Dr. Victor Chidubem Iwuoha

Short Bio

Dr. Victor Chidubem Iwuoha is a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has received excellent research fellowship awards globally, such as the British Academy International Visiting Fellowship, at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Wales, United Kingdom; a residency fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; a visiting research fellowship at the Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany; Taiwan International Fellowship at the Department of Diplomacy, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. Born in Nigeria, Victor Iwuoha has conducted commissioned research projects for a number of international organizations and NGOs including the UNESCO and African Union. He is Associate Editor, Society journal (Clarivate analytics). He has published extensively in many peer-reviewed international journals with about three dozens of peer-reviewed essays on International migration and security, biometric technology, and African studies. Victor Iwuoha ranks among top 500 Elsevier’s SciVal Authors (most published scholars) in Nigeria from 2021 till present. His research interests include: international migration and security studies.

Selected Publications

•  Iwuoha, V.C., and Doevenspeck M. (2023) ‘Dilemmas of Biometric Nationality’: Migration Control, Biometric ID Technology and Political Mobilization of Migrants in West Africa. Territory, Politics, Governance. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21622671.2023.2205885
• Iwuoha, V.C. and Doevenspeck, M. (2023) Introduction to Forum: (Im)mobilities, Security, and Identities in West Africa Borderlands. Society 60(3) 289-296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00854-9
• Aniche, E.T., Iwuoha, V.C. and Isike, C. (2022) Whither the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocols? Pandemic Nationalism, Borders, and Migration in West Africa. Political Geography 99: 102771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102771
• Iwuoha, V.C. and Mbaegbu, C.C. (2021) Border Governance and Its Complications in West Africa: What Can Be Learned from Constructivism? Society, 58:269–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-021-00622-7
• Iwuoha, V.C. (2020) Street-Hawking in a Foreign Land: Social Dynamics of Migrant Petty Traders Livelihoods in Nigeria. Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(8): 1209–1229. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909620916912

Project Description

Project Title: Biometrics Agenda in Africa: Biometric ID Policies, Gendered Dynamics, and Political Mobilization of Migrants in West Africa

The project interrogates how the intrusion of biometric ID technologies into the conduct of cross-border management has revealed radically in political mobilization of migrants across West African borderlands especially in Nigeria. This project contributes to the externalization debate by stressing the imperativeness of African and actor-specific perspectives relating to the politicization of European biometrics projects in Africa. It refocuses externalization from its predominant Eurocentric narratives to African contexts, and relationally show how it serves binary (im)mobility interests in Africa: primary – the EU external border securitization and humanitarianism; and secondary – African political elites’ migrant instrumentalization. The project conducts a foremost gender analysis on migrants’ biometric ID adoption, showing the gendered implications of biometric objectification of migrants in Nigeria. Drawing on Ake’s (1982) and Rodney’s (1972) decoloniality analysis, the project attempts to rethink (im)mobility of technologies such as the European cooperative biometrics projects in Africa as neo-neocolonial modality and neoliberal forms of (authoritarian) power relations to control (im)mobilities and enact spatial recolonization of African borderlands. This research will stimulate multi-relational conversation with African scholarship towards de-imperialization of biometrics ID processes.