Research areas

Hans Lucht’s research focuses on undocumented migration from Africa to Europe via North Africa. Lucht’s core interests include migrant sending communities in West Africa; West African connection men and the organization of clandestine routes to Europe; high-risk migration on the Mediterranean Sea and in the Sahara Desert; migrant lives in post-Gaddafi Libya; migration related deaths and the ramifications in Europe and in Africa; undocumented migrant lives in Southern Europe; European migration policies; global, social and existential anthropology. Hans Lucht’s work is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Niger, Libya, Italy, and Greece.

Current research

Hans Lucht is heading the research project, ‘Borderwork - An Ethnographic Study of Migrants, Brokers and European Border Governance in West Africa’ (2018–2021). Focusing on West Africa, this project explores competing notions of borderwork in the expanded EU-African borderlands in a time when safe and legal mobility is limited and human, social, and political conditions of migrants are severely challenged.