Both Nahla El-Menshawy and Fumie Nakamura successfully defended their dissertations in May. El-Menshawy is an associate researcher at the Research Department Intrastate Conflict at PRIF. In addition to Hanna Pfeifer and Baher Baser, Jonas Wolff also served as her dissertation supervisor. Nakamura, in contrast, is a researcher at PRIF’s International Institutions Research Department. Thomas Scheffer and Nicole Deitelhoff supervised her dissertation.
In her dissertation “Pracitising Social and Political Trust: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Yemeni Diaspora in Cairo,” El-Menshawy examines the practice of political, social, and interpersonal trust among Yemeni migrants in Cairo.
She understands trust as an interdependent process within a diaspora operating under autocratic state structures. At the heart of the work is the insight that radical upheavals caused by revolution, war, and migration fundamentally transform perceptions of one’s homeland and fellow citizens, with historical ties between the host country and the homeland significantly shaping these dynamics. In her dissertation, she concludes that social trust among Yemeni men and women in Egypt plays a central role and is reconfigured, particularly in the context of migration.
On the vertical level, Yemeni migrants express a desire for a functioning state order in Yemen, although the specific form this order would take is not predetermined and must be conceived beyond classical Weberian notions of the state. At the same time, El-Menshawy argues for systematically taking so-called “parallel institutions” — such as tribe-based norms, civil society initiatives, and kinship networks — into account, as they contribute significantly to the negotiation and stabilization of relationships of trust.
El-Menshawy’s dissertation makes an important contribution to the decolonization of trust research by showing that certain social networks, such as the diaspora, are often more enduring and reliable than formal political orders. Women, in particular, play a key role in this regard, one that should be given greater weight in political processes. Trust is not a static asset that people “possess,” but rather a living practice that migrants use to reorganize their world even under the most difficult conditions.
Nahla El-Menshawy is a research associate in the Department of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt and was a doctoral candidate in the research initiative “ConTrust: Trust in Conflict — Political Coexistence under Conditions of Uncertainty.” Her research interests include radicalization and violence, autocracies, and processes of legitimation in the Middle East and North Africa.
Fumie Nakamura has also successfully defended her dissertation “Making Sense of Climate Migration Locally: Three Case Studies of Translation in City Networks” in May. She illuminates how cities collaborate with and learn from one another to tackle today’s policy challenges regarding climate migration. Additionally, she demonstrates the advantage of viewing cities as a network rather than as isolated entities, particularly when it comes to the issue of migration.
Climate migration, also known as climate-induced migration, is a complex issue. Various research fields and advocacy groups specialize in facets of the broader phenomenon. Nakamura has identified a significant gap in the discourse on policy responses to climate migration: Cities have thus far been neglected as key actors in the context of climate migration. Yet city networks serve as a crucial forum where local governments receive information on climate migration and guidance from the secretariat on implementing measures.
In her dissertation, Nakamura points out that the measures taken by city networks in response to climate migration are not only intended to support the migrants in question, but also benefit the respective urban populations in a broader sense. She advocates for greater involvement of cities in debates on climate migration so that they can share their insights. This could help accelerate the implementation of policy measures related to climate migration.
Fumie Nakamura was a doctoral candidate at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her current research focuses on cities as actors in global governance and their contribution to international norms and institutions.