Diasporas in Conflict Settings: Neglected Agents of Change

Outline

Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has agreed a Research Support Grant lasting one year (2009-2010) to facilitate the development of a collaborative research initiative for the investigation of how diasporas invest their resources to maintain livelihoods, encourage economic and human development, and contribute to peace-building and/or conflict in their war-torn countries of origin.

The project is based on collaboration among leading migration research institutes at Georgetown University, George Washington University and the University of Oxford together with counterparts in the global south.

The work under the project will be undertaken by teams consisting of ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ partners, who will each work together on a case study. Three team leaders represent each of the three leading northern institutions: Patricia Fagen for the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown; Stephen Lubkemann for the Diaspora Research and Policy Program (DRPP) at George Washington University; and Nicholas Van Hear for the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. The southern counterparts will be connected with (in the case of diaspora organizations) or located in respectively Haiti, Liberia and Sri Lanka, which are the three initial case study countries envisaged in the project.  Each team is developing a proposal for its case study, and a number of state of the art, background and briefing papers are being written by the whole research group.  This work will feed into a major research proposal to be submitted to the IDRC and other funders in mid 2010.

Georgetown University is providing the secretariat for the project and the IDRC funds are channeled through Georgetown. 

Preparations are under way with research partners and a meeting of the whole research group to draw together this work will be hosted by COMPAS in Oxford at the end of March 2010. 

This project is funded by an International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Research Support Grant Agreement 105671-001.

Contacts

  • Patricia Weiss Fagen (Project Coordinator), Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), Georgetown University: pwf@georgetown.edu
  • Stephen Lubkemann, Diaspora Research and Policy Program, George Washington University: sl02@gwu.edu
  • Nicholas Van Hear, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford:  nicholas.vanhear@compas.ox.ac.uk

 

 

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