Research areas

Primary research areas

Ida Marie Savio Vammen’s primary ethnographic research examines the impacts of EU externalization in West Africa, particularly how restrictive border policies affect the daily lives, aspirations, and decision-making processes of migrants and their families. Her work also highlights how civil society in Senegal resists EU externalization efforts in diverse ways. Additionally, she investigates the connections between climate change and child and youth (im)mobility in Ethiopia. Her fieldwork spans Senegal, Ethiopia, and Argentina.

Current research

Ida Marie Savio Vammen’s current research delves into the local effects of EU-driven border governance policies and interventions in West Africa that aim to curb migration to Europe. She is interested in how West African actors respond to EU pressures to reduce irregular migration and their involvement in the burgeoning migration industry. In her work on climate change and (im)mobility, she focuses on the role of humanitarian interventions and informal social protection systems in shaping the (im)mobility of youth in Ethiopia.

Additionally, she continues to explore the lives and mobility of Senegalese migrants in Argentina, whom she came to know during her PhD fieldwork. Her dissertation, titled The Madness of Migration: An Ethnographic Account of Senegalese Migrants’ Mobility and Lives in Buenos Aires (2017), documented this aspect of her research.

Projects

Ida Marie Savio Vammen is actively involved in the PATHWAYS: Complex Pathways of Climate Mobility for Children and Youth in Ethiopia research project, which, together with Ethiopian and international researchers, investigates how children and youth in Ethiopia navigate climate stressors amid conflict and worsening socio-economic conditions due to extreme climate events and slow-onset environmental changes.

In recent years, she has also contributed to two collaborative research projects on externalization and border governance: (1) the Nordforsk-funded: EFFEXT:Effects of Externalisation EU Migration Management in Africa and the Middle East and (2) the Independent Research Fund Denmark-funded project, Borderwork: Migrants, Brokers, and European Border Governance in West Africa. In both projects, her primary focus has been on Senegal and the multiple local ripple effects of EU-driven externalization.