in Ghana’s National Democratic Congress: Explaining reforms to candidate selection and their impact
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2021-12) Dodsworth, Susan; Alidu, Seidu; Bauer, Gretchen; Alidu Bukari, Gbensuglo
Candidate selection procedures play a crucial role in shaping parliaments and influence the quality of democracy. Yet our understanding of how and why political parties reform their candidate selection mechanisms over time is surprisingly limited – especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where a number of parties have begun to shift towards more inclusive procedures. To address this gap, we examine the experience of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress, which reformed its selection procedures in 2015 allowing all party members to vote in primary elections for its parliamentary candidates. We identify four motivations that drove these reforms: making the party more democratic by expanding participation, reducing the cost of the primary process, building the organizational capacity of the party, and keeping up with the party’s main competitor. Each motivation mattered more to some within the party than others; almost all ended up disappointed due to a substantial divergence between actual and intended effects that ultimately led to the reversion of the reforms in 2019. Our findings leave us better placed to understand both why political parties in sub-Saharan Africa’s more democratic regimes have shifted towards more inclusive candidate selection mechanisms over time, and why the pace of that change has been slow and uneven.
Perspectives on access to and control over land, livelihood, and agricultural production outcomes in three districts with land investments in Ghana
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2022-09) Boateng, John Kwame
The paper explored perspectives about men and women’s access to and control over land, water, energy, and food resources in the Sene West, Denkyembour, and Kwaebibirem districts of Ghana. Much of the literature suggests that while women may have access, they often do not have control over productive resources and that this lack of control is implicated in gender inequalities. The objectives examined perspectives and attitudes to women’s role in the management of land and questions of access to land and other resources, as well as opinions about who has benefited from large-scale land acquisitions. Mixed methods, constrained by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic were employed. Qualitative and quantitative research approaches were used. The quantitative part involved the use of a paper-based questionnaire given to 30 respondents and the qualitative study focused on six items developed in a study guide for six respondents; this was at the peak of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Ghana when Accra was under lockdown and most of the country was under severe restrictions. The traditional livelihoods of the people, based mainly on food and cash crop farming, agro-processing, and hunting, have suffered several impacts from the land grabs. These include loss of land, declined access to resources such as fuelwood, damaged ecosystems, deforestation, and lack of alternative ways to maintain food security. However, for those community members who found positions as workers in the large-scale investments especially at Kwae, in the Kwaebibirem municipality, the positive effects of the oil palm out-grower scheme have, in general, benefited not only the scheme out-growers but also the members of the communities surrounding the large-scale oil palm investment.
The Question of Religious Authority: Ga Converts and Non-Indigenes in Muslim Identity Politics in Postcolonial Accra
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Dumbe, Y.
This contribution to the working paper focuses on the religious conversion to Islam of some Ga ethnic people, their role in the Islamic revival and their impact on founding Muslim communities in postcolonial Accra. Ga converts have considered themselves as relevant to assuming religious authority positions in Accra, which was already dominated by Muslims of migrant descent. The issues of representation and integration have been a challenge for Muslims of diverse backgrounds in the Islamic sphere in Accra. The study demonstrates that while the Ga converts have highlighted their unique background in secular education as well as being the indigenes of Accra, the Muslims of migrant origin have questioned the place of converts in religious proselytization.
Religious Diversity in Sharia-Compliant Cities in Northern Nigeria
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Ibrahim, M.
This paper examines religious diversity through everyday life experiences of various religious or not-so religious groups and how they negotiate cultural and theological differences in the context of the sharia implementation in urban northern Nigeria. More specifically, it analyses how the sharia (implementation of Islamic law) reconfigures inter-faith relations, especially between Muslim and Christian minorities. Initially in tended to reinforce strict conservative practices in urban centres, the reform has equally facilitated religious pluralism and hybrid practices such as the invention of Jesus Mawlid, which is observed by both Muslims and Christians as well as the blending of religion with previously considered irreligious urban cultures.
Religious Diversity through the Life Trajectories of Northern Migrants in Madina, Accra
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Zaami, M.
In this paper, I explore the interrelatedness of individual migration and religious conversion stories, both temporal and permanent. Through two contrastive case studies, I analyze the role of migration in religious diversity among Christians, Muslims, and practitioners of African Religious Traditions in Accra’s urban settings. I illustrate how the life trajectories of Aisha and Solomon provide some critical and insightful perspectives on how migration and urban settings intersect in shaping individual social actors’ lived religious experiences in a multi-religious field and help them navigate between different familial and societal demands, as well as how individuals’ upbringings can impact religious diversity.
Sociabilities and Religiosities in Urban Senegal
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Sieveking, N.
This article addresses the question of how social positioning and stratification influence religious diversity in urban Senegal. The author approaches religious diversity from a sociological point of view, with a methodological focus on intra-religious diversification. Based on contrastive case studies carried out in Dakar, the article analyses how forms of sociability that are characteristic of a specific social milieu contribute to distinctive religious identities and how people’s social embeddedness shapes their own religious self positioning. Linking Georg Simmel’s (1984) concept of sociability with the formations of individual religiosities, the article provides an empirically grounded theoretical reflection on the interrelatedness of religious diversity with social heterogeneity in urban West Africa.
Temporality, informality, & translocality in Africa’s urban archipelagos
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2019-11) Landau, Loren B.
Mobilities across time and space are reshaping African lives, communities, and imagination. As people make lives across multiple sites – connections forged through travel, media and the circulation of goals, memories and values – they generate novel forms of mobile urbanism and belonging. Cities’ rapidly expanding, diversifying, and mobile urban populations now interact with each other in ways largely unstructured by state regulations or hegemonic social norms. The results are urban socialities often deviating from the models of solidarity, integration, and membership described in classic urban sociology or more recent debates around transnationalism, multiculturalism, and urbanization. While often appearing deeply anomic, fragmented, and relatively unregulated by officials or constitutional orders, these are not genetically antisocial or disconnected sites. Nor are they singular in the histories, morphologies or trajectories. Yet despite the diversity and distance between them, they are linked. These connections draw together urban estuaries where highly fluid populations move into and through cities with archipelagos of people and sites interlinked across and within spatial and temporal horizons. These changing social and urban forms raise epistemological, ethical, and practical challenges around the governance of space, rights, and representation. This paper outlines these concerns as a way of charting research directions for the study of mobile urbanisms.
Towards a political economy of renewable energy in Ghana: A review
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2022-09) Pedersen, Rasmus H.
New forms of renewable energy have featured in Ghana’s energy planning since the early 1980s, but their share in the energy mix remains limited. This development mirrors similar trends in many other lower-income African countries. Based on a literature review, this paper explores the political economy of renewable energy in Ghana with a particular focus on the role of development donors, who have been identified as potentially important actors in the promotion and deployment of new renewable energy. The paper suggests that coalitions between Western donors and Ghanaian decision-makers with a shared interest in new renewable energy have emerged more than once, typically as a response to supply crises. However, these coalitions have been short-lived, partly due to the fragmented nature of Ghana’s energy sector governance. Concerns over energy security and fossil-fuel resource endowments decisively influence the priorities of key domestic decision-makers. This became conspicuously clear after the discovery of oil and gas in 2007 when the development of Ghana’s petroleum resources was prioritised at the cost of new renewable energy. Whereas expanding access to cheap modern energy has been a mainstay among key domestic decision-makers, decarbonisation does not appear to have been a major priority. Generally, more empirical research is needed.
Turkey and Côte d’Ivoire Encounter: Dynamics, Actors, and Practices in the Field of Islam
(Merian Institute for Advances Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2023) Binaté, I.
This text focuses on Turkey’s religious diplomacy in Côte d’Ivoire, a West African country where Islam has experienced significant growth in recent decades. Through the prism of a Soft Power, this cooperation opened Ivorian Islam – dominated by the Maliki and Salafi currents – to the religious tradition of Turkey. This process was marked by the transfers of practices as well as of religious objects, materials for the construction of mosques and support for socio-economic development initiatives. This study is mainly based on fieldwork carried out in Côte d’Ivoire (Abidjan, Bouaké and Korhogo) and Turkey (Istanbul). In addition, a digital ethnography conducted from social networks, in particular Facebook, was used.
Urban Sanctuary and Solidarity in a Global Context: How Does Africa Contribute to the Debate?
(Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), 2019-11) Bauder, Harald
As national governments and supranational institutions fail to cope with international migration and refugee movements, many cities in the Global North are asserting stronger roles in protecting and including vulnerable international migrants and refugees. Various labels, such as sanctuary city, solidarity city, and city of refuge describe corresponding municipal policies and practices. However, literature that connects such labels to urban policies and practices in the Global South is sparse. I review the English language literature to assess whether the concepts of urban sanctuary and solidarity are applicable in Africa, or whether they represent inherently Eurocentric or Western concepts of little relevance to cities in Africa. The review indicates that there may be some similarities between cities in Africa and the Global North, but that the differences are fundamental and challenge the universality of the concepts of urban sanctuary and solidarity.