Home
International Encyclopaedia
of the Histories of Anthropology

French anthropologist Michel Agier (1953–) specialises in urban anthropology, globalisation, forced displacement and migration. He began his research on the fringes of major cities in West and Central Africa, Brazil and Colombia, working in subaltern or precarious neighbourhoods and social environments. He has focused on social mobilities and inequalities, cultural and identity (ethnic and racial) assignments and/or mobilisations, with particular attention paid to ritual situations such as carnivals and religious feasts. Since the 2000s, Europe has been his main field of research, through an anthropology of displacement and urban logics that focuses on the places where migrants, displaced persons, refugees and exiles congregate, such as refugee camps, displaced persons sites, and transit zones. On the basis of his individual research and the collective research programmes on European, Middle East, and African contexts that he has directed, Agier has constructed a critical theory of the humanitarian governance of the undesirable fringes of society. He advocates a policy of hospitality that gives migrants their rightful place in it.

Keywords: Anthropology of France | Anthropology of public policy | Reflexive Ethnography | Racism | Political commitment | Last quarter of the 20th century | 21st century | France | Togo | Ghana | Burkina Faso | Cameroon | Colombia | Brazil | Afro-brazilian Studies | Carnival | Candomblé | Urban anthropology | Cultural syncretism/creolization | Racial Segregation | Migrations | Hospitality | Refugee | Development Policy | Humanitarian Politics | Violence | War | Forced displacement | Exile | Globalization | Marc Augé | Gérard Althabe

Audio-video