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

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, the European Union (EU) and its Member States have been funding information and awareness-raising initiatives to deter irregular immigration. These programmes increasingly rely on the involvement of intermediaries with a migration background in so-called “peer-to-peer” information dissemination activities. Their “peerness” is considered an efficient tool to gain (potential) migrants’ trust, and ultimately enforce migration and border control. However, while “peerness” between migrants and intermediaries is generally taken for granted by migration and border studies, it is crossed by conflicting dynamics and generates contrasted effects on the ground. This paper interrogates how various migration experiences are captured and defined as “peerness” for control purposes, and, simultaneously, how it is mobilized and enacted by migrant actors in different contexts. Empirical insights from three case studies are brought together, each of which engaging with an emblematic figure of “migrant intermediation”: the Senegalese “diaspora” in the EU, “transit migrants” in Morocco, and “returnees” in Senegal. The paper argues that “peer-to-peer” information dissemination entails inherent tensions and contradictions which can ultimately come to challenge borderwork. Finally, it demonstrates that beyond the question of its efficiency, “migrant intermediation” transforms and reinforces both social hierarchies and relations of power within local migration industries.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer-to-peer
• migrant intermediaries
• information campaigns
• voluntary return
• International Organisation for Migration
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The IOM has been criticised for depoliticizing the migration policies of Western nations, creating a consensus which serves to veil the political divergences and power asymmetries between states. Although claiming to “manage migration for the benefit of all”, the IOM largely serves the political priorities and interests of developed Western states and their restrictive migration agendas and are involved in both hard and soft measures to deter migration (see for example Geiger and Pécoud 2020; Brachet 2016).

2 The paper draws on qualitative research conducted individually by each of the authors. Julia Van Dessel’s case on the Senegalese “diaspora” draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with the representatives of EU civil society organisations (CSOs) between August 2020 and September 2021, in the framework of her ongoing PhD thesis. These CSOs were involving members of the Senegalese diaspora in two EU funded campaigns. Anissa Maâ’s case on “transit migrants” builds on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2018 in Morocco, in the framework of her PhD thesis on the implementation of voluntary return programmes, which she defended in 2020. Ida Marie Savio Vammen’s case on “returnees” in Senegal builds on four months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2018 and 2020, where she followed two of the IOM’s ongoing campaigns in the framework of her postdoctoral research.

3 Idem.

4 Funded by the European Commission, Switzerland and Italy, the project aimed at promoting “Assisted Voluntary Returns and Reintegration” programmes (AVRR programmes) both in Libya and Morocco, through the production and distribution of promotional leaflets to migrants, and the involvement of local actors who enjoyed a trust relationship with the latter. See: IOM 2019. “Regional Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) Programme for Stranded Migrants in Libya and Morocco. External Evaluation”.

5 Ibidem, 45.

6 https://www.migrantsasmessengers.org/about