Panel 103: Pathways of Social-Economic Integration. Inclusion and Exclusion of Migrants in Africa

Transboundary migration in Africa and within African countries in the last decades promoted multifaceted demographic, socio-economic and environmental dynamics. Beside the millions of people who seek refuge from war, persecution or natural disasters or participate in resettlement schemes even larger numbers of migrants move of their own accord due to a combination of socio-economic pull and push factors. The question of integration of migrants is often discussed on the level of nation states and formal frameworks, such as citizenship. In reality, however, integration mainly takes place on the local level, depending on local legal frameworks, available resources and local mechanisms of integrating in-migrants. In this panel, emphasis will be given to the local perspective of migrants’ integration. It focuses on the social processes in the location of arrival, where migrants are faced with resident communities and have to negotiate their social and economic space with them. The outcomes of migration strongly correlate with the migrants’ inclusion to or exclusion from institutions, networks and resources of the host societies, as well as with the in-migrants ability to handle new circumstances and existing rules. Based on empirical case studies from four African countries, the panel will discuss pathways, opportunities and limitations of social-economic integration of migrants into their host communities and identify its causal factors.