Theme Panel: Migration and Border Politics in Africa

Migration and Border Politics in Africa

This panel explores emerging re-conceptualizations of state legitimacy, citizenship, and nation-building in Africa by focusing on the implications of migration and border politics. These papers employ diverse methodologies including geo-coded survey experiments, interviews and focus groups, and extensive original cross-national data collection. Together, these papers offer new insights to the rich literature on political membership and boundary-making in Africa while also building a comparative reference to current immigration debates in Europe and the US by highlighting South-South migration, an often overlooked dynamic in migration studies.

Participants:
Claire Leslie Adida, UCSD (Chair)
Amanda Lea Robinson, The Ohio State University (Discussant)

Papers:
Familial Nationalism in Weak African States
Abhit Bhandari, Columbia University (Author)
Lisa Mueller, Macalester College (Author)

How Refugees Shape National Boundaries by Challenging Them
Yang-Yang Zhou, Princeton University (Author)

Mobility, Space and Scales: Participation and Citizenship in Cities that Move
Loren B Landau, University of the Witwatersrand (Author)

Does Citizenship Travel? Diaspora Voting in Africa
Elizabeth Wellman, Yale University (Author)