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- Convenors:
-
John Kotsopoulos
(University of Pretoria)
Jack Mangala (Grand Valley State University)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH206
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The EU and Africa have set out shared priority areas, including some which increasingly affect African cities like climate change, migration and terrorism. This panel investigates the framing of common challenges, accounting for divergent African and European views and the ability to surmount them.
Long Abstract:
In April 2016 the heads of the EU and African Union Commissions reaffirmed their "common future", setting out a list of priority areas to address at the 5th Africa-EU Summit in 2017. The areas -- which increasingly affect African cities -- included climate change, migration and the fight against extremism. Yet, are these areas perceived in the same way by the two partners? And to what extent are the responses and remedies also truly shared? Policy issues are always subject to interpretation by the actors involved. Migration, for example, has long been a common challenge, yet the interests at stake and the way in which the problem is framed varies profoundly between African and European actors. How (if at all) do the two sides surmount disparate interpretations of regional problems? This panel will explore both the framing of common challenges and the practical development of responses to them. Are institutional linkages such as the Road Map of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy or the Cotonou Agreement facilitating robust dialogue and analysis of differing interests and interpretations on which to base common approaches? Do the AU's 2063 agenda and the EU's 2016 Global Strategy contain insights into the framing of common areas for cooperation? The panel will examine approaches to cooperation, reflecting critically on the commitments to "effective multilateralism" in the areas of climate change, migration and the fight against extremism. This panel is one of two which seek to re-examine EU-Africa relations organised by the European Studies Association of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Franzisca Zanker (Arnold-Bergstraesser Institute)
Paper short abstract:
Dealing with migration has been prioritized in the EU-AU common agenda in recent years. But a de facto emphasis on the securitization of migration management increasingly diverts the EU approach from African frameworks geared towards mobility and legal migration.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 'refugee crisis' crossed the frontiers of Europe, a common EU-AU agenda of dealing with the challenges of migration has visibly gained in importance. In 2015, more than 60 heads of states and government met in Valetta for the first summit between the EU and AU solely dedicated to the topic of migration. In reality however, consultations go back at least a decade with common approaches addressed on a bilateral, regional and continental level. But how does the EU-Africa Action Plan on Migration and Mobility differ from the Valletta Summit Action Plan or the Khartoum Process? Moreover how do these diverge from institutional frameworks developed in the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) including the Migration Policy Framework for Africa?
This paper sketches out a comprehensive picture of the different policy approaches developed by the EU-AU and African institutions, arguing that whilst on paper EU-AU policies advocate a migration-development nexus, in reality migration management is shaped by an increasing emphasis towards securitisation. This is not least because the EU-AU policies focus on extra-African migration despite the preponderance of intra-African migration and fails to comprehensively conceptualise their distinction between 'irregular migration' and 'forced displacement'. The practice of emphasising the security-migration nexus risks reverting long traditions of mobility within the African continent that are reflected in the AU and RECs migration management frameworks.
Katharina P.W. Döring (University of Leipzig)
Paper short abstract:
The African Union and the European Union have each formulated a strategy for the Sahel regarding inter alia climate change, migration and terrorism. This contribution juxtaposes them in a critical reading that is informed by insights from Africans and Europeans concerned with these strategies.
Paper long abstract:
The Sahel has been framed as an area where the challenges of climate change, migration and the fight against extremism are most pertinent. These dynamics unfold between the rural areas, often perceived as vast sparsely populated spaces, and the urban areas, among which the capitals, are also entry points for the politics of the African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) towards the Sahel.
This contribution provides an analysis of the AU's and the EU's strategy for the Sahel (respectively the African Union Strategy for the Sahel Region and the European Union Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel). While both strategies address matters of security and development, and advocate to strengthen governance, a closer look reveals a differing framing between them of such common challenges as well as the envisioned responses to them. In both strategies the organizations make reference to one another and emphasize the importance of regional cooperation. At the same time they also pursue different approaches to cooperation in the Sahel: The AU is supporting the Nouakchott Process, encompassing 14 countries in the area, and the EU is supporting the G5 du Sahel a regional grouping of five states. Which strategic choices do actors in the region make about cooperations? How does their framing of challenges impact the ensued responses? This contribution juxtaposes the AU's and EU's strategy for the Sahel in a critical reading that is informed by ongoing empirical research in Addis Ababa, Abuja, Bamako and Ouagadougou.
Carlos Sangreman (Universidade de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of the communication is to present research on human rights (economic, social and cultural) in a fragile state, the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, as a key point in the dialogue between political power in a classical way and political power understood as articulation of actors public and private
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of the communication is to present research on human rights (economic, social and cultural) in a fragile state, the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, as a key point in the dialogue between political power understood in a classical way and political power understood as articulation of actors of various levels of public and private action
This research proves that it is possible to collect data, treat them and construct basic indicators with statistical significance that unequivocally demonstrate the inequalities of access to HR at the level of the different regions of the country, in education, health, justice, housing, sanitation and means of subsistence (food).
This research project lasts 3 years and has already produced 2 books, the third one with the 2016 data scheduled to come out in February 2017. With these indicators, a methodology was created to collect information by a team of national inquirers, built an interregional global index that allows us to state which zones or regions of the country have more or less access to HR.
It also proves that civil institutions in this area of HR are able to engage in a dialogue based on concrete data with state power on Economic and Social Rights that gives them a broader role than the classic role of reporting violations of Political and Civic Rights
Sebastian Prothmann (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the Senegalese concept of the elsewhere – Kaw – as it is used by young men with migratory aspirations to express their imaginaries of the ‘Global North’.
Paper long abstract:
In Pikine, an urban area within the Dakar region of Senegal, many young men perceive their local life as a besetting reality of bleak possibilities to lead any kind of meaningful life, and the imagined 'Global North' as a compelling story of the reverse of what characterises the local. Using the term Kaw, literally meaning 'on top', they characterize Europe and North America as a more advanced and developed entity and as the all-in-one solution for most of their current problems. "That's Europe!" is often heard in conversations about this seeming paradise. References to the difficult labour market in Europe and the many suffering migrants were usually dismissed with an incredulous shake of the head by these youth. This paper, based on eleven months of ethnographic research in Pikine between 2011 and 2013, sheds light on imaginaries and rumours of international migration by young men with migratory aspirations. The research opens up a wider perspective on migration which looks beyond nar-row economic constraints. The case study of Pikine illustrates how young men construct a "unilinear, teleological narrative" (Bordonaro 2009: 134) in which Pikine is at the bottom end of a (linear) scale of development and the 'Global North' at the top. Thereby they position themselves in a state of non-movement and non-development at the margins of a globalised world, disconnected from the other parts of this world, creating a 'self-peripheralising mental-ity'.