Protective exclusion as a postcolonial strategy: Rethinking deportations and sovereignty in the Gambia

Abstract

In 2019, the tiny West African country of the Gambia imposed a moratorium on all deportation flights from the EU. Though West African countries are notoriously reluctant to cooperate on forced returns, such a moratorium was unheard of and caused an uproar within diplomatic circles in Europe. In the age of deportability, why is deporting ‘unwanted’ migrants an illustration of a nation’s sovereign rights, yet refusing to accept deportees is not? The Gambian government used the moratorium to forestall political destabilization at a time of transition from a long dictatorship. With the moratorium, the government not only sought to protect deportees from violent removal practices but also served the interests of the Gambian population more broadly, among whom deportation remains deeply unpopular. Drawing on original expert interviews and informal conversations carried out between 2017 and 2020, this article shows that the moratorium allowed the Gambia to enact its internal sovereignty through a (temporary) protective exclusion of its citizens. Given the asymmetric and colonial legacy of modern-day sovereignty between states, the moratorium was a legitimate renegotiation of established but questionable standards of interstate sovereignty.

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

“…First, we carried out a document analysis of policy and research sources on the operational and funding relationships built between EUrope and The Gambia since the end of Jammeh's rule. We started from the seminal work by Zanker and Altrogge (2017), which has been the first to indicate the organisations implementing migration-management projects in The Gambia and their sources of funding. We then scanned the repositories of each of these organisations and accessed relevant reports and documents.…”

Income prospect trajectories after state-induced return from Germany to the Gambia: Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration as ‘slow deportation’

“…Migrants' higher agency 2019), including some openness towards forced return. Gambian migrants in Germany were increasingly pressured to return by German political and administration actors, leading to a slight rise in AVRR cases and the uptake of charter deportations (Zanker/ Altrogge 2022). Policy hopes started blossoming about what young people, including returning migrants, could achieve in the 'new Gambia'.…”