Rethinking Forced Migration Governance in Africa: Political Reconfigurations and Sociopolitical Dynamics

This panel seeks to rethink the governance of forced migration in Africa by examining how forced displacement interacts with changing political, institutional, and social configurations. It explores how state responses aimed at controlling, containing, and managing displacement reshape political authority, institutional arrangements, and relations between states and societies. Rather than approaching forced migration solely as a consequence of conflict or instability, the panel considers it as a lens through which broader political transformations can be analyzed. Particular attention is given to the sociopolitical dynamics generated by the governance of displacement. How does forced migration contribute to the emergence or deepening of political fractures and societal divisions, both within states and across subregional spaces? How do policies governing displaced populations reshape relations between institutions, territories, and societies? These questions are especially relevant as the governance of forced displacement increasingly involves multiple levels of authority and a plurality of state and non-state actors.
Civil society organizations, religious groups, migrants and refugees, local communities, and subnational authorities play an increasingly visible role in refugee assistance, asylum processes, and the everyday governance of displacement. The panel examines the political significance of these interventions and the forms of authority they generate. Do they constitute forms of political entrepreneurship or alternative modes of governance? To what extent does the redistribution or delegation of state responsibilities to non-state and subnational actors reveal emerging configurations and new figures of the state in Africa? More broadly, the panel invites contributions that use African cases to rethink forced migration governance and to theorize changing relations of authority, responsibility, and political action.
Paper proposals may be submitted and presented in either English or French.