Responding to important research gaps at the intersection of conflict studies, migration studies, and urban studies, this project investigates the formation of transnational “urban warscapes” between cities in Eastern Congo and Flanders. From the specific perspective of women’s everyday spatial experiences, the project aims to provide a deeper understanding of the dialectical relationship between migration, war, and urbanization across the transnational Flanders-Eastern Congo geography, through investigating the transnational mobility and reconfiguration and social tensions that emerge from the protracted civil war in Easter DRC, and its impact on urban settlements patterns and home-making practices in the African Great Lakes diaspora in Flanders. Ultimately, the project will deliver a novel transnational epistemological and analytical framework and empirically grounded theory-formation on the reconfiguration of urban spaces through the de- and re-territorialisation of violent conflict dynamics within transnational fields.
Funded by FWO