Research

The African Centre for Migration & Society has five research themes (described below), which guide our Research Projects.

ACMS Reports reflect timely and relevant research outcomes.

ACMS Resources hosts Issue Briefs, Data and statistics from ACMS research, Migration maps produced from ACMS demographic surveys, Videos, and a forthcoming Grey literature database.

Scholarly Publications provides access to all of the Book Chapters, Journal Articles, non-ACMS sponsored Reports, and non-ACMS sponsored Working Papers. These publications can also be accessed from each individual staff page. In addition, ACMS Working Papers are available for view and download.

Student theses are avaialble for fulll view and download.

ACMS's Research Themes are the driving questions behind each of our research projects. These themes are:

• Considering Communities of Difference
  Projects within this research theme interrogate the meaning of community and how social differences are enacted and re-enacted within them. They pay particular focus to community practices that veil social differences of 'race', class, gender and nationality. Interrogating the limits, functions, and forms of 'community' and mobilizations in its name reveals important aspects of political representations, identitive affinities, and the changing nature of belonging.
  

• Governing Mobility in Southern African Cities
  As Africa's cities grow and their administrations become decentralised, mobility is generating new social configurations and patterns of power, authority, and belonging. Projects developed under this theme explore how movement is transforming urban governance by redistributing population, resources and claims on these resources, shifting policy networks, altering the flow of information and resources, and generating new political subjectivities and forms of citizenship.
  

• Illness, Boundaries and Health Systems
  By exploring various determinants of the health of migrant groups, this research theme examines the complex linkages between migration and health in Southern Africa. This means investigating the personal and social dimensions of displacement and its impact on health. Within this initiative researchers are considering themes related to sexuality and gender, health and citizenship, and the use of plural health systems and alternative healing strategies.
  

• Migrants and Rights in Law and Practice
  This research theme examines the legal rights of migrants and their interactions with legal institutions from an access-to-justice perspective. Key focus areas include administrative justice, refugee rights, and detention practices. Additionally, this research seeks to understand how migrants claim rights from state and non-state power holders, and to identify their rightsmobilising strategies.
  

• Mobility, Labour and Livelihoods
  As the Southern African economy transforms due to policies, crises, and global trends, so too do forms of mobility and patterns of migration and their impacts on individual, community, and regional patterns of work and exchange. This research theme focuses on the impact of crossborder trading; seasonal migration for commercial farming, and migration for study, training and asylum. It pays special attention to negotiations between governments and business, internal labour migration, and working conditions in various sectors. Projects under this theme map migrants' survival strategies and trajectories in the country-of-origin, local, national, and regional economies, and assess the impact of migrant labour on poverty and inequality reduction.
  

• Paradigms and Practices of Migration Policy Making in Comparative Perspective
  This research theme interrogates the processes producing migration and migration-related policies at local, national and regional levels. This includes the production and circulation of policy paradigms and how implementation practices and policies diverge and converge. Projects nested within this theme document government agenda-setting efforts, power relationships between state and non-state actors, and the impact of governments' regulation efforts on actual migration control practices.