PROJECT
Labour mobilities and displacements in West Africa
Focus area
This project offers a migrant-centred analysis of regional labour mobilities in West Africa, emphasising the enduring legacies of colonialism, the resilience of migrant aspirations and practices over time, and the centrality of informality in facilitating movements across transnational spaces and through dramatically shifting circumstances.
Key objectives
The study builds on a long-term ethnographic engagement with migrant families in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, and combines qualitative interviews and participant observation with archival research to portray the experiences, outlooks, and aspirations of people who have moved through war and peace. The project thereby provides an in-depth understanding of the complex ways in which human mobility is and has been at the heart of this subregion’s social, political, and economic life.
External funding
VR 2018-04602 (2019-2024)
Researchers in the project:
Publications in the project:
- Bjarnesen, Jesper, Cristiano Lanzano and Gabriella Körling. 2025. Soft Infrastructures. Mediating Labor Mobilities Across and Between Secondary Cities in West Africa Migration and Society 8 (2025): 203–217.
- Kleist, Nauja and Bjarnesen, Jesper. 2023. Mediating Mobility in West Africa: Improvisation, Culture, and Volatility in Migration Infrastructures. International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231205563 External link, opens in new window..
- Bjarnesen, J. 2023. The Power of Impending Zoning: Governance through Inaction in a Secondary City in Burkina Faso. International Journal for Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) 47 (1): 39-53. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13159 External link, opens in new window..
- Bjarnesen, Jesper. 2023. Back in Youth: Social Unbecoming in the Study of West African Masculinities. Africa Spectrum 58(3): 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/00020397231211615 External link, opens in new window..