Borders, Migration and Xenophobic Policies in West Africa

Aniche, Ernest Toochi

doi:10.1163/09744061-20220121

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

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“…Practices that were trialed since the 1980s led to the observation and problematization of international migration, imagined to be mostly young and black men, as a security issue in the early 2000s (Huysmans, 2006). The result was, as is impressively visible with the ECOWAS Common Approach on Migration, a focus on border management (Frowd, 2014;Lopez-Lucia, 2020;Aniche, 2022;Mouthaan, 2022), with ever more perverse effects evidenced by the many deaths in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas and African deserts (Callamard, 2018;Forensic Architecture ). However, when the number of deaths became even untenable for European countries, the door opened for reigning in security measures to a certain degree and expanding measures of development.…”

Section: The Ecowas Common Approach On Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

Oelgemöller

2023

Front. Hum. Dyn.

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This article contributes to discussions that problematize the recent proliferation of soft law instruments in relation to international migration. The Global Compact for Migration has placed soft norm instruments more formally on the agenda of plausible tools with which to regulate people's movement. I am contributing to these discussions by engaging with the question of how the amalgamation of soft and hard law contributes to and impacts on legal effects, using a postcolonial feminist lens. I do so by focusing on the interaction between freedom of movement and the right to leave in the ECOWAS area, drawing on original research material collected mainly in Abuja, Nigeria, but also in Senegal, Guinea, and The Gambia. It is argued that freedom of movement provisions, as they are promoted by the ECOWAS and largely funded by inter-governmental organizations and European donor countries, end up infringing the right to leave. In a first step, existing norms at international, continental, regional, and national level are discussed to prepare the ground to answer the question how such infringing is done. From this step, I conclude that the triple layers of legal instruments, political instruments, and programming are impairing the intent of the right to leave in the way that a politico-legal landscape is constructed within which programs operationalize freedom of movement. The next step then looks at freedom of movement programming at regional, national, and local levels by asking about the subjectivities that are created—for example the “potential migrant”; by shedding light on practices of resistance—for example in how national governments use diplomacy to disengage; and by highlighting how “home patch” talk renders those potential migrants leaving not just implausible but suspect. It is found that, in the legal and political context of West Africa, soft norms thrive. The GCM constitutes an unhelpful list of random contradictory approaches that orient ideas, policy initiatives, programs, and ultimately people, toward being fixed in place, rather than being able to leave and to move freely should they want to. This happens in-country when people have not yet begun to move.

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Section: The Ecowas Common Approach On Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

Oelgemöller

2023

Front. Hum. Dyn.

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‘Your Land or Your Life’! ECOWAS Free Movement Regime, Migration, and Resource Conflicts in West Africa

Aniche,

Alumona,

Iwuoha

et al. 2023

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Nigerian migrants vulnerability under ECOWAS migration framework in Ghana

Yemisi

2024

Discov glob soc

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Migration has become one of the most pronounced global issues of the twenty-first century. Migration has been recognised as an essential driver for accessing economic opportunities, development, social upward mobility and regional integration. Hence, under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), concerted efforts have been directed to pursuing policies such as the Free Protocol Movement, visa-free and borderless economic communities towards deepened regional integration. However, despite ECOWAS laudable initiatives, migrants in West Africa are faced with migration securitisation and new nationalism from their host states. Securitisation of migration connotes that migration is perceived as an existential security threat to the host state and thus deserves at least some control and, at best, stopping. Also, a new form of nationalism has endangered immigrant (non-citizen) activities in their host countries, especially with the prism of “son of the soil” versus “immigrants or strangers.” Both have resulted in the expulsion, deportation, and harassment of immigrants from their host countries to their countries of origin. Using the Nigeria-Ghana relations problem, the article explores the causes and crises attached to migration securitisation and new nationalism. The article also interrogates the ECOWAS migration framework within the context of its appropriateness for addressing immigrants’ vulnerability.

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Borders, Migration and Xenophobic Policies in West Africa

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

‘Your Land or Your Life’! ECOWAS Free Movement Regime, Migration, and Resource Conflicts in West Africa

Nigerian migrants vulnerability under ECOWAS migration framework in Ghana

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