Michael Stasik - MIASA - Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa

Michael Stasik is an anthropologist working on the intersection of urban cultures, economies and mobilities in West Africa. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. He obtained his MPhil from the African Studies Centre Leiden and his PhD from the University of Bayreuth, where he also worked as lecturer in anthropology. He was co-editor of Temporalities of Waiting in Africa (Critical African Studies, 2021), Bus Stations in Africa (Africa Today, 2018) and The Making of the African Road (Brill, 2017), and serves as co-editor-in-chief for the journal New Diversities.

During his MIASA fellowship, he wants to consolidate findings from his current research project. This project explores practices of transnational migration in West Africa by considering the trajectories of individual/non-associational migrants in urban Ghana. The main interest here is to understand dynamics of the diversification and individualization of migration in the sub-region. Related research questions concern the significance of social detachment and loneliness/aloneness in constituting migrant experiences and aspirations.

MIASA Project: Individual migration in West Africa

Stasik’s project explores current dynamics of transnational migrant mobilities within West Africa by considering trajectories of individual migration to urban Ghana. Based on 15 months of ethnographic research conducted intermittently from 2011 to 2019 in Ghana, it advances an understanding of the role of the individual in West African migration circuits, while attempting to critically rethink long-held assumptions about the primacy of co-ethnic and co-national networks in the making of migrant mobility in the sub-region. As such, his project is not introducing a new study subject but is rather seeking to rearrange descriptions and analyses of West African transnational migration in the face of changing empirical realities. As he has already compiled an extensive amount of ethnographic material, during the MIASA fellowship he does not intend to conduct any substantial additional empirical research. Rather, he intends to consolidate his research findings and, in so doing, to sharpen the descriptive and conceptual lens proffered by the category of individual migration. Central to this conceptual work will be to present, discuss and evaluate hisfindings with scholars, students and practitioners in Ghana, and, further, to convert insights from these conversations into a basis for writing two articles for leading peer-reviewed journals. Together with other writings he is currently preparing, these efforts will lead him to a book manuscript connected to his research project.

Institute:
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Year:
2021/2022