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
