15/05/2024 – Migration seminar on Equal Partnerships – African intermediary cities as actors in urban migration governance
Equal Partnerships – African intermediary cities as actors in urban migration governance
Dr. Janina Stürner-Siovitz , the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Nuremberg
Africa is witnessing an ongoing transformation from rural to increasingly plural urban societies. While this transformation has been well-documented, the focus of scholarship and policymakers has been predominantly on migration and refugee movements into major urban areas and capital cities. In contrast, intermediary cities, the in-between the rural and the metropolitan, have been largely absent in policy and academic debates. Addressing this gap becomes all the more important, as African intermediary cities are increasingly impacted by mixed migration movements and (inter)national policies, without necessarily having adequate legal mandates, nor financial and human resources to accommodate and protect vulnerable migrants and refugees. To address such challenges, some local authorities have begun to engage in multi-stakeholder partnerships, bringing together local, national, and international actors. Based on research collaborations of the Equal Partnerships project with intermediary cities in Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia and Uganda this session explores central stakeholders, risks, and opportunities of such partnerships and presents policy recommendations for discussion.
About the speaker
Janina Stürner-Siovitz is a postdoctoral research fellow and project lead at the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Nuremberg. She analyses migration governance in complex multi-level systems. Taking a bottom-up perspective, she focuses on the interaction between cities, states and regional/international actors in the realization of the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees as well as in EU migration policy-making. Furthermore, Janina Stürner-Siovitz explores multi-level partnerships in mixed-migration contexts on the African continent in cooperation with African and European partners. As a policy-oriented researcher she has developed evaluation processes, workshops and policy papers on behalf of organizations such as the European Commission, the German Federal Foreign Office, the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project (MC2CM) and various foundations. Janina Stürner-Siovitz is a peer reviewer for the Knowledge Platform of the UN Network on Migration and a member of the UNHCR Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN) and the Cities and Human Mobility Research Collaborative of the Zolberg Institute. As a Visiting Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a Research Associate of the City Diplomacy Lab she develops impact-oriented research on cities, migration governance and city diplomacy.
Date: 15 May 2024
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 CET
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