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Caught in the crossfire: unravelling the complex interplay of exploitation and agency in children associated with Boko Haram
Boko Haram has increasingly dominated media headlines over the past decade, particularly for its widespread recruitment and exploitation of children through forceful tactics. The group’s notorious 2014 abduction of the Chibok girls was a...
Why do some people choose to migrate and some people not? Why are some willing to do so via irregular channels and some unwilling? Answering these questions is not purely an academic exercise. Correctly identifying causes allows us to design better interventions to achieve migration policy objectives such as “safe, regular, and orderly migration”. Moreover, the scale of migration as a policy issue has grown exponentially and will likely do so further in coming decades, making it one of the defining political issues of the twenty-first century. Although scholars have made several advances in explaining migration—broadly defined and regarding specific categories therein—our explanatory ability remains limited. Scientifically, this is more problematic given the theoretical consequences for understanding human behaviour in toto and across all of the sciences that advances in the specific, timeless, yet increasingly important and prevalent topic of migration an offer.
This study introduces the explanatory factor of narratives and belief in them. It builds on recent scientific advances in understanding the behavioural importance of narratives and suggests that their importance in migration decisionmaking is likely large, perhaps even beyond that of their role in immigration attitudinal formation, which is even more regularly cited by international organisations, academics, NGOs, etc. (Dennison, 2021). To describe belief in narratives and test their explanatory power on migration behaviour—both regular and irregular—this study makes use of a novel data source: the Swiss-Subsaharan Migration Network (S-SAM)’s S-SAM Survey – Health, Migration, and Uncertainty (Adetutu et al, 2021), the data of which was generously given to the author for the purposes of this report. The survey asked representative samples of Kenyans, Nigerians, and South Africans—three major origin countries of migrants in the Euro-Mediterranean region (and destination countries in their own right)—about their migration aspirations, plans, and preparations, along with scores of further questions on their perceptions of migration, including their belief in 20 common migration narratives. The use of this survey facilitates the broader goal of this study: to provide the richest understanding of the relationship between narrative belief and migration behaviour to date.
The report proceeds as follows: First, we briefly overview academic findings on the causes of variation in migration behaviour and narratives, respectively, building on recent work (Dennison, 2022; 2021). Second, we describe the data used in more depth. Third, we overview several aspects of the data: first, migration propensities including aspirations, plans, and preparations and desired countries of destination; second, we consider willingness to migrate irregularly and which methods of irregularity are planned; third, we look at the migration calculus in terms of stated motives, acknowledged push factors, and perceived challenges; finally, the analyses moves on to narratives, both describing the extent to which 20 narratives are believed and then modelling their effects on migration and irregularity. Finally, the report concludes and discusses next steps for research and practice.