Arrival or Return? Temporality and Materiality of Transit Sites in Overlapping Displacement Context in Border Cities of the Lake Chad Basin Region

Abstract

Since over a decade of conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin region, different measures have been adopted to regulate the mobility of displaced persons in border cities. Mubi—like other transit sites—is both a place of care and control, of incentivization and eviction and of inclusion and exclusion. To nuance these contradictions, I argue that we might have to pay attention to arrival practices in transit sites, particularly the encounter with infrastructures, which are intertwined and profoundly co-constitutive of the displaced persons’ realities. In transit sites, arrival is practised and lived temporally and relationally among the displaced persons, despite the conditions of exile and immobility. Urban infrastructures (such as marketplaces, transit camps and living rooms) transform and enact the strategy adopted by the displaced persons to navigate daily life and to ‘move on’ from conditions of exile and confinement. Moving on, in this sense, is a strategy to overcome the disruption of the temporality of arrival practices from the Nigerian state regulation of mobility through incentivization and encampment policies. I demonstrate that both incentivization and encampment aim towards a common goal, which is to render displaced persons invisible in urban centres while becoming a raw material for capital production. The regulation enables a new form of unplanned spaces to emerge that are hyper-visible and super-precarious at the urban margins. This paper calls for a critical perspective on humanitarian urbanism in the Global South.

GOVERNING MIGRATION THROUGH SMALL TOWNS: Dispersal and the Production of Spaces of Transit

“…They function as ‘logistic centers’ or permanent ‘dumping grounds’ (Cheshire and Zappia, 2016), temporarily warehousing migrants in less desirable public housing estates and dispossessing them of time, freedom of movement and social rights (Tazzioli, 2020a; Vianelli, 2021). At the same time, they also function as enablers, as places of preparation of further migration trajectories (Oginni, 2021).…”

“…and permanent ‘dumping grounds’ (Cheshire and Zappia, 2016) for temporarily residing migrants, where dispersed populations are left until they are allowed to continue to migrate and where they experience being dispossessed of their time, freedom of movement, home and social rights. As places of passage and temporary residence, these spaces can also be sites of collecting forces, practicing transit and preparing for new beginnings, enabling migrants ‘to “move on” from conditions of exile and confinement’ (Oginni, 2021: 463). Applying my case study of a peripheral, declining small town in East Germany, I will further explain in the following section the dual role of small towns as both dumping grounds for dispersed migrants and jumping‐off sites and enablers of further migration trajectories.…”

Situated sites of migration control: Swiss deportation practices and their relational materiality in prisons, hospitals, and airports

“…Sociomaterial studies have also explored the role of immigration enforcement technologies, their dehumanizing effects on detainees (Radziwinowiczówna, 2017), and the increasing digitalization of such spaces of control (Leese et al, 2021). Prior research into the relational materiality of immigration enforcement technologies and infrastructures more broadly has highlighted the extent to which they are co-constitutive of migrants' everyday realities and practices (Oginni, 2022). Infrastructures can constrain agency; but they also open up space for contestation and participation, shaping the agency of migrants in their struggle for recognition (Amelung et al, 2020).…”

“…Access was granted after an official request to conduct fieldwork at the described sites, allowing me to follow the everyday work of various departments and to engage in informal conversations throughout the working day. Influenced by prior state ethnographies that have taken an interest in the power dynamics within organizations and between state actors and the public (Dubois, 2016;Eule, 2014;Lipsky, 1980), this approach involved "studying up" (Nader, 1972) by following bureaucratic actors during direct contact with "clients of the state". This was done with the aim of understanding how policy and law are implemented "on the ground", paying particular attention to administrative struggles and the role of discretion and materiality in everyday bureaucracy (see Borrelli, 2020, for more on data collection, including a critical reflection on positionality).…”