New Geographies of Hope and Despair

The social effects of migration management for West African migrants. ‘New Geographies of Hope and Despair’ is a five-year research programme on West African migration, running between 2012 and 2016. We explore how migration management and the combat against irregular migration reshape mobility and livelihood strategies as well as hope, opportunity, risk and failure among migrants, their families and communities. We thereby aim to offer new insights to ethnographic studies on migration, mobility and globalization processes.
©Dorthe Thorsen
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The social effects of migration management for West African migrants. ‘New Geographies of Hope and Despair’ is a five-year research programme on West African migration, running between 2012 and 2016. We explore how migration management and the combat against irregular migration reshape mobility and livelihood strategies as well as hope, opportunity, risk and failure among migrants, their families and communities. We thereby aim to offer new insights to ethnographic studies on migration, mobility and globalization processes.
 
The programme consists of three sub-projects, focusing on deportation and forced return to Ghana; transit and new labor migration in Morocco; and the emergence of a new transatlantic migration system between West Africa and Argentina.

Programme members

 

Nauja Kleist

Programme coordinator and works as senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in the migration unit. PhD in sociology, University of Copenhagen, MA in international development studies, Roskilde University. My work currently focuses on deportation, forced return and entrapment among Ghanaian migrants from Europa and Libya and the local consequences of and responses to their situation. I explore links between mobility regimes on the one hand and the coping and mobility practices among Ghanaian deportees and returnees on the other. Likewise, I focus on notions of hope, risk, failure, and success; gender and family relations; and belonging and identity. Fieldwork in Ghana in February 2012, November 2012 to April 2013 and March 2015.

Case study: Deportation and Emergency Return to Ghana from Europe and Libya

Nauja Kleist is currently coordinating the collaborative research programme Diaspora Humanitarianism in Complex Crises (D-Hum).


Ida Marie Savio Vammen
PhD Candidate and connected to this research programme in affiliation with the department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. My work currently revolves around the recent transatlantic migration flow from West African to South America. My project examines West African migrants’ everyday life in the metropolis of Buenos Aires. It analyses how different social and legal possibility structures and constraints influence the migrants’ livelihood strategies and notions of hope, risk and failure, as well as their transnational family relations. I am also interested in questions of visibility and invisibility in relation to irregularity and ethnicity. The analysis builds on multi-sited and ethnographic fieldwork in Argentina (from November 2012 – June 2013) and Senegal (2014). 

Case study: Emerging Transatlantic Migration –  West African Migrants in Argentina 

Ida Marie Savio Vammen is currently postdoc at the Borderwork collaborative research programme.

 
Dorte Thorsen
Postdoctoral Research Fellow and works at the Anthropology Department at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom). I hold a DPhil in African Studies, University of Sussex. My research focuses on female and male migrants from West and Central Africa who stay in Morocco for an extended period of time. I look at their integration, or lack of same, in the informal labour market, alternative livelihoods and, more broadly, their experience of living in Morocco to examine notions of hope, regret and suffering and the linkages with transnational family relations and strategies. My analysis include a focus on gender differences. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Morocco from February to September 2012.

Case study: From Transit to Settlement? – West African migrants in Morocco 

Dorte Thorsen is currently research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, working on the ACHA collaborative research programme.
 

George Meyiri Bob-Milliar
Guest researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies August-October 2012. PhD in African Studies, University of Ghana. I have an expertise in African politics, the state, irregular migration, democratization, and chieftaincy. Contributed to the research programme with a study on Ghanaian migration to and return from Libya, following the war in 2011, with particular emphasis on Ghanaian state responses to the migration crisis. 

George Meyiri Bob-Milliar is currently senior lecturer at the Department of History and Political Studies at the Kumasi National University of Technology and Science (KNUST), Ghana.

Outputs

Edited volume
Kleist, Nauja and Dorte Thorsen (eds.) (2017): Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration, New York and London: Routledge

Special issues
Thorsen, Dorte and Nauja Kleist (eds.) (2017): Reconfiguring Migration: Connections and Disconnections. Special issue of Africa, 87(2)

Kleist, Nauja and Stef Jansen (eds.) (2016): Hope over Time: crisis, immobility and future-making. Special issue of History and Anthropology. 27(4)

Peer-reviewed articles
Vammen, Ida M. S. (2020). ’Entangled hypervisibility: Senegalese migrants everyday struggles for a place in the city, eds. In Bjarnesen, J. & Turner, S eds. Invisibility in African Displacements. Zed Books

Vammen, Ida M. S. (2019): ’New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina´. CMS 7, 8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-018-0109-z 

Kleist, Nauja (2018): ‘Trajectories of Involuntary Return Migration to Ghana: Forced relocation processes and post-return life’, Geoforum, 1-10.

Thorsen, Dorte (2017): ‘Reconfiguring Migration: An Introduction’Africa, 87 (2), 300-303.

Kleist, Nauja (2017): ‘Disrupted Migration Projects: The moral economy of involuntary return to Ghana’ Africa, 87 (2), 322-342

Thorsen, Dorte (2017): ‘Is Europe Really the Dream? Contingent paths among Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco’, Africa, 87 (2), 343-361

Kleist, Nauja and Stef Jansen (eds.) (2016): ‘Introduction: Hope over Time - Crisis, immobility and future-making. History and Anthropology, 27(4), 373-392

Peer-reviewed book chapters
Kleist, Nauja (2017): ‘Introduction: Studying hope and uncertainty in contemporary African migration’, pp. 1-20, in Nauja Kleist and Dorte Thorsen (eds.): Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration, New York and London: Routledge

Kleist, Nauja (2017): ‘Returning with Nothing but an Empty Bag: Topographies of social hope after deportation to Ghana’, pp. 173-192, in Nauja Kleist and Dorte Thorsen (eds.): Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration, New York and London: Routledge 

Vammen, Ida Marie (2017): ‘Sticking to God: Brokers of hope in Senegalese migration to Argentina’, pp. 40-57, in Kleist, Nauja and Dorte Thorsen (eds.): Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration, Routledge 

Kleist, Nauja (2015): ‘‘Pushing development’: A case study of highly skilled male return migration to Ghana’, pp. 64-86, in Lisa Åkesson and Maria Eriksson Baaz (eds) Africa’s Return Migrants: The New Developers?, London: Zed Books

PhD Thesis
Vammen, Ida M. S. (2017). The Madness of Migration: An Ethnographic Account of Senegalese Migrants’ Mobility and Lives in Buenos Aires. Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.

Educational material
Kleist, Nauja, Dorte Thorsen og Ida Vammen (2014):  Afrikansk Migration. Educational website in Danish for social studies and history, high school level, prepared in collaboration with the media organization Fjerne Naboer (update and thorough revision of previous webpage)

Working papers, policy briefs, comments
Kleist, Nauja (2020). Welcome aboard KLM Air Land! Reflections on the mobilities turn. AMMODI blog. 16. June, 2020.

Kleist, Nauja (2016): Masseudvisninger vil ikke afholde flygtninge og migranter fra at risikere livet på Middelhavet, International debat, Jyllandsposten, 22 December 2016

Kleist, Nauja (2016): En aftale mellem EU og Tyrkiet løser ikke flygtningesituation, International debat, Jyllandsposten, 18 March 2016

Kleist, Nauja & Ninna Nyberg Sørensen (2015): EU’s løsning på Europas flygtningekrise er utilstrækkelig, DIIS Impact, 22 april 2015

Kleist, Nauja (2013): Kan menneskesmuglere stoppes med mere kontrol?DIIS Comment, 14 Oktober 2013

Kleist, Nauja (2013): Virker Europas grænseovervågning efter hensigten?, International debat og analyse, Jyllandsposten, 13 December 2013

Kleist, Nauja and George Bob-Milliar (2013): Life after deportation and migration crisis: The challenges of involuntary returnDIIS Policy Brief, October 2013

Vammen, Ida og Sine Plambech (2013): Så skete tragedien igen – R.I.PDIIS Comment, 4 Oktober 2013 - også bragt i Politiken den 9.10.2013

Bob-Milliar, George (2012): Rescuing Migrants in Libya: The Political Economy of State Responses to Migration Crises – The Case of GhanaDIIS Working Paper, 2012:16

Kleist, Nauja (2012): Længes vi efter Gadaffi?, International debat og analyse, Jyllandsposten, 16 Oktober 2012

Conferences, panels and seminars
Precarious Futures? Hoping, moving and waiting in times of uncertainty. International workshop. 16-19 September 2015, Tisvildeleje

Next stop Dubai: Migration in the Global South, DIIS seminar, 29 April 2014, Copenhagen

New Geographies of Hope and Despair. Panel at the 17th World Congress of IUAES, August 5-10, 2013, Manchester

Field seminar – collective fieldwork and analysis, 13-17 May 2013, Buenos Aires

Rescuing Migrants in Libya: The Political Economy of State Responses to Migration Crisis – The Case of Ghana, DIIS seminar, 30 October 2012, Copenhagen

Rerouting migration: Connections and Disconnections. Panel at the conference Border and mobility dynamics:  Reconfiguring borders and mobility in times of crisis, September 26-28, 2012, Copenhagen

Field seminar – collective fieldwork and analysis, 14-21 June, 2012, Rabat 

Contact

Nauja Kleist
Senior Researcher
32698667
+45 32698667
Ida Vammen
Senior Researcher
+45 32698707

Research and activites