From expulsion to extortion: deportability, predatory policing and West African migrants in Angola

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of migrant ‘illegality’ and deportability by focusing on informal regimes of citizenship and regulation between state and society. It sheds light, in particular, on the interactions between West African migrant traders and immigration officers in Angola. Although Angola deports thousands of ‘illegal’ West African and other migrants every year, during everyday checks police officers often extort money from, rather than expel, undocumented migrants. Far from jeopardizing immigration enforcement, this kind of predatory policing is sustained by the deportation apparatus. The article demonstrates that illegalization and the threat of deportation spread discretionary power and authoritarianism down the state hierarchy, resulting in more intense and frequent street-level predation. What deportability downgrades is therefore not only migrants’ formal rights, but also the more informal rules of corruption through which migrants negotiate their inclusion in the state.

Keywords:

• Illegal immigration
• deportation
• state predation
• corruption
• informality
• Angola
• West African traders

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin,and at the workshop ‘Understanding and Managing Migration in Africa. Multidimensional Perspectives’, University of Pavia. I would like to thank the participants of these events for their feedback. I am also indebted to Jon Schubert and Jason Sumich for their invaluable comments.

Notes

1. Fieldwork in Angola (2015, 2016) builds on previous research (2006–2008, 2012, 2014) on the migrants’ places of origins in the upper Gambia River valley.

2. Rygiel accordingly suggests treating citizenship not as a ‘legal institution entailing rights and responsibilities within the nation-state’ but as a kind of government (Rygiel 2010, 10, 11).

3. Just how significant the West African presence in Angola is difficult to ascertain. Statistics on immigration in general are often scant or outdated, and difficult to obtain from the relevant institutions (Lopes 2013).

4. Furthermore, in 2013 the Ministry of Commerce decreed (273/13) that foreign merchants could secure commercial licences only for medium and large-scale businesses.

5. As Cooper-Knock and Owen (2015) note, African police forces often fulfill a regulatory function, and this entails the use of discretionary power, coercion and violence.

6. Which some police use to engage in criminal activity (see Waldorff 2014, 321–323).

7. There are particular cases, such as Angolans returning from the Congos, whom the MPLA regime have at times policed as foreigners, for political and other reasons (Mabeko-Tali 1995).