Conference on South-South migration network: The Africa Hub

Conference background

In 2018, over 80 migration researchers, teachers, activists and students, out of which a greater percentage of us were from the Global South, came together to research on migration, inequality and development in the Global South. Since the inception of this largest research on south-south migration, our aim among others, has been to decentre knowledge production. While also changing the negative narratives portraying that majority of Global South migration is directed to the Global North.

Following our research findings over these years, we have recognized that it is a truism that South-South migration accounts for the bulk of global human mobility. Nonetheless, it is given scant attention in both academic and policy circles. This paradox is partly because the dominant narratives portray an imaginary “exodus” from the Global South towards the Global North. Shifting such evidence-free, yet entrenched narrative, requires among other things: engaging with “other” concepts, categories, and frameworks (outside of the dominant ones) as a prelude to decentring the research processes, and the power relations that structure research; and accelerating the ongoing individual and institution-specific efforts through conscious creation of connections and linkages between and among (migration) and other progressive scholars, activists, Pan-African institutions, CSOs.

Accordingly, the Network on South-South Migration works to curate a space that brings together scholars working in Africa, on Africa, from Africa, or committed to Africa in understanding intra-African, and Southern migration. The broad vision is to create a structure where African and Southern scholars collaborate to produce knowledge, facilitate the exchange of ideas, convene joint training of the next generation, and cultivate an organic scholarship in conversation with progressive African, and Southern institutions, activists, and CSOs.

The central question that drives the conference and the network is: in overcoming the marginal status of African scholarship in understanding, and then overcoming the African condition and global challenges, what set of strategies and structures should scholars working in/on/from Africa on African, and Southern migration, adopt in producing knowledge that is locally relevant and globally legible? To grapple with these questions, the maiden conference brings together researchers, academics, activists, policy makers and social movements to reflect and collectively think possible way(s) forward.