Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NEGOMOBI (The Euro-African Migration, Development, Security Nexus in West Africa: Negotiating Mobility in Mali and Burkina Faso)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-09-01 al 2023-08-31
This MSCA Action is titled ‘The Euro-African Migration, Development, Security Nexus in West Africa: Negotiating Mobility in Mali and Burkina Faso’ (NEGOMOBI). For more than a decade, the EU experiments what it perceives as an unprecedented “migration crisis”. Since the mid-2000, the US-European agenda has integrated West Africa into the ‘Global War on Terror’ and uses its development cooperation to promote its policy. This migration-development-security nexus became a major political problem, prompting discourses, policies and dispositifs of crisis impacting African mobility. Based on an empirical and qualitative approach, NEGOMOBI investigated this nexus via the Malian and the Burkinabe case studies, in a comparative perspective. NEGOMOBI gave major importance to practices, representations, and perceptions of actors. This project was particularly interested in giving a voice to people directly impacted by this nexus. NEGOMOBI was based on a multi-sited ethnography in Mali and Burkina Faso.
This research project was important for society because the link between development, migration and security is an important part of Europe’s foreign policy strategy in Africa. NEGOMOBI also helped to deconstruct some of the dominant narratives on migration, development and security that underpin African and European politics.
NEGOMOBI has three main objectives:
1/ Conducting a retrospective study of this Euro-African nexus as a public problem. This will involve a historical review of migration and security policies promoted by Western countries in Burkina Faso and Mali in a postcolonial setting.
2/ Studying the actual policy-making process promoting this nexus and the negotiations between the EU and Mali and Burkina Faso on cooperation agreements as an attempt to “solve this migration-security crisis”.
3/ Describing the implementation ‘from below’ of this nexus, its effects, and counter-effects on West-African mobility.
This research project was important for society because the link between development, migration and security is an important part of Europe’s foreign policy strategy in Africa. NEGOMOBI also helped to deconstruct some of the dominant narratives on migration, development and security that underpin African and European politics.
NEGOMOBI has three main objectives:
1/ Conducting a retrospective study of this Euro-African nexus as a public problem. This will involve a historical review of migration and security policies promoted by Western countries in Burkina Faso and Mali in a postcolonial setting.
2/ Studying the actual policy-making process promoting this nexus and the negotiations between the EU and Mali and Burkina Faso on cooperation agreements as an attempt to “solve this migration-security crisis”.
3/ Describing the implementation ‘from below’ of this nexus, its effects, and counter-effects on West-African mobility.
This MSCA Fellowship was hosted at Uppsala University, at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University and at the interdisciplinary Forum for Africa Studies in Sweden. As visiting researcher, the fellow spent 6 months at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the KU Leuven University in Belgium.
During the fellowship, the researcher has also maintained collaborations and strong professional ties with her home institution, the Laboratoire d’anthropologie prospective at UCLouvain (Belgium), where she now holds a position as Assistant Professor in Anthropology. She maintained, developed, and extended her scientific network, collaborating with leading scholars at UC Irvine (US), at Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (Mali), at Université Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany), at the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), and the internation network of the Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD).
Work performed during this fellowship was ascribed to 9 work packages. The fellow carried out 3 months of fieldwork in Mali and Burkina Faso to collect ethnographic data. She attended several training sessions, regular research seminars, interdisciplinary workshops, and international conferences. She co-organized the international Conference of the Mande Studies Association in Sweden and the international APAD conference in Togo, both in 2021. She was the panel co-convenor and the discussant of 6 panels at the 9th European Conference on African Studies - ECAS 2023, at the 17th EASA Biennial Conference - EASA2022, at the 7e édition des Rencontres des Études Africaines en France - REAF2022, at the Annual Conference of the Swedish Anthropological Association - SANT2022, at the international APAD Conference 2022 and the international MANSA Conference 2022. The fellow made 17 presentations at international conferences, workshops, and seminars. In the third year of the project, she co-organized an International Seminar and Reading group on Feminist and Decolonial Approaches with Lys Alcayna-Stevens (Oxford University, UK) and B. Fontaine (UCLouvain, Belgium), including 14 hybrid sessions.
Results of this MSCA fellowship are reported in 6 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and 1 peer-reviewed book chapter in an edited volume published by Berghahn Books, one of the leading English-speaking publishers in the field of anthropology. In addition, several peer-reviewed articles are underway. The fellow also co-coordinated 2 special issues of international journals. The results are published in French and in English. These results show how this ‘migration, development, security’ nexus shapes socio-economic and political realities on different scales; (re)produces inequalities between countries, institutions, and individuals; and, more globally, increases vulnerabilities and violence in Mali and Burkina Faso. The fellow provided several outreach activities to the general public via non-scientific publications and podcasts.
During the fellowship, the researcher has also maintained collaborations and strong professional ties with her home institution, the Laboratoire d’anthropologie prospective at UCLouvain (Belgium), where she now holds a position as Assistant Professor in Anthropology. She maintained, developed, and extended her scientific network, collaborating with leading scholars at UC Irvine (US), at Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (Mali), at Université Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany), at the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), and the internation network of the Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD).
Work performed during this fellowship was ascribed to 9 work packages. The fellow carried out 3 months of fieldwork in Mali and Burkina Faso to collect ethnographic data. She attended several training sessions, regular research seminars, interdisciplinary workshops, and international conferences. She co-organized the international Conference of the Mande Studies Association in Sweden and the international APAD conference in Togo, both in 2021. She was the panel co-convenor and the discussant of 6 panels at the 9th European Conference on African Studies - ECAS 2023, at the 17th EASA Biennial Conference - EASA2022, at the 7e édition des Rencontres des Études Africaines en France - REAF2022, at the Annual Conference of the Swedish Anthropological Association - SANT2022, at the international APAD Conference 2022 and the international MANSA Conference 2022. The fellow made 17 presentations at international conferences, workshops, and seminars. In the third year of the project, she co-organized an International Seminar and Reading group on Feminist and Decolonial Approaches with Lys Alcayna-Stevens (Oxford University, UK) and B. Fontaine (UCLouvain, Belgium), including 14 hybrid sessions.
Results of this MSCA fellowship are reported in 6 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and 1 peer-reviewed book chapter in an edited volume published by Berghahn Books, one of the leading English-speaking publishers in the field of anthropology. In addition, several peer-reviewed articles are underway. The fellow also co-coordinated 2 special issues of international journals. The results are published in French and in English. These results show how this ‘migration, development, security’ nexus shapes socio-economic and political realities on different scales; (re)produces inequalities between countries, institutions, and individuals; and, more globally, increases vulnerabilities and violence in Mali and Burkina Faso. The fellow provided several outreach activities to the general public via non-scientific publications and podcasts.
NEGOMOBI advances scientific understanding of the current transformations in the Sahelian region induced by a third wave of popular protests since the independence, open armed-conflicts, and violent political shifts by empirically investigating the ‘migration, development, security’ nexus in Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as its impacts on West-African mobility. Scientific publications are in Open Access and outreach activities have made the results available to those who can best use them in their day-to-day work, e.g. development and humanitarian workers, policymakers, journalists, migrant associations, etc.