Programme profile

The Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development (GTD) research programme has its geographical focal point in the Global South, intended here as developing countries and recently emerging economic powers. GTD’s research approach centres on the concept of transnationalism, which focuses on the linkages between the Global South and the rest of the world as well as within the Global South. A transnational perspective, as applied in the GTD programme, looks at the micro- and meso-scale with a focus on individuals, networks, communities, policy makers and civil society organisations and how they enact, practice and give shape to linkages across nation states. Linkages can take the form of material flows of people, goods or money and immaterial flows such as ideas and norms. A commonality is that research is firmly grounded in empirical, primary data collection work ranging from anthropological qualitative fieldwork to sociological quantitative surveys. A characteristic of this group is its strong track record in interdisciplinary research using mixed methods and multi-sited research designs.

The GTD programme focuses on two main areas of research. The first area of concentration is transnational migration. Research projects investigate linkages that are created between places and people in migrant sending and receiving countries. The specific geographic areas include migration between Africa and Europe as well as within African countries. This research aims to re-frame migration research that is usually conducted within a nation-state framework and does so by focusing on the everyday lived experiences of migrants and their families and network members in their origin countries as well as elsewhere.

A second area of focus is on transnational knowledge exchanges for development. Projects study how new governmental and non-governmental actors collaborate across nation-states to influence the way development is thought about and conducted in multiple locales. Examples include the role of African civil society institutions and their use of transnational platforms to influence development outcomes locally and the role of emerging economies in setting development agendas and providing role models for policy makers and elites in the Global South. Both foci include new initiatives to expand research into linkages between Africa and East Asia.

The year 2017 brought us a new colleague: Adam Dixon, who is bringing his acquired European Research Council Starting Grant with him.

In 2017 the programme started with the implementation of:

• the ERC Consolidator Grant funded project Mobility Trajectories of Young Lives: Transnational Youth in Global South and North (MO-TRAYL) that will study the way geographic mobility affects young people’s lives in Europe and Africa.
• the ERC Consolidator Grant funded project, Migrant Life Course and Legal Status Transition (MiLifeStatus), which investigates how citizenship status relates to migrant integration in different national contexts.

You can access the website of the programme here.