This book examines the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) practices of international migration management and studies current transformations of migration governance and the role of international organizations outside Europe. While so-called migration crises in North Africa in 2005 and 2011 made the instability of the increasingly militarized border regime visible, they also created space for new actors and instruments to emerge under the label of international migration management, promising softer forms to control migration outside Europe. Who are these actors, and how do they think and practice migration control without the use of physical force and obvious repression? This book develops an innovative theoretical framework that mobilizes Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to critically investigate the work of the IOM in Morocco and Tunisia between 2005 and 2015. Analyzing its information campaigns, voluntary return programs, and anti-trafficking politics, the book shows how this organization teaches (potential) migrants and North African actors to understand migration as their own problem and its management as their own responsibility. This book advances our understanding of the complex and ambivalent practices of controlling migration through information, protection and repatriation, and the implications of ubiquitous but underresearched institutions, such as the IOM, in this contested field. It will appeal to postgraduates, researchers, and academics in International Relations Theory, Border and Migration Studies, International Political Sociology, international organizations, and contemporary politics in North Africa.

Africa is a continent of 54 countries and over a billion people. However, despite the rich diversity of the African experience, it is striking that continuations and themes seem to be reflected across the continent, particularly south of the Sahara. Questions of underdevelopment, outside exploitation, and misrule are characteristic of many - if not most-states in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this Very Short Introduction Ian Taylor explores how politics is practiced on the African continent, considering the nature of the state in Sub-Saharan Africa and why its state structures are generally weaker than elsewhere in the world. Exploring the historical and contemporary factors which account for Africa's underdevelopment, he also analyses why some African countries suffer from high levels of political violence while others are spared. Unveilling the ways in which African state and society actually function beyond the formal institutional façade, Taylor discusses how external factors - both inherited and contemporary - act upon the continent. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book analyses the rapidly increasing role of African states, leaders and other political actors in international politics in the 21st Century. In contrast to the conventional approach of studying how external actors impacted on Africa’s international relations, this book seeks to open up a new approach, focusing on the impact of African political actors on international politics. It does this by analysing African agency – the degree to which African political actors have room to manoeuvre within the international system and exert influence internationally, and the uses they make of that room for manoeuvre. Bringing together leading scholars from Africa and Europe to explore the role and conception of African Agency, this book addresses a wide range of issues, from relations with western and non-western donors, Africa’s role in the UN and World Trade Organisation, negotiations over climate change, trade agreements with the European Union, regional diplomatic strategies, the character and extent of African state agency, and agency within corporate social responsibility initiatives. African Agency in International Politics will be of interest to scholars and students of Africa’s international relations, African politics, development, geography, diplomacy, trade, the environment, political science and security studies.

This book is a multidisciplinary approach to Africa's international relations in an era of globalization and the shifting of power from the West. It moves beyond colonization, marginalization, imperialism to look at the forces and dynamics that are reshaping Africa's external relations today.

As an emerging Continent, with a rich past, dynamic present and promising future, Africa has an important role to play in the develop ment of international organization. Well before Africa Year, 1960, when several African States attained their independence and their rightful place in the community of nations, the various movements for unity and co-operation strove towards the creation of regional international organization. Now more than ever before, nearly two scores of African States, members of the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity and several other sub-regional organizations and arrangements, look upon international organization as an important means for safeguard ing their independence, enhancing African identity, forging collabor ative bonds amongst themselves and with the outside world, and rais ing the standard of living for their populations. It should also be noted that the age of science and technology which is, and should be, based on international co-operation, stimulates fur ther Africa's desire to strengthen and work through international inter governmental organizations. As Africa faces the I970's, confronting the core problems of colonial ism and apartheid in its southern parts, she looks upon the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity as the main vehicles for thought and action. For these considerations, the present book resulting from the St.

This book is the first to exclusively consider the foreign policy tendencies of African states in international institutions. As an edited volume offering empirically based perspectives from a variety of scholars, this project disabuses the notion that Africa should be considered a "niche" interest in the field of foreign policy analysis. It asserts that the actions of the continent's states collectively serve as an important heuristic by which to interrogate and understand the foreign policies of other global states, and are not simply "anomalously" extant entities whose actions should be studied only insofar as they deviate from predictions based on the experiences of Western or other non-African states.