IRIS NRC is proud to co-sponsor the EPS Network for International and Comparative Education’s Fall series. We hope that you join us for the second of five events: “Hosting States and Unsettled Guests: Eritrean Refugees in a Time of Migration Deterrences,” with Jennifer Riggan.
As wealthy countries build walls to keep migrants out, countries in the Global South are celebrated for their hospitality towards refugees. Hosting States and Unsettled Guests asks the question: did these policies enable refugees to consider their new country home?
Beginning in 2016, Ethiopia promoted local integration, economic opportunities, and access to education for refugees in order to encourage them to stay long-term rather than migrate towards Europe. But by 2020 a political overhaul and the outbreak of war in Northern Ethiopia foreclosed these opportunities, particularly for Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. How did Eritrean refugees envision their future in light of the discrepancy between promising policies and ongoing instability?
About Jennifer Riggan
Dr. Jennifer Riggan is Professor and Director of International Studies in the Department of Historical and Political Studies at Arcadia University. She is the current Frank and Evelyn Steinbrucker ’42 Endowed Chair and will hold the position during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years. She began teaching at Arcadia in 2007. She is a political anthropologist whose ethnographic research focuses on political identities and state formation in Eritrea and Ethiopia. She has published on the changing relationship between citizenship and nationalism, the de-coupling of the nation and the state, and the relationship between militarization, education and development. Her current research explores the effects of new paradigms in global migration management on Ethiopian refugee policy and Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. She is the author of The Struggling State: Nationalism, Mass Militarization and the Education of Eritrea (2016). She has held fellowships from the Wolf Humanities Center (2020-21), The Georg Arnhold Program (2019), Fulbright (Addis Ababa University 2016-17 & Asmara University 2004-5), the Spencer Foundation/ National Academy of Education (2012-14), and the Social Science Research Council (2004-5). Her current research interests include forced migration, refugee hosting in the global south, and temporal agency among refugees. Along with Amanda Poole she is the author of The Hosting State and Its Restless Guests: Time-Making, Mobility and Containment Among Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia, which is currently under review. She recently received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia.
