Leaving one’s home is never an easy undertaking. Whether having left voluntarily or not, migrants face various challenges in their new host states. Many rely on their co-nationals and diaspora...Show moreLeaving one’s home is never an easy undertaking. Whether having left voluntarily or not, migrants face various challenges in their new host states. Many rely on their co-nationals and diaspora communities to remain connected to their homeland and to navigate their new host countries. One way to remain connected to the home country are joking relationships. Prevalent in West African states, joking relationships or cousinage assume make-believe family ties, which in turn allow people to jokingly insult their “cousins”. Commonly known as traditional conflict resolution techniques, these relationships play important roles in people’s everyday life. This thesis investigates the impact that cousinage has on the community of the Senegalese diaspora in Germany, as well as the question whether diaspora activity and involvement can facilitate integration. In the course of this thesis, an in-depth case study of the Senegalese diaspora in Germany was conducted, for which 28 members of the diaspora were interviewed. The research found that joking relationships are a way for the diaspora to create community feeling based on ethnic and national identities. Furthermore, the thesis shows that diaspora involvement facilitates the integration process of migrants by offering active support.Show less
State violence against civilians is rarely considered in the context of the Sahel-crisis, although militaries and other state actors are responsible for a major share of civilian casualties in the...Show moreState violence against civilians is rarely considered in the context of the Sahel-crisis, although militaries and other state actors are responsible for a major share of civilian casualties in the region. As many international actors support Sahelian states in mitigating the crisis, this study seeks to shed light on state violence in the Sahel from different perspectives. I use theories and concepts of recent studies on militia-state cooperation and societal explanations of violence and modify them to develop my theoretical framework of “cooperation, rivalry, and revenge”. Based on that framework, I argue that three factors determine state violence in Burkina Faso and Niger: firstly, cooperation of the state with militias encourages the latter to carry out local conflicts violently, secondly, state actors target more civilians the higher the rivalry measured in parity of represented and marginalised ethnic groups, and thirdly revenge motives account for the location of state violence. I test these arguments using a mixed-methods design that combines extensive qualitative information from expert reports with data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Proejct (ACLED) for Burkina Faso and Niger from 2015 to 2021.Show less
In analyzing the relationship between religious diversity and democratic support in Sub-Saharan Africa, existing research has very much focused upon cross-national analyses. This thesis aims to...Show moreIn analyzing the relationship between religious diversity and democratic support in Sub-Saharan Africa, existing research has very much focused upon cross-national analyses. This thesis aims to challenge this by conducting a research on religious diversity and democratic support in Ghana on sub-national level. It analyses the following question: To what extent does religious diversity influence democratic support among religious people in Ghana? This thesis builds upon Robert Dowd’s (2015) theory, which suggests that religious diversity is a stimulus for accepting democracy among Muslims and Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa. I use the clustered version of Afrobarometer Round 5 Ghana in order to assess the relationship between religious diversity on micro-level and democratic support in Ghana. By conducting a multilevel logistic regression analysis, this paper finds that there is no significant relationship between religious diversity and democracy when analyzing for the religious groups Christianity, Islam, Pentecostalism and ‘Other’. Also, religious diversity does not significantly impact interreligious tolerance and political activism. When testing diversity for only Islam and Christianity, there is a significant relationship between religious diversity and democratic support in Ghana.Show less
Since the rise of Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, both had the same goal: putting an end to racism and white supremacy. Although it would be logical that both movements follow a similar...Show moreSince the rise of Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, both had the same goal: putting an end to racism and white supremacy. Although it would be logical that both movements follow a similar path, Black Lives Matter seems to be more popular and Rhodes Must Fall protests seem to be more violent. This research is about analyzing the differences in success between the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the Rhodes must Fall movement from South Africa. Success can be measured in a way of looking at accomplishments, but this literature study will compare successes in mobilization strategies. Grievances from institutionalized racism created comparable grievances in The United States and South Africa. Other factors that will be analyzed in this study are resource mobilization, mobilization strategies, networking strategies and media representation. This research will argue that the Black Lives Matter movement adapted better mobilization strategies overall.Show less
For too long women and gender issues have been overlooked in security studies scholarship, which tends to preserve a “genderless” and male-dominated perspective. However, more recently, scholars...Show moreFor too long women and gender issues have been overlooked in security studies scholarship, which tends to preserve a “genderless” and male-dominated perspective. However, more recently, scholars have been investigating the question of gender related to conflicts, and if working towards gender equality could be a solution to many of the challenges faced today. Some researchers assert that the more gender-equal a state is, the less violence, between or within states, there is. Scholars differ in how they define and conceptualise gender equality, varying between political, educational, economic and social factors. Taking these scholarships into consideration, I investigate how political gender equality can influence the occurrence of intrastate conflict events. I use sex quotas in parliaments as a proxy of gender equality and hypothesise that their adoption lowers the occurrence of intrastate conflict events. I use a multiple linear regression analysis to test my hypothesis and conclude that legislating sex quotas reduces the occurrence of intrastate conflict events. However, the reduction of violence does not seem to be due to the increasing number of women in parliament, but may be emerging from gender equality norm acquisition at the elite level, or from international pressures, which may also explain the adoption of sex quotas.Show less
