Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees' needs and rights. This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world. The 52 state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. The chapters vividly illustrate the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice.

Whereas most studies of migration focus on movement, this book examines the experience of staying put. It looks at young men living in a Soninke-speaking village in Gambia who, although eager to travel abroad for money and experience, settle as farmers, heads of families, businessmen, civic activists, or, alternatively, as unemployed, demoted youth. Those who stay do so not only because of financial and legal limitations, but also because of pressures to maintain family and social bases in the Gambia valley. ‘Stayers’ thus enable migrants to migrate, while ensuring the activities and values attached to rural life are passed on to the future generations.

Do young West Africans want to go abroad at any cost because they receive too little or erroneous information? Why do they and their families risk large sums of money with migration brokers? How do the risks of illegality and deportation change migration aspirations in West Africa? This book places trafficking and smuggling within a wider framework of high-risk migration and proposes a novel interpretation of how people manage unwanted and uncertain migration outcomes. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research with aspiring and failed migrants, their families, migration brokers and consulate offices in anglophone Cameroon, the author analyses high-risk migration from the vantage point of people in a place of departure. Brokering High-Risk Migration and Illegality in West Africa: Abroad at Any Cost develops a critical socio-legal approach to the governance of migration that sees the state without ‘seeing like the state’. The state’s monopoly over legitimate means of mobility is continuously in the making – frequently through accusations of fraud and criminality. By revealing how authority, legality and legitimacy operate in a country of origin, the analysis contributes original insights into processes that create the conditions for illegality and migrant exploitation. The book will appeal to those in the fields of migration and development, African studies, gender, anthropology, sociology, criminology and law.

This book discusses regional and continental integration in Africa by examining the management of migration across the continent. It examines borders and securitisation of migration and the challenges and opportunities that arise out of reconfigured continental demographics. The book offers insights on intra-Africa migrations and highlights how intra-continental migration creates socio-economic and cultural borders. It explores how these borders, beyond the physical boundaries of states, including the Berlin Conference-constructed borders, create cultural divides, challenges for economic integration and cross-border security, and irregular migration patterns. While the movement of economic goods is valued for regional economic integration, the mobility of people is seen as a threat. This approach to migration contradicts the intentions of true integration and development, and triggers negative responses such as xenophobia that cannot be addressed by simply managing the physical border and allowing free movement. This book engages in a pivotal discussion of these issues, which are hitherto missing in African border studies, by demonstrating the ubiquity and overreaching influence of various kinds of borders on the African continent. With multidisciplinary contributions that provide an in-depth understanding of intra-Africa migrations and strategies for enhanced migration management, this book will be a useful resource for scholars and students studying geography, politics, security studies, development studies, African studies and sociology.

Spurred by major changes in the world economy and in local ecology, the contemporary migration of Africans, both within the continent and to various destinations in Europe and North America, has seriously affected thousands of lives and livelihoods. The contributors to this volume, reflecting a variety of disciplinary perspectives, examine the causes and consequences of this new migration. The essays cover topics such as rural-urban migration into African cities, transnational migration, and the experience of immigrants abroad, as well as the issues surrounding migrant identity and how Africans re-create community and strive to maintain ethnic, gender, national, and religious ties to their former homes.

The West African Sahel is predicted to be heavily affected by climate change in the future. Slow-onset environmental changes, such as increasing rainfall variability and rising temperature, are presumed to worsen the livelihood conditions and to increase the out-migration from the affected regions. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from study areas in Mali and Senegal, this book examines the relationship between population dynamics, livelihoods and environment in the Sahel region, focussing specifically on motives for migration. Critiquing the assumption that environmental stress is the dominating migration driver, the author demonstrates the important role of individual aspirations and social processes, such as educational opportunities and the pull of urban lifestyles. In doing so, the book provides a more nuanced picture of the environment-migration nexus, arguing that slow-onset environmental changes may actually be less important as drivers of migration in the Sahel than they are often depicted in the media and climate change literature. This is a valuable resource for academics and students of environmental sociology, migration and development studies.