Ben
Page

I am Professor of Human Geography and African Studies at UCL. My research interests are broadly located within the field of development geography, bringing together my interests in migration, development and cities. My principal concern at the moment is exploring the role of the African diaspora in the UK in bringing development to Africa. I am particularly interested in the way African individuals, families and associations accommodate change in unexpected and innovative ways outside the development mainstream. In addition I am also writing on security issues in Cameroon. Land, politics and security in anglophone Cameroon. There has been a violent insurgency in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon since 2017 following the excessive use of force by the Government of Cameroon during protests by teachers and lawyers. Since then rebels aspiring to create a new state of Ambazonia have been operating a guerrilla war, that the central state has partially contained, but failed to end. Research on this theme has three strands (1) the role of the diaspora in the conflict (2) the role of land in Fako as a source of rents to sustain the satus quo, and a site of more-than-clientelist politics and (3) an analysis of the internal contradictions of Cameroonian security policy with Dr Manu Lekunze (University of Aberdeen). A house at home: domestic architecture and the African diaspora One of the most common aspirations for many individuals in the new African diaspora is to construct a house in the place they came from in Africa. As a result spectacular buildings have sprung up in towns and villages across the continent. Existing research (mostly in Ghana and Nigeria) has explored this process, in terms of the impact on urban land prices and urban planning. This project (with Dr Emile Sunjo from the University of Buea) looks at a different case study (Cameroon) from a different perspective (the engagement between geography and architecture). These new houses are dramatically different (in terms of their style, size, and decor) from their neighbours and are a dramatic, visible and common sign of the impact of migration on the built environment. This project (1) analyses the form of these houses to better understand how migration is changing the built and social landscapes; and (2) uses the example of diaspora house-building to develop theory that better integrates social change in Africa into our understanding of the relationship between migration and development - particularly in relation to the emergence of the new African Middle Class. The work has generated publications on housing, interior decoration, dinner parties and draws on a range of interpretive frameworks including psychoanalysis. Some relevant publications Sunjo, E., Page, B. (2022). Land Restitution and Conflict in Cameroon: the case of The Bakweri. African Affairs, doi:10.1093/afraf/adac034 Lekunze, M., Page, B. (2022). Security in Cameroon: a growing risk of persistent insurgency. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 1-18. doi:10.1080/00083968.2022.2120507 Page, B. (2021). Towards a psychoanalytic migration studies: a son, a brother, a father, an American, and his house in a Cameroonian village. Migration Studies, doi:10.1093/migration/mnab027 Page, B. (2019). Domestic dramas: class, taste and home decoration in Buea, Cameroon. In Noret, J. (Ed.), Social (Im)mobilities in Africa. Oxford: Berghahn. Page, B. (2019). Remittances. In Kobayashi, A., Collins, F. (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd Edition. Elsevier. Page, B., Mercer, C. (2018). Diasporas. In Nel, E., Binns, T., Lynch, K. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of African Development. . Page, B., Mercer, C. (2018). Diasporas and Development. In Cohen, R., Fischer, C. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Diaspora Studies (Routledge International Handbooks). . Page, B., Christou, A., Mavroudi, E. (2017). Introduction: from time to timespace and forward to time again in migration studies. In Mavroudi, E., Christou, A., Page, B. (Eds.), Timespace and International Migration. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Page, B. (2017). Dinner Time: Eating, moving, becoming. In Mavroudi, E., Page, B., Christou, A. (Eds.), Timespace and international migration. Edward Elgar Publishing. Page, B., Sunjo, E. (2017). Africa's middle class: building houses and constructing identities in the small town of Buea, Cameroon. Urban Geography, doi:10.1080/02723638.2017.1286839 Page, B., Tanyi, R. (2016). Engaging the African diaspora in the fight against malaria. In Mavroudi, E and Christou A (Eds) Dismantling Diasporas: Rethinking the Geographies of Diasporic Identity, Connection and Development. (pp. 189-201). . Page, B., Mercer, C. (2012). Why do people do stuff? Reconceptualizing remittance behaviour in diaspora-development research and policy. PROGRESS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, 12 (1), 1-18. doi:10.1177/146499341101200101 Mercer, C., Page, B. (2010). African home associations in Britain: between political belonging and moral conviviality. African Diasporas, 3 (1), 111-131. Page, B., Mercer, C., Evans, M. (2009). Introduction: African transnationalisms and diaspora networks. GLOBAL NETWORKS-A JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 9 (2), 137-140. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009.00247.x Mercer, C., Page, B., Evans, M. (2009). Unsettling connections: transnational networks, development and African home associations. Global Networks, 9 (2), 141-161. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009.00248.x Mercer, C., Page, B., Evans, M. (2008). Development and the African diaspora: Place and the politics of home. London: Zed Books.