Epidemics, Xenophobia and Narratives of Propitiousness

ABSTRACT

The heightening of exclusionary practices targeting migrants during epidemics often creates dilemmas for perpetrators whose resolution undermines the foundational structures of xenophobic narratives. For many perpetrators of xenophobic acts, epidemics amplify dilemmas rooted in the chasm between neat dichotomizing exclusionary tropes and messy social realities. Escape efforts involving fabricating categories of special migrants that can be spared maltreatment undermine the homogenization and ossification of communities, and the elision of inter-communal links that are fundament to xenophobic discourses. Exclusionary practices targeting Peul migrants from Guinea in Senegal during the 2013–2016 Ebola epidemic constitutes the arena for this study.

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RÉSUMÉ

L’intensification des pratiques d’exclusion visant les migrants pendant les épidémies crée souvent des dilemmes pour les auteurs de ces délits dont la résolution mine les structures fondamentales des récits xénophobes. Pour des nombreux auteurs de la xénophobie, les épidémies amplifient les dilemmes enracinés dans le gouffre entre les dichotomizations des tropes d’exclusion et les réalités sociales complexes. Les efforts d’évasion impliquant la fabrication de catégories de migrants spéciaux qui peuvent être épargnés de la maltraitance minent l’homogénéisation et l’ossification des communautés et l’élision des liens intercommunautaires qui sont à la base des discours xénophobes. Les pratiques d’exclusion ciblant les migrants peuls de Guinée au Sénégal au cours de l’épidémie de la maladie à virus Ebola de 2013–2016 constituent l’objet de cette étude.

KEYWORDS:

• Senegal
• Ebola
• intercommunal relations
• epidemics
• Peul migrants
• xenophobia

Acknowledgments

I thank Aissatou Sow and Serigne Cheikh Ka for research assistance with this project, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of Medical Anthropology for their comments on earlier drafts. I presented this paper at a special Immigration and Development Seminar at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague on December 9, 2019. I thank those present for their comments.

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Funding

I did not receive any funding for this project.

Notes on contributors

Ato Kwamena Onoma

Ato Kwamena Onoma is a senior program officer at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and author of The Politics of Property Rights Institutions in Africa (2009) and Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics (2013). His current work explores identity, belonging and intercommunal relations in Africa. Address correspondence to Ato Kwamena Onoma at CODESRIA, 1046 Av. Cheikh Anta Diop, P.E 11, ANGLE Canal IV, P.O. Box 33014, Dakar 18524, Senegal.