Jonathan Crush

Jonathan Crush was raised in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. After obtaining his first degree at Cambridge University, he moved to Canada and completed his M.A. at Wilfrid Laurier University and Ph.D. at Queen’s University. The initial focus of his research was the history of the colonial and apartheid migrant labour system in Southern Africa.

His research and policy work on contemporary migration and development began during the 1990s, when he and South African colleagues at the University of Cape Town, through an IDRC-funded project, pursued policy alternatives to the destructive South African mine migration system. In the mid-1990s, Canadian efforts to engage with South Africa provided new opportunities to research the policy implications of migration movements to post-apartheid South Africa with African colleagues with funding from CIDA, DFID and OSF.

He founded the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) (a consortium of Canadian and African researchers) in 1997 which is now housed at the International Migration Research Centre at the BSIA. In 2005, he co-founded the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), a research, policy and capacity-building network of Canadian and African universities, NGOs and municipal governance networks. Since joining the Balsillie School, he has established the Hungry Cities Partnership which links colleagues from Laurier and Waterloo with partners in Mexico, Jamaica, South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, India and China. He is also working with the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, where he holds an Honorary Professorship, on several projects including the IDRC-funded Growing Informal Cities Project and the DFID-ESRC funded Consuming Urban Poverty project. He is also an active member of the 2030+ Group of Laurier CIGI Chairs and the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems.

Jonathan is a frequent commentator on issues of migration, food security and xenophobia in the Global South and has consulted for the IOM, ILO, UNDP, UNAIDS, UNESCO, CIDA-CIC, OECD and various African governments.

Jonathan is interested in hearing from prospective MA and PhD students and Post-Doctoral Fellows with research interests in global development, international migration, urbanization and urban food issues.

To watch an interview with Dr. Jonathan Crush, go to CIGI's Inside the Issues 2.19: "International Migration and Development".

To follow African migration and food security issues on Facebook, go to Moving on Empty.

Select Publications

2015 J. Crush and A. Chikanda, "South-South Medical Tourism and the Quest for Health in Southern Africa" Social Science & Medicine 124: 313-332.
2015 J. Crush, "The EU-ACP Migration and Development Relationship" Migration and Development 4(1):39-54.
2014 R. Anich, J. Crush, S. Melde and J. Oucho, eds, A New Perspective on Human Mobility in the South (New York: Springer).
2014 J. Crush, ”Southern Hub: The Globalization of Migration to South Africa” In R. Lucas, ed., International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development (London: Edward Elgar), pp. 211-240.
2014 A. Chikanda and J. Crush, “Diasporas of the South” In R. Anich, J. Crush, S. Melde and J. Oucho, eds., A New Perspective on Human Mobility in the South (Dordrecht NL: Springer), pp. 65-88.
2014 S. Melde, R. Anich, J. Crush and J. Oucho, “The South-South Migration and Development Nexus” In R. Anich, J. Crush, S. Melde and J. Oucho, eds., A New Perspective on Human Mobility in the South (Dordrecht NL: Springer), pp. 1-20.
2014 J. Crush, “Approaching Food Security in Cities of the Global South” In S. Parnell and S. Oldfield, eds., A Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (London: Routledge), pp. 543-55.
2014 J. Crush and A. Chikanda, “Forced Migration in Southern Africa” In E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long and N. Sigona, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 554-70.
2014 J. Crush and B. Frayne, “Feeding African Cities: The Growing Challenge of Urban Food Insecurity” In S. Parnell and E. Pieterse, eds, Africa’s Urban Revolution (London: Zed Books), pp. 120-132.
2014 J. Crush and G. Tawodzera, “Exclusion and Discrimination: Zimbabwean Migrant Children and South African Schools” Journal of International Migration and Integration 15: 677-693.