Reconsidering African Integration in a Fragmented Age

About this workshop

This workshop arises from a recognition that newly arrived migrants and immigrants across the continent typically occupy worlds weakly structured by laws and official institutions. Rather than state policies and formal politics, the meaning and means of integration are often determined by highly localised social processes and power structures. Underlying migrants’ incorporation or exclusion are varied ethics of hospitality and political calculation and community ideals.

Through an interactive three day workshop in Johannesburg, this initiative will develop comparative insights from across Africa and situate findings within global empirical and scholarly trends. Selected papers from the workshop will contribute to an edited volume examining the dynamics of integration across the case studies.

The workshop will include critical theoretical reflections from Africanist and non-Africanist perspectives and empirical case studies from African scholars. It will be held in South Africa and bring together 15-20 senior and early career scholars from across Africa and key speakers from other regions to provide a comparative perspective.

Workshop papers should address one or more of the following themes:

• How are integration and cultural accommodation conceptualised and discussed in the ‘global’ literature and to what extent are these debates reflected in African literature?
• Do African realities give cause to question the philosophical and empirical foundations of the global debate?
• What accounts for the forms of accommodation or ‘community’ emerge in urban gateways, borderlands, and rural communities across Africa? Can we identify an emerging and practical ethics informing these engagements?

Please see our Call for Papers welcoming proposals for a workshop and publication project on the mechanisms, ethics and politics of migrant integration in sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstracts of between 400-500 words should be submitted to integration@migration.org.za by 15 April 2013.