‘Bushfalling’ : the ambiguities of role identities experienced by self-sponsored Cameroonian students in Flanders (Belgium)

Educational mobility in Cameroon is not a recent phenomenon, yet through the notion of ‘bushfalling’ – that is, the way international migration is envisioned and constructed in Cameroon – young Cameroonians explore routes to new destination countries for educational migration as a way of fulfilling their dreams of a better future. These dreams are enabled and challenged by the different role identities the students have to combine in the destination country. The current article focuses on self-sponsored Anglophone Cameroonian students in Flanders, who combine roles as students, workers and transnational caregivers. Using bushfalling as our analytical lens, we explore the change in understanding bushfalling through the educational route and its implications on transnational family relations. Further, we explore the various ways in which these students negotiate and manipulate the different roles, yet keep the student role identity in the centre, and how this in turn informs their next step in the education-migration trajectory

Morality and Boundaries in Paul

In the Pauline communities, ethics, ethos and identity were closely intertwined. This essay analyses the way in which Paul emphasised the mental boundaries of the Christ communities to turn them into moral boundaries. In this process, the fencing off of these communities over against their past and their present was a fundamental feature of Paul’s reasoning. The communities thus became fenced off from their past, because the Christ event was seen as causing a major change in history. This change affected both Gentile and Jewish believers. At the same time, Paul stressed the boundaries with the outside world: he characterised the inside world as the loyal remnant of Israel, consisting of Jews and Gentiles alike, and pointed out that this group is the group of the elect ‘saints’. The perspective with which Paul looked at ethics and morality inside this group was strongly coloured by the assumed identity of this group as ‘Israel’. Even though the Mosaic Law was no longer the focal point for the identity of this eschatological Israel, the ethical demands Paul mentioned over against the members of this new Israel were highly influenced by the morality of the law. For Paul, sanctification was a fundamental ideal, and this ideal reflected the spirituality of the Holiness Code of Leviticus. This particular ethical model was framed by the awareness that Paul (and Christ before him) was ‘sent’ by God, much in the same way the prophets of Israel themselves had been sent

Sustainable reintegration: identikit of a popular policy objective. IES Policy Brief Issue 2019/07, September 2019

Among the objectives composing the 2018 UN Global Compact for Migration, Objective 21 deals with the return of migrants to their countries of origin. This objective includes a reference to sustainable reintegration occurring when returnees have access to psycho-social assistance, justice and occupational prospects. The policy objective of sustainable reintegration apparently enjoys broad support in the face of some countries increasingly opposing the global governance of migration. Such support can be explained by making reference to sustainable reintegration’s potential to accommodate diverse interests and the limited monitoring of the programmes it underpins