‘When Migrants Become Messengers’: Affective Borderwork and Aspiration Management in Senegal

Can Migrants do the (Border)Work? Conflicting Dynamics and Effects of “Peer-to-peer” Intermediation in North and West Africa

“…Thus, approximately twenty-seven volunteers went through a short training in order to produce short testimonial videos on a specially designed mobile phone app. Returnees' emotional testimonies were then circulated via different communication channels, including Facebook, radio shows, and a documentary-like film to be screened during town hall meetings and caravan tours (Vammen 2021).…”

“…Yet, insofar as the African continent has been the main target of these initiatives, their ambition collides with the socio-cultural factors that have historically made mobility, both internal and international, a survival strategy and a most desirable option in the context of what has been termed a "culture of migration" (Hahn and Klute 2007;Degli Uberti and Riccio 2017). Moreover, while these measures are mainly associated with institutional actors such as the European Union (EU) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) 1 , their local implementation increasingly relies on the involvement of humanitarian actors (Van Dessel and Pécoud 2020) and "community-based" agents, including "former" or return migrants (Maâ 2021;Vammen 2021). These intermediation practices have also seen the growing emergence of actors labeled as "peers" with (potential) migrants in transit and/or origin countries because of their prior experience of migration.…”

Introduction: the production of irregular migration

“…Irregular migration trajectories oftentimes lack any coherence or linearity (Kleist 2020, Vammen 2019), especially when analyzed in relation to migration regimes (Schapendonk et al 2020). Next to border control, migration regimes rely on a wide variety of tools and techniques, including development aid (Collyer 2020), visa policies and affective bordering practices in the presumed countries of origin (Vammen 2021), as well as various return migration practices (DeBono 2016, Kalir andWissink 2016, Lietaert 2021). Partly because of this interplay between migrant itineraries on the one hand, and the multiplicity of bordering and ordering practices ( Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002) on the other, we do not start from the idea that irregularity is a fixed and structural position.…”

Migration information campaigns: How to analyse their impact?

“…In such peer‐to‐peer messaging campaigns, returnees share testimonials of their journeys through (often emotional) videos. They often target communities from which many people migrate (Dunsch et al, 2019; Vammen, 2021). This strategy is still used for information campaigns primarily in West African countries.…”