Abstract
Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in the West African state of Mali (2014–2016), this article delves into the local, national, and transnational effects of (externalized) European and North African deportation regimes and reactions to them by civil society actors and deportees themselves. This work aims to contribute to a better understanding of how geographical, physical, social, and psychological spaces are reshaped through interactions with bordering practices. Deportation generally takes the form of (il)legal, bureaucratic measures and violent interventions that are perceived as deeply unjust. They generate anger, alienation, and uncertainty among those deported and their families and associates. By seeking patterns in the accounts of social suffering in deportees’ narratives, the article seeks, empirically and analytically, to unravel multilevel bordering practices through examining localized, agentic forms of bordering power. The post-deportation context involves southern Mali, an area subject to dramatic desertification and loss of sustainable livelihoods.
Highlights
This article gives an account of the local, national, and transnational effects of the North African and European deportation regimes and of some of the responses to them by civil society actors and deportees themselves
Throughout the last half-century, Mali has been impacted by high numbers of forced returns, starting in the 1960s when many African states gained their independence and, as “new” nation-states, applied this practice as a kind of Western legacy to demonstrate their sovereignty over who belongs in a place and who does not (Sylla and Schultz 2019)
From the end of the 1990s, deportations were increasingly implemented by North African countries that, building on their previous deportation practices, became paid guardians of externalized European borders
Summary
This article gives an account of the local, national, and transnational effects of the North African and European deportation regimes and of some of the responses to them by civil society actors and deportees themselves. Its focus is on the bordering practices of deportation and externalization and on former deportees’ experiences of these processes in post-deportation situations, especially in Mali. The shaping discourse and context of “irregular” migration are dominated by the conception of “desirables” and “undesirables” (Agier 2011) It is important, to understand how such power of discretion works. From the end of the 1990s, deportations were increasingly implemented by North African countries that, building on their previous deportation practices, became paid guardians of externalized European borders. Individual deportees, were received “home” with ambivalence by their inner social circle of family and friends
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