How do migrants and states manage borders?

The new joint project 'Transnationalism from above and below: Migration management and how migrants manage' (MIGMA) launched this week in Oslo. University of Oslo is host institution and DIIS is one of the partners along with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen (UiB).

DIIS researcher Sine Plambech is the participant from DIIS. Plambech will in the coming years conduct field work in Denmark, Italy and Nigeria. Her project explores the routes of migrants through and across EU and how member states seek to control, hinder and manage migrants. She will also explore the circulation of migrants within EU and how an increasing number of migrants are being returned or deported to other EU member states.

The overall aim of MIGMA is toexamine EU migration policies as well as Norwegian migration policies enacting a project of exclusion and excision in the pursuit of governance. MIGMA will explore the case of Nigerian migration and offer a theoretically informed empirical exploration of legal instruments central to the sustainability of current migration management, and explore their effects and efficiency. Managing rejected Nigerian asylum seekers is particularly challenging, due to a combination of factors including a high prevalence of criminal activity, transnational human trafficking networks, vulnerable victims of human trafficking, high rates of disappearances from reception centres, escalating violent conflict in Nigeria and the refusal of Nigeria to enter into a readmission agreement. Some of these factors are also conducive to the re-migration of returned asylum seekers following their return to Nigeria, undoing Norway’s efforts and increasing costs.

MIGMA is financed by the Research Council of Norway.