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Paper short abstract:

Using insights from cities in Nigeria, Uganda and Ethiopia, this paper critically explores how efforts to promote peace and prevent or mitigate conflict in the face of high levels of urban migration are encountered as expressions of governmentality in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

Significant urban migration flows can contribute to notable urban governance challenges and reworkings of identities, belongings and power. Shifting populations can disrupt and rework existing geographies of power, access and control – be this to employment, land, housing, or the basic rights of citizenship – with the potential for conflict within and between communities. Responding to these pressures, multiple agents and agencies – from state or city authorities, through form civil society organisations to street-level collectives – engage with multiple efforts to prevent or mitigate conflict and promote peace. At play, therefore, are dynamics of conflict prevention, suppression and generation (Elfversson et al., 2023) that are often related to contestations over power at multiple scales. In response, efforts to promote, bolster or secure peace are complicated by differing understandings of – as well as approaches to realising – peace at different scales, between different groups and in relation to different issues. Utilising insights from sites of intense urban migration in Nigeria, Uganda and Ethiopia this paper explores everyday practices of and encounters with peace-building initiatives with a particular focus on the intersections of peace and governmentality in everyday life.