Photo by Joel Devereux
Best Poster Award 2024
24th International Migration Conference
12 - 14 June
Klagenfurt, Austria
Expertise and Research
Agency, Communications, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Leadership Theory and Practice, Migration, and Social Capital.
Biography
Responding partly to anti-migrant and victim rhetoric by media, political parties and other actors, researchers highlight how migrants exercise agency in navigating various migration and integration experiences. There is considerable space for further exploration into how migrants exercise agency through networks.
Daniel William Szabo's research involves original fieldwork with interviews of 101 migrants who had experience travelling high-risk migration routes through the Sahara Desert and 16 staff members from the humanitarian sector working with migrants in the region. He investigates how individuals have sought to derive social capital through networks in an environment of increasing securitised migration and barriers to migrant integration by states. The outcomes advance our understanding of high-risk Sahara routes, migrant agency and social capital.
In addition to his dedication to research and thirty-five years of experience instructing and teaching, Daniel has spent eleven years in international civil service. He supports the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) communications efforts in humanitarian response, part of the Global Data Institute at International Organization for Migration (IOM). Activities involving DTM monitor and track displaced populations' movements and evolving needs in one hundred countries. Meanwhile, IOM is the leading intergovernmental organisation in the field of migration. Fully integrated into the United Nations system, IOM helps advance a comprehensive and coordinated response to address the crucial needs of migrants.
Daniel earned his academic credentials at Griffith University (Queensland, Australia), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Berlin, Germany), and Capilano University (North Vancouver, Canada).
Awards and Honours include the Best Poster Award 2024, 24th International Migration Conference, Universität Klagenfurt—Student Experience of Teaching Survey Commendation 2023, Griffith University—International Postgraduate Research and Postgraduate Research Scholarships 2018—Medal for Outstanding Academic Excellence 2017, Griffith University.
Download Thesis
Data as of 28 March, 2024
Cite This Thesis:
Szabo, D.W. (2023). Extraordinary Decisions® Network-Derived Social Capital as a Survival Strategy on Routes Through the Sahara Desert [Doctoral thesis, Griffith University]. doi.org/10.25904/1912/4988
Abstract
This thesis examines how migrants have sought to develop and use network social capital as a survival strategy on high-risk migration routes and to facilitate integration into their host society. It focuses on the Sahara Desert context, which has been increasingly marked by intensified enforcement and risk to migrants amid the European Union’s externalisation of migration control policies, acting with sending and transiting third countries in the African Union. The thesis draws on original field research involving interviews with 101 migrants who had the experience of travelling high-risk migration routes through the Sahara Desert. It also draws on interviews with 16 humanitarian organisation staff members working with migrants in these regions. Respondents identified several factors motivating efforts to derive network social capital that were central to their survival approaches. Leading factors included having limited resources, having no contacts at the intended destinations, lacking knowledge of migration routes, travelling alone and vulnerability to authorities, human smugglers and other actors. Each of these factors spurs them to derive network social capital in ways that include forming groups, humanitarian organisations, human smugglers, informal labour networks, social networking applications and the support of kinship connections. This thesis thus makes a significant contribution to the understanding of migrant agency, challenging some still-prevailing views of migrants as primarily threats or victims and instead presenting migrants as resilient survivors. It also situates their exercise of agency within the broader empirical and theoretical framework of increasing state securitisation of migration and their growing extraterritorial enforcement efforts. It works to advance understanding of the full implications of such policies while providing a fine-grained counter-narrative on them from migrants’ contextually situated perspectives.
What Others Are Saying
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Good work on this. It's a substantial thesis and makes some real contributions.
Professor Luis Cabrera, Principal Supervisor
Deputy Head of School, Government and International Relations
School of Government and International Relations
Griffith University
This is a well-crafted and researched dissertation that makes four distinct contributions. It is ambitious and well-executed that clearly meets and exceeds the requirements of original research for a doctoral dissertation.
I look forward to seeing it as a book!
This is an excellent thesis. It addresses a timely and important issue, i.e. the conditions of migrants on high-risk migration routes. This thesis is very well written and draws on rigorous, comprehensive and methodologically sound research.
Upcoming Conferences
European Consortium of Political Science Research (ECPR) General Conference, 12-15 August 2024, University College Dublin, Ireland.
Australian Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Conference, 25-29 November 2024, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. APSA 2024 forms part of the Congress of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences,
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© 2024 Daniel W. Szabo
