Projects

Starting from the observation that the critical vocabulary for transnational mobility is not adapted to the current unprecedented numbers of involuntarily displaced persons worldwide, this project aims to develop a novel account of the relation between mobility, literature, and human rights. More specifically, it updates the generative notion of the "Black Atlantic" by foregrounding the understudied role of juridical realities and imaginaries ...

The past decade has witnessed one of the largest forced movements (internal and external) produced by armed conflict recorded, in particular, Syria (armed conflict) and Iraq (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and internal feuds). The anthropologist Michel Agier (2008) read this phenomenon as the image of the 21st century where “a world of displaced and refugees (is) being created before our eyes” (Agier, 2008). This ...

When transnational mining corporations start up a large-scale mining project, they often decide to dispossess, relocate and resettle (some of) the people living in their mining concession. This research project, which is based on fieldwork in the southeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeks to examine the impact of this involuntary displacement on people's sense of feeling at home.

DISMARK focuses on three echelons of the supply chain: production (cultivation and manufacturing), the brokering and the retail trade. Furthermore, the focus is on 3 illegal drugs markets: the cannabis market, the synthetic drugs market and the cocaine market. In order to be able to actually investigate whether movement is occurring, a conscious choice is made for these specific drug markets.

This research project explores the role of landless people in collective resistance to Mining-Induced Displacement and Resettlement (MIDR)caused by the Phulbari Coal Mining project (Bangladesh). It explores the relationship between landlessness, forced displacement, exclusion, and collective resistance to fill a gap in MIDR scholarship, which has almost exclusively paid attention to effects of MIDR on people with formal land-rights.

When transnational mining corporations start up a large-scale mining project, they often decide to dispossess, relocate and resettle (some of) the people living in their mining concession, so that they can move ahead with their mining operations in an undisturbed manner. This research project seeks to examine the impact of this involuntary displacement on people's sense of feeling at home. The project wants to examine which strategies ...

This research wants to highlight the conceptual links between gender and displacement and inform how resettlement programmes can fail due to their neglect of gender concerns; identify and understand why gender blindness and insensitivity persist in policies and programmes; and elaborate how gender can concretely be incorporated into the plans and activities of different state and policy actors in the course of resettlement programmes.