Migration is an important phenomenon in Ugandan’s history and present. It is captured in key narratives about Uganda as a refugee sending and refugee receiving country, not to mention its impacts on the economic fortunes of the nation. Uganda has come to be defined by its generous refugee hosting model, a novel, internationally recognized permissible approach to receiving and integrating displaced persons[1]. But the country‘s troubled socio-political history has led to the emigration of Ugandans across the globe over time, creating a sizeable Ugandan diaspora on the continent and beyond. In deed, more recently, economic challenges at home have motivated a concerted effort to systematize labor migration or labor export as a strategy for human resource management and economic development[2].
From the above background, a plethora of fundamental questions ensue: what policy options, processes, structures and instruments are necessary to ensure the full and efficient functioning of the migration and refugee management order in Uganda? What key values and principles should inform it? What actors and institutions should shape it? And how should it be actualized? What are geo-political aspects of migration and force displacement in Uganda? Throughout 2022, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and the Centre for Multilateral Affairs (CfMA) shall partner to conduct separate research activities addressing some of these questions.
Themes:
- An assessment of the existing migration governance frameworks for the regulation of asylum and refugee protection, irregular migration, student migration, labor migration, among others. Generally, this will help in the assessment of the comprehensiveness of Uganda’s migration management frameworks, identifying good practices and areas for further policy development.
- The geopolitics of migration and forced displacement: To what extent does the primacy of borders, the competing hegemonic relations between and within nation-states, and the political economy of a globalizing world drive forced migration and responses? Why do migrants choose one country over another? Etc.
- Migration and forced displacement within the Pan-African Agenda: how is the free movement of persons evolving in Uganda and how does it relate to the Pan African vision of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena”? What are the opportunities and challenges for movement
- Migration, peace and security: As drivers of stability, development and safe migration: what is at stake with Uganda’s migration phenomenon, implications for domestic and foreign policy?
- Internal migration and forced displacement trends and policies in Uganda: What are the internal migration trends in Uganda? What is the push and pull factors? Where do people migrate to, how and why do they get internally displaced and why?
[1] Mulimba & Olema, 2009; Coggio, 2018; IOM/GOU (2014) Labour Migration Management Assessment: Uganda; IOM (2018). Migration Governance Profile: Republic of Uganda. UN Migration
[2] (IOM/GOU, 2014).
