Over the last two decades, conflicts and wars in Africa and the MENA region have, and still are, triggering large-scale migration movements to neighboring countries. Although some migrants aim at journeying toward the global North, the vast majority of them are not intending to do so and remain in the region, establishing themselves in countries like Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Djibouti.

 For instance, out of the 14 million Syrians who fled the civil war, more than 7.2 million are internally displaced, with approximately 5.5 million Syrian refugees living today in neighboring countries (UNHCR 2024a). After nine years of war, more than 4 million Yemenis are internally displaced, while those who left the country primarily reside in Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Malaysia and Jordan (Al-Majali 2022). As a result of the conflict that erupted in Sudan on April 15, 2023, almost 8.6 million people have been displaced, the majority of which are IDPs. According to UNHCR, more than 500,000 Sudanese have entered Egypt since the outbreak of the conflict (UNHCR 2024b). Egyptian authorities estimate that since October 2023, more than 83,000 people have managed to leave Gaza, out of which roughly 10,000 Palestinians reside in Egypt (The Guardian 2024).

 While the Mediterranean has historically been viewed as a bridge between North Africa and Europe allowing the exchange of goods, ideas and people (Moreira Rodriguez Leite, et. al 2020; Holdermann et. al 2020; 2021), today the Mediterranean Sea represents a barrier, a deadly borderzone for some. A recently adopted migration agreement between the EU and Egypt in March 2024 follows a tradition of agreements that, since the early 2000s, aims at externalizing European border politics towards the African continent and the MENA region in order to govern migration movements and/or prevent people from reaching Europe. However, externalization politics are in no way a top-down process, where Global North policies are easily enforced on the Global South (see El Qadim 2007; Genc, Heck and Hess 2018; Heck and Habersky 2024), as states in the region have their own national, political, and economic agendas. 

The DiaMiGo Summer Academy looks at recent conflicts in the region – predominantly in Sudan, Gaza, and Yemen – and the forced migration movements stemming from them, with a special focus on Cairo (and the region). In addition to analyzing these phenomena from political, sociological and anthropological perspectives, the Academy also pays close attention to civil society and refugee led organizations. Thereby, the academy underscores not only the atrocities migrants fleeing these conflicts are subjected to, but also, and perhaps especially their agencies, aspirations for justice and desires for peace while examining/investigating how they navigate and establish themselves in urban and national spaces.

The academy will be organized around the following research strands/questions:

• While some conflicts receive adequate attention from the international community, others remain almost concealed from media coverage. How are the regional wars perceived and categorized by the local and international media and international community and how are these categorizations affecting those directly involved with them. 
• Migrants’ mobilities are shaped by social, economic, and political factors at various levels, from family and kinship networks to local urban contexts and national and international frameworks. This strand looks at how migrants and refugees navigate the urban landscape despite the fact that they possess limited rights. Furthermore, it investigates how they are establishing themselves within the urban context while reshaping the city itself. 
• How are refugees and migrants navigating societal and legal challenges caused by international, as well as national immigration policies and regulations? What role are refugee-led organizations playing in this context? 
• Despite the ongoing debate on migrants’ participation in academia, migrants and refugees are still often excluded from scholarly debates and rather treated as ‘objects of inquiry’. This strand discusses the methodology of cultural heritage practices and its documentation elucidating the role that the agency of the migrants plays. It thereby aims at reconceptualizing cultural heritage from the perspective of human mobility, putting memories of violence and solidarity at the center of the analysis.