Dr. Eyene Okpanachi

Eyene is a Marie Curie Fellow with the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Walees.  Eyene’s research project engages with the literature on the securitization of migration in the European Union (EU) and the political economy of multi-level governance (MLG) to investigate the complex interactions and negotiations between returning migrants and MLG actors and the impact of this complicated entanglement on returnees’ reintegration. The empirical study focuses on Ethiopia and Nigeria, two key priority countries under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration, which have served as major countries of origin for migrants, and which have witnessed the return of migrants from Libya. This project aims to contribute to academic and policy knowledge on the role of institutions, policies, and politics in migration governance in Africa, and their intersection with the EU’s border management policies.

Prior to his current position, Eyene was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria (Canada). He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of Alberta  (Canada), and a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Ibadan (Nigeria). He also received a Postgraduate Diploma in Federalism, Decentralization, and Conflict Resolution from the Institute of Federalism, University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Eyene’s broad area of research and academic interests are comparative politics and international relations, but he is specifically interested in migration / mobility, security  (including terrorism and counter terrorism), conflict and peace processes, federalism and multi-level governance, natural resource politics, institutions and institutional reforms, public policy, and the politics of government decision-making.