<i>En Route</i> to Europe? The Anti-politics of Deportation from North Africa to Mali

Sylla, Almamy; Cold-Ravnkilde, Signe Marie

doi:10.1080/14650045.2021.1995358

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…We question then how locally owned CSOs are incorporated in EUrope's migration regime where they externalise migration management through the performance of borderwork. While some recent studies focus on the ways Southern CSOs perceive EUrope's migration agenda (Aguillon 2020;Pastore and Roman 2020;Sylla and Cold-Ravnkilde 2021), incorporation dynamics are often overlooked. This can be explained by the fact that some authors put emphasis on an overarching governmentality that deterministically absorbs different actors (e.g.…”

Section: Externalisation As Borderwork In the European Migration Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

2022

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The end of a long-standing autocratic regime in The Gambia renewed EUrope's geopolitical interest in the externalisation of (return) migration management to the West African country. Since 2017, EUrope has financed several programmes implemented by a combination of international and local actors. Analysing original qualitative data through the lens of the sociology of translation (SoT) offered by actor-network theory (ANT), this paper explores the incorporation of locally owned civil society organisations (CSOs) within the socio-material network of externalisation. As such, it engages with the understudied perspective of Southern implementers in the context of migration management. In our analysis, we put central two notions of SoT: interessement and enrolment. With the first, we show how the development and migrant-protection interests of locally owned CSOs are brought in alignment with the EUropean objective of curtailing irregular migration. This process of interessement is never complete, but leaves room for excess positions, which here correspond to the locally owned CSOs' criticism of EUrope's appropriation of Gambian natural resources, practical organisation of migration management and excessive immobilisation of Gambians. The notion of enrolment refers to the processes of negotiation addressing part of these excess positions. Even with enrolment being successful, locally owned CSOs keep imagining, and to some extent, performing alternative ways of dealing with migration. Such alternative thinking and practicing will overtake the EUropean only if multiple and stable connections arise around it. Our ANT-driven analysis demonstrates that local implementers endorse EUropean migration management because they broadly see it as beneficial; yet, with their criticism, requests and imagination, manage to limitedly alter it, and may, potentially, transform it.

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Section: Externalisation As Borderwork In the European Migration Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

2022

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“…Drotbohm & Hasselberg, 2015). There is a tendency to consider it as forced removal by air, but research is increasingly considering cross-border removal by land as well (Sylla & Cold-Ravnkilde, 2021; Alpes, 2020;Kleist, 2017a;Mensah, 2016).Deportations and involuntary returns produce the opposite of the heroic homecomings expected. They violently cut the journey to potential economic success and socio-cultural recognition.…”

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»Failed« Migratory Adventures?

Schultz¹

2022

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success can bring even more advantage and prestige (p. 187). The returnee is supposed to be a hero indeed.Deportations and the supposed ''failure'' of the migratory adventureRestrictive migration policies and multifold borders are what interrupt, stop, redirect, or reverse these migratory journeys (Drotbohm & Hasselberg, 2015) converting them into "new confinements and modes of exploitation" (Glick-Schiller & Salazar, 2013, p. 190). Deportation is generally understood as a legal, political, and socio-economic measure involving the forceful removal of a migrant from a national territory to another country (cf. Drotbohm & Hasselberg, 2015). There is a tendency to consider it as forced removal by air, but research is increasingly considering cross-border removal by land as well (Sylla & Cold-Ravnkilde, 2021; Alpes, 2020;Kleist, 2017a;Mensah, 2016).Deportations and involuntary returns produce the opposite of the heroic homecomings expected. They violently cut the journey to potential economic success and socio-cultural recognition. Particularly in the West African context, deportations are to be seen in relation to the adventurers' deep social embedding and relationality, before, during, and after the journeys (cf. Pian, 2010, p. 97). Here, the extended family plays a significant role in any aspect of life: West Africans experience themselves not as "having" relationships but as "being" relationships (Piot, 1999), an idea that I will develop, particularly in Chapter 5, and consciously construct their families across (inter)national and continental boundaries (cf., e.g., Drotbohm, 2015Drotbohm, , 2009. Deportations thus produce potential "failures" in light of the collective expectation of success and a triumphant homecoming. Against this background, the informants portray themselves as distressed and empty-handed, like Salif: at best with a plastic bag shuffling from the airport to some relative in Bamako. This powerful image emblematically embodies the drama of the unwanted return. As Éliane de Latour puts it: "Failure on the journey is worse than immobility on the spot: from being poor at the start, the warrior becomes poverty-stricken" (Latour, 2003, p. 187; transl. S.U.S.), 13 though in fact such a symbolic and charged depiction does not adequately mirror the realities on the ground."Failure," like the term "adventure," emerged in my research as an emic term first of all. Former deportees and their close contacts speak of "l'échec" or "maloya," the Bambara word for shame. More often, deportees and their circle will say "mon objectif n'était pas atteint" ("My objective was not attained"), or "je n'ai pas réussi" ("I did not succeed"), or, more explicitly, "j'ai échoué" ("I failed"), "c'était un échec" ("It was a failure"). However, the line taken by most of the men is that tounga man ja ("the travel did not work out") and "there are other ways of getting on" (Chapters 5 and 6). 13S.U.S. stands for the initials of the book's author Susanne Ursula Schultz. 17 This differs from the terminology of "state-induced" re...

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The Geopolitics of Return Migration in the International System

Fakhoury

Mencütek

2023

Geopolitics

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En Route to Europe? The Anti-politics of Deportation from North Africa to Mali

Cited by 5 publications

References 31 publications

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

»Failed« Migratory Adventures?

The Geopolitics of Return Migration in the International System

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