The Political Lives of Migrants: Perspectives from Africa

Refugees and other migrants continue to arrive in new places all across the world.

Their reception, long-term prospects and lives in their new homes remains one of the most pressing socio-political issues of our times. What about the migrant in all of this? How do they see their life, role and political agency?

Migration research has thus far under-conceptualised and under-researched political migrant agency, especially from a Global South perspective and in interaction with states and non-state actors.

PolMig aims to redress this gap and combine it with a commitment to tackle global inequalities in knowledge production.Focusing on Africa, PolMig considers how migrants define political agency, enabled or disabled by politicisation processes of belonging in postcolonial state contexts.

Drawing on this research, PolMig advances an Afrocentric understanding of political migrant agency with global relevance.

The research will consider the effects of different migrant trajectories (refugee or other migrant; transregional or intraregional; in country of destination, transit or return to origin) on the self-defined understanding of political agency, along intersectional principles of gender, class and race.

PolMig uses pioneering research methods to do so including migrant agency diaries and theatre workshops.PolMig bridges the literature on migrant agency and migration states as well as contributing an Afrocentric perspective to the field.

The Afrocentric perspective is ensured through a process of collaboration and exchange, centring the continent empirically and epistemologically.

The innovative project will have significant scientific impact through addressing an interdisciplinary research gap and the commitment to highlighting and tackling knowledge inequalities. It also offers highly relevant policy contributions to an urgent societal question.