Events

The conference intends to break from academic and policy silos to promote crosspollination and critical consideration of how information on migration is generated and employed. It is concerned with the creation and mobilization of knowledge across Africa where agendas are largely determined by policy makers and donors.

International migration is an increasingly prominent theme in public, policy, and scholarly debates. Movements of Africans within and beyond the continent have long been at the margins of these global discussions.

In recent years this has been changing. African mobility is now at the heart of deliberations across Africa and elsewhere. Many of the continent’s regional economic communities (SADC, EAC, ECOWAS, IGAD) along with the African Union and the UN have begun developing and implementing immigration and migration management initiatives intended to promote state and human security.

Given the growing global and political interest in African migration and mobility, this conference is intended to provide critical reflection on the state of knowledge, of knowledge production, and the inter-relationship among knowledge production and producers, activism, and policy formation.

The conference is explicitly interdisciplinary, intending to break from strict academic and policy silos to promote crosspollination and critical consideration of how information on migration is generated, considered, and employed. It is particularly concerned with the creation and mobilisation of migration knowledge across Africa where, like much social research, agendas are largely determined by domestic and policy makers and donors.

While the politicization of migration issues has sharpened the criticism of strictly policy-driven research, knowledge of migration in Africa is still conceptually thin, empirically fragmented, and often disconnected from wider theoretical or policy debates. Some of the most comprehensive research on African migration is conducted by people looking at the continent from outside.

With the goal of exploring the linkage between theoretical perspectives on international migration and the implementation of public policies, this event will offer a reflective and critical space to identify and bridge existing gaps between the supply and demand sides of migration data and knowledge-production. To this aim, the conference organisers are eliciting inputs from established and emerging scholars and researchers within and outside the academy. Papers are expected to go beyond case studies or situation reports to engage with broader conceptual and methodological themes and debates. Particular preference will be for those working topics, regions, or from perspectives that remain marginalized or under researched.

Links:

UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa

More information on the Conference

Theme page:

Learning to Live Together

Social Transformations

Culture of Peace and Non-violence

Intercultural Dialogue

Partnerships

URL:

https://en.unesco.org/events/southern-perspectives-migration-addressing-knowledge-production-policies-and-cooperation