Framing Identities from Human Agency Mobility on the Kenya-Uganda Highway

Abstract

Abstract

This project aims at conducting a formative research and disseminating its findings over eighteen (18) months. Findings from the formative research will be used to design a three years research to understand re-configured human identities that result from human (im)mobility in East Africa. The formative research will focus on human agency in mobility, to study using mixed methods, three human and materials mobility spots along the Kenya-Uganda highway. The study assumes that human mobility in East Africa is increasingly agentive and no longer collective, passive and forced. The study further assumes that newer forms of mobility in East Africa are changing people‟s identities. The region is witnessing multiples of agentive mobility and immobility. Human agency will be studied in this stated respect, centring on its influence on mobility choices, processes and outcomes. The central research question is how newer identities form as a result of human mobility and immobility. A mixed methods design and methodology will apply to research and report mobility and immobility. From six multi-disciplines, Moi University researchers joined by one ACC and one AMCE collaborator (as a result of ongoing match-making), will develop formative research protocols on mobility, immobility and identity in three sites: urban Eldoret, Bungoma County both along the Kenya-Uganda highway and in Malaba; a border town of Kenya-Uganda, along the same highway. Researchers will collect formative data in 2020-2021, aimed at four distinct outputs: first, data bases for the Knowledge Lab; second, research findings for dissemination through scheduled workshops and conferences in 2021; third, two co-publications, and; fourth, results, lessons and recommendations for use in 2021-2022 to design a three years Mobilities Project: “Human Agentive Mobility for Livelihoods and emerging Identities in East Africa”, that will test human agency in mobilities that frame identities, using livelihoods, education, health and climate as mobility variables