Borderwork - Migrants, Brokers and European Border Governance in West Africa

 
Subproject 1: Border control in Niger

Niger has emerged as one of the primary sites of recent EU Borderwork, and several EU bodies and EU funded anti-migration projects are in the process of implementation. At the same time, migration brokerage is soaring to new levels; constantly offering new and contested forms of Borderwork that challenge the way the global interacts with the local. Based on two months of fieldwork in Agadez, Niger, and building on earlier research, Hans Lucht (PI) explores the dynamics between border control actors – specifically local police and the EUCAP Sahel Niger – and Ghanaian migration brokers in a time of accelerated control. What kinds of friction does this particular Borderwork generate?

Subproject 2: Readmissions in Mali

The question of readmission of rejected asylum-seekers is one of the central themes of European Borderwork in West Africa and one that creates significant political friction. In December 2016, the EU commission announced that they had reached an agreement with Mali on the issue, only for Mali to come out days later and deny that any deal had been signed. Negotiations are now at a standstill. Based on four months of fieldwork, drawing on prior research and established networks in Mali, Signe Cold-Ravnkilde (postdoc) explores the political struggle vis-à-vis the everyday lives of Malian deportees in Bamako. Cold-Ravnkilde examines how being ‘deportee’ is connected to larger political struggles over readmissions and engenders certain forms of social infrastructure that shelters local aspirations.

Subproject 3: Information campaigns in Senegal

Along with more concrete efforts at managing West African migration to Europe – border control and readmission – European funded and driven information campaigns aimed at discouraging African youth from migrating has become an increasingly important aspect of Borderwork. The new ‘Aware Migrants’ campaign in Senegal, launched in 2016 by the Italian government and the International Organization for Migration, for instance, aims at communicating to the would-be migrants that their hopes of going to Europe are dangerous and futile. Based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal, and building on extensive earlier fieldwork with Senegalese migrants and their families, Ida Maria Vammen explores this particular form of European driven management and how the struggle over migrants’ hopes and desires is challenged by local narratives and social infrastructure offered by diaspora groups, brokers, and Murid religious networks.