Sousse, the third-largest city in Tunisia, is a sanctuary for migrants who have encountered violence and discrimination and is notable for its municipality’s progressive stance on migration management. This research report seeks to fill a research gap on the experience of migrants and refugees in Sousse and provide an evidence base to better support these populations. It draws on surveys with 200 Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, and qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with Sub-Saharan African, Arab, and European refugees, migrants, and local key stakeholders.

Please click here to download the report from the Mixed Migration Centre website:

To access the full article please click on the link below:

https://doi.org/10.1332/27523349Y2023D000000001

*Abstract*

This article contributes to debates on international collaborations by examining contradictions between the decolonial turn and the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund which imposed Global North leadership on Global South partners. Through the lenses of compromise and complicity, the article explores how collaborators strive to work together equitably within the constraints of a UK government Official Development Assistance funding scheme. Drawing on focus group discussions with members of a research team, the article traces, first, their engagement with political and institutional constraints and, second, their articulation of collaborative compromise and productive complicity. The article foregrounds the generative potential of complicity as a productive concept that can help partners to navigate the challenges of interdependence and partnership entailed in North–South, South–South, cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The report was researched, produced and written by a team of five researchers/field actors consisting of: two leading researchers, Abdeslam ZIOU ZIOU, anthropologist and independent researcher, and Mehdi AZDEM, D. in cultural communication and expert in cultural policy issues, who have worked for the last ten years within several Moroccan NGOs that campaign for human and cultural rights. Three junior researchers: Abdessamad KHADIRI, PhD student in urban sociology at Tetouan University who is interested in urban sustainability, Oumayma AGHZERE, a master’s student in anthropology at Laval University, and Younes TALAA, an associative actor and social worker, working with migrants and refugees at an NGO in the city of Tangier.

The project was conceived by Dr Sébastien Bachelet (University of Manchester) and Prof. Laura Jeffery (University of Edinburgh), both researchers in social anthropology, and supervised by Dounia Benslimane, a consultant on cultural projects development.