8. Knowledge Production at the IOM: Looking for Local Knowledge in Tajikistan

In the mid-1990s, international organisations started releasing research produced and situated in the local realities of aid-receiving countries, calling it ‘local knowledge’. Over time, local knowledge became a new standard to design development projects by taking into account local complexities and a way to improve project implementation through the use of local solutions. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has also been keen on including local knowledge in its knowledge production schemes. This chapter examines how the IOM produces knowledge on migration in Tajikistan, where it has been operating since 1993 and how it incorporates local knowledge in its projects. It does so by taking a case study of a 2016 IOM research project on the vulnerability of Central Asian labour migrants returning from Russia, in which a strong argument about the ‘radicalisation potential of returning migrants’ was made. The chapter highlights by whom and how knowledge is produced at the IOM; what meaning local knowledge gains for different actors involved in the process; and if, and how, local knowledge is adapted to fit international settings. By way of example, this chapter argues that production of knowledge at the IOM is embedded in a broader economic and geopolitical context in which the organisation operates, questioning the possiblity of including pure, unfiltered local knowledge.