Speaker
Affiliation
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Presentation
“Mobility, Mobilization and Counter/Insurgency: The Routes of Terror in an African Context”
Details
Event Description
This talk introduces a critical mobilities perspective to understanding one of the world’s deadliest insurgencies, the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria and Africa’s Lake Chad region. It explores how violent extremist organizations rely on a population that is stuck yet constantly on the move, how state counterinsurgency campaigns mobilize against so-called subversive mobilities, and how people in transit are treated as could-be terrorists and subjected to corruption and coercion en route. Central to the talk is how multiple interacting mobilities and counter/insurgency interpenetrate and shape each other. Throughout, mobility emerges as not just the mise en scène but the organizing logic of counter/insurgency.
Sponsors
- Center for Migration and Development
- Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
- Effron Center for the Study of America