This workshop is hosted by the International Migration Institute

Summary: Migration in its various forms has been a key part of the popular uprisings that spread across North Africa and the Levant in 2011. The columns of vehicles escaping from cities and villages under siege in Libya, the boats crammed with Tunisians crossing the Mediterranean Sea and landing on the island of Lampedusa, and the numerous Egyptian émigrés and university students returning to Cairo to join the protests in Tahrir Square are a few examples of the ways in which human mobility intersects current events in North Africa and the Levant.

The workshop will address the following questions: How have varying processes of political, economic, and social contestation in North Africa and the Levant affected human mobility? To what extent have events transformed or impacted the institutional behaviour and responses of international organisations and civil society groups working in the field of migration and displacement? How have publics and governments in North Africa and the Levant positioned or repositioned themselves in relation to issues of asylum and migration?