NEGOMOBI · The Euro-African Migration, Development, Security Nexus in West Africa: Negotiating Mobility in Mali and Burkina Faso
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2023-08-31
- EU contribution
- €305,778
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The Euro-African Migration, Development, Security Nexus in West Africa: Negotiating Mobility in Mali and Burkina Faso
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.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
For about a decade, the EU experiments what it perceives as an unprecedented “migration crisis”. Moreover, 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 a qualitative, empirical and comprehensive perspective, NEGOMOBI will investigate this nexus via the Malian and the Burkinabe case studies, in a comparative perspective. NEGOMOBI has 3 main objectives. The first one is to conduct a retrospective of the career of this Euro-African nexus as a public problem, through the design of both case studies. This will involve a work of historicization of migration and security policies promoted by Western countries in Mali and Burkina in a postcolonial setting. The second one is to study 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. Finally, based on an ethnography of bus stations in Bamako and Ouagadougou, the third objective is to describe the implementation ‘from below’ of this nexus, its effects and counter-effects on West-African mobility, and the tactics and strategies developed by local actors, with a specific focus on gender issues on one hand, and on materiality on the other hand. It examines how border management and controls through technical and technological infrastructure are shaping human experience, masculinity and femininity, mobility and security in bus stations. By following the chains of actors, NEGOMOBI investigates how scales are concretely articulated in the making of a public policy and its implementation, and how this policy contribute to locally (re)produce social and political inequality through its performative effects.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UPPSALA UNIVERSITET · UppsalaCoordinatorSweden
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union