Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste PhD
Contact
Name and title: Tekalign Ayalew MengistePhD
Workplace: Department of Social Anthropology Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Universitetsvägen 10 B, plan 6
Postal address Socialantropologiska institutionen106 91 Stockholm
About me
Dr. Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste is Assistant Professor and senior researcher in the
College of Social Sciences at Addis Ababa University (AAU) and affiliated researcher
at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Dr. Tekalign
obtained his BA in History from AAU and MA and PhD degrees in Social
Anthropology specializing in Transnational Migration from Stockholm University,
Sweden. He has worked as lecturer, senior researcher and policy analyst at Arba
Minch University, Addis Ababa University and Stockholm University. He has an
extensive knowledge on Ethiopian and African political and social history, migration,
forced displacement, challenges of peace building and indigenous conflict resolution
mechanisms in Ethiopia and Africa. He has researched and widely published on issues
such as tranansnational migration, climate mobility, gender relations, human
smuggling, youth studies, children migration, forced mobility, legal anthropology,
social/cultural capital and peacemaking, conflict management, and legal pluralism. He
has conducted fieldwork in many countries in East Africa, Europe and the Middle
East. He is engaged public anthropologist who has provided consultancy services and
training on IDPs management, trauma healing, migration governance and conflict
resolutions and mediation, and peace building for Ethiopian government ministries
(Ministry of Peace), IGAD, IOM, the Swedish government agencies, African Union
Commission and other international organizations. Dr Tekalign has won grants and
managed several research projects funded by the Swedish Research Council, Irish
Research Council, Danida, IOM, ICRC, GIZ, IGAD, UNICEF, DIIS and other state
and international agencies. Dr. Tekalign is also member of many international
research councils and networks such as OSSREA, ESSSWA and IMESCOE.
Dr Tekalign has supervised numerus PhD, MA and BA students. He has teaching experience at MA and BA levels- forced migration, conflict management, security studies, anthropological theories, research methds and transnational migration.
Dr. Tekalign’s current research focuses on ‘Migrant Preparatory Training and the Shaping of Circular Migration between Ethiopia and the Gulf States’, funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). This study deals with a critical dimension of the intensification and deepening of circular migration, namely the expansion of what we term “migrant preparatory training,” vocational education in the deployment of low-skilled documented international labour migrants from sending to receiving countries. Government-regulated training is part of an expanding migration infrastructure that prepares migrants for work abroad, while aiming to shape their aspirations and channel them into specific labour sectors in destination countries. Importantly, these training programs are becoming formalized through policy transfers from mature sending countries, most notably the Philippines, to countries such as Ethiopia, which is currently developing the most ambitious labour deployment program on the African continent. This project takes the circulation and implementation of these training programs as an empirical entry-point for understanding how the recruitment, preparation, deployment and channelling of documented low-skilled labour migration is evolving through increasingly sophisticated means. This is of great relevance for understanding the future of labour migration across world, not least to Europe. As part of this study, he is also is exploring the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in disrupting migratory mobility between Ethiopia and the Gulf States including mass deportations form Lebanon and Saudi Arabia .
1) Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste. 2024. “Drivers and Patterns of Ethiopian Youth
Migration to Global Destinations.” In the Global Ethiopian Diaspora: Migrations,
Connections, and Belongings, Edited by Shimelis Bonsa Gulema, Hewan Girma and
Mulugeta F. Dinbabo.
2) Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste. 2023. Smuggling as a Collective Enterprise:
Ethiopian/Wollo Migration to Saudi Arabia, in Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from
Below, edited by Mahmoud Keshavarz Shahram Khosravi. Pluto Press.
3) Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste and Tatek Abebe. 2023. Ethiopian Girls Narratives of
Risk and Governance of Circular Migration to the Arabian Gulf, Children and
Society.