7th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS–7): Urban Africa - Urban Africans: New encounters of the rural and the urban
The panel aims at identifying and discussing the features of urban-to-rural migration and movement, the factors of attraction involved, migratory dynamics and new strategies and features of the new settlements, towns and cities.
While the debate on the inevitability of explosive urbanisation in Africa appears to be over, new dynamics involving both the private and government enterprises in the rural areas gradually pull, voluntarily and involuntarily, the urban dwellers and rural migrants to new forms of urban settlement out of the main cities. The panel aims at identifying and discussing the features and trends of such movement and settlement in diverse African contexts, particularly in a global setting of economic crisis, new opportunities beyond the major cities, exuberant projects of urban modernisation, and more expressive international migratory flows. How attractive are rural opportunities in agriculture, mining, border trade or tourism projects to the poor and vulnerable in the cities? What are new urban strategies and sociabilities in resettlement districts resulting from urban expansion of new modern projects? How does internal migration and movement relate and combine with the strategies linked to international migration? The panel aims bringing to the fore the possible comparisons between the African tendencies and those of other world contexts, as well as comparing the African cases within their own specificities. Moreover, it will be an opportunity to re-activate the urban-rural discussion in a renewed perspective.
Proposals can be submitted1
- 1. http://www.nomadit.co.uk/ecas/ecas2017/panels.php5?PanelID=4800