Mobility and the Governance of Urban Space in Southern, Central and Eastern African Cities (2008-2010; Institute of Research for Development; Chaire Croisée Programme; Loren Landau & Aurelia Segatti)

This project addresses the politics of spatial redistribution of people and power in six African cities: Johannesburg, Cape Town, Maputo, Lubumbashi, Nairobi, and Kinshasa. As Africa’s cities grow, they are generating new social configuration and patterns of power, authority and belonging. With decentralisation, local authorities are gaining new resources and authority over these urban spaces, potentially challenging the dominance of national governments in policymaking and regulation. But as they become formally empowered, they must confront translocal processes—including human mobility—over which they may have little influence. Although urbanisation and urban politics attract considerable attention elsewhere in the world, contemporary Africanist urbanists have tended to overlook migration and human mobility. When scholars address these themes, they often do so through the lenses of demography, national policy, or human rights protection. This initiative makes sense of how mobility is transforming urban governance by shifting policy networks, altering the flows of information and resources, and generating new political subjectivities and forms of citizenship.

Research phases and focus areas

Building on previous work conducted by the Forced Migration Studies Programme and its partners, this two-year initiative includes three overlapping phases.

  1. Policy and Demographic Overview: Intended to reveal the spatial redistribution of populations and official responses to human mobility, the project begins with a review of existing demographic data and policy documents. The study will draw on national and subnational surveys to trace the demographic growth of cities, the respective scopes of domestic and international migration into and through urban centres, and population movements among them. It will also collect and review relevant policy documents explicitly addressing human mobility and those considering policy fields directly affected by migration: housing, health, economic development and infrastructure and other forms of service provision.
  2. Conceptualising migration and urban governance: Through interviews with local officials, the project will build on its demographic and policy review by revealing how local government officials understand and approach human mobility. Using an approach drawn from organisational sociology, the study will identify and explain significant differences in officials’ response and attitude to migration. It will focus on the cognitive processes and the existing social and political networks (Advocay coalition networks) informing the way local and national political stakeholders interact and contribute to migration policy formation in its local dimension. It will also monitor and document the local politicisation of issues around migration and use local electoral contexts as observation sites.
  3. Reconfiguration of Regulation and Power: Recognising the often significant disjunctures between policy and practice, this project’s third phase will identify actual existing processes of spatial regulation and governance. Using intensive observation and ethnographic techniques, the study will reveal who—in practice—controls access to Africa’s urban centres and what kind of administrative and social learning is taking place. Such an approach will incorporate studies of 1. Local bureaucracies and the implementation of migration policy; 2. The development of contestation repertoires among policy recipients and the exploration of sovereignty and governance dynamics (trade and cultural associations, religious institutions, property owners, crime syndicates and residents) and 3. The role of urban centres in the emergence /transformation of transnational networks of regulation and resistance. . Through its focus on migrants and on circulation within and through the region’s cities, it will also reveal forms of translocal control and regulation that are typically overlooked through more conventional methods of analysis.

    4. 2008-2010 research trips and activities:

    • 3 November 2008 : Loren B. Landau & Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, meeting with Jacques Charmes, Eloise Gransagne and Anne-Marie Tièges at IRD Marseille. Presentation of the project
    • 5 November 2008 : Loren B. Landau & Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, meeting with André Guichaoua, Daniel Delaunay & Monique Bertrand at UR 201, Nogent-sur-Marne. Presentation of the project.
    • February 2009: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Lisbon, meeting of the International Steering Committee – Metropolis International.
    • 1-16 May 2009: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Kinshasa, DRC, exploratory trip & Phase 1 (Report 1); 1 lecture taught.
    • July-October 2009: Loren B. Landau & Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Migration and Human Rights (with an emphasis on governance and urbanisation), Course taught as part of the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE), University of the Witwatersrand.
    • 5-23 August 2009: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Kinshasa, DRC, Phases 1 & 2 (Report 2 + Report 1 by Jacques Tshibwabwa Kuditshini).
    • 30 Aug.-4 Sept. 2009: Methods training workshop for junior researchers associated to the project (Sharon Mina Olago, Kenya; Carlos Quembo, Mozambique; Jacques Tshibwabwa Kuditshini, D.R.C.) funded and coordinated by Edulink (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex / FMSP, Wits University Johannesburg).
    • 2-3 September 2009: 2 meetings of all project members at Forced Migration Studies Programme, Wits University Johannesburg (see attached agenda). Training on Refworks data base.
    • 14-19 September 2009: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Tervuren/Brussels (Work session with Jacques Tshibwabwa-Kuditshini to define case studies for Phase 3 of DRC case study; Book launch, T.Tréfon (ed.). 2009. Réforme au Congo. Attentes et désillusions. Tervuren. Cahiers Africains. Paris. L’Harmattan); Copenhagen, meeting of the International Steering Committee – Metropolis International.
    • 22 November-2 December 2009: Loren Landau & Sharon Olago: fieldwork in Nairobi for Phase 1.
    • 29 November-3 December: 2nd Edulink workshop and IRD project meeting in Johannesburg.
    • 20-22 January 2010: 3rd Edulink workshop and IRD project meeting in Johannesburg.
    • May 2010: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Kinshasa, DRC, Phases 2 & 3 (Report 3).
    • June 2010: Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Kinshasa, DRC, Phase 3 (Report 2 by Jacques Tshibwabwa Kuditshini).
    • June-August 2010: Fieldwork in Kinshasa by Jacques Tsibwabwa, Gilbert Mbuyamba.
    • May-June 2010; Fieldwork by Carlos Quembo, Maputo, Mozambique.
    • October 2010: Presentation of results at 15th Metropolis Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.
    • November 2010: Fieldwork by Loren Landau & Sharon Olago, Nairobi, Kenya.

    Contact persons

    Loren Landau: loren@migration.org.za
    Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti: aurelia.wakabwe@wits.ac.za