“I could have married in Europe, if I wanted to” How black migrant men challenge moralizing and racializing discourses when returning to Senegal

ABSTRACT

Marriage offers one of the few routes for Senegalese migrants to enter Europe and settle there legally, and it is often assumed that migrants marry just for a residence permit. “Marriage migration” is highly scrutinized by state actors, whose admission practices and their consequences have been the focus of much research. Less, however, is known about the perspectives of migrants who left Europe in response to these practices. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, we show how male Senegalese returnees and deportees challenge the idea that men want to marry a European resident at all costs. These men are spatially excluded from Europe but they discursively regain their dignity by returning to Senegal. Their return also challenges gendered and racialized European narratives about dangerous and hypersexual black Muslim males, and at the same time reinforces their positioning in moral hierarchies about love and marriage.

KEYWORDS:

• Return and deportation
• marriage
• masculinities
• Senegal
• Europe
• migration

Introduction

Mamadou was deported to Senegal after spending several years in Europe. In Germany, I met one of Mamadou’s old friends, Rebecca. She showed me a lake where Mamadou used to volunteer for a local organisation. A couple of months later, I recalled this joyful afternoon while sitting with Mamadou on a foam mattress on the floor of his family house in Senegal’s capital Dakar. I shared how Rebecca was teasing Senegalese men, including Mamadou, about being ‘saï saï' a term that is hard to translate but means, a kind of ‘trickster' ‘player', ‘swindler' or ‘bandit' in Wolof in the most common language in Senegal and suggests powers of seduction. Mamadou was upset about Rebecca’s remark: ‘If I had been like that, why did I not marry over there? Why did I not have children there? It would have been possible, with my tall body and features. No, she is the ‘saï saï!.’ (Fieldnotes, Dakar, January 2021)

In the vignette above, Mamadou responds indignantly to stereotypical images of black migrant men in Europe to the field researcher. In European discourses, black migrant men are often portrayed as being hypersexual and marrying for selfish or strategic reasons. Legal options to enter and stay in the European Union (EU) are limited, especially for those coming from the Global South (Gemmeke 2013; Kringelbach 2016a). Marriages between an EU citizen and a partner from outside the EU often appear in European media accounts and policy discourses as ‘scam marriages’ or ‘fake marriages’ on the assumption that migrants are only after a residence permit (D’Aoust 2018; Eggebø 2013; Vandenbroucke 2020). Research on marriage migration has shown how agents of the state identify fake relationships and how, through their practices, informal hierarchies have created that result in different treatments depending on intersections of class, race and gender (Lo 2015; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019, 859; De Hart and Besselsen 2021, 38). Muslim and black men, in particular, are often represented as dangerous, patriarchal and strategizing, rather than physically or emotionally vulnerable or reliable, committed and trustworthy (De Noronha 2020; Gallo and Scrinzi 2019; Yurdakul and Korteweg 2021). Mamadou, in the vignette above, reverses the narrative: he explains that he had to watch out for Rebecca as she was the “saï saï” who was going after men for sexual relationships, not him.

Research on intimate ties and the moral economy of European marriage migration has hitherto focussed on justifications about who can come to the destination country (Moret, Andrikopoulos, and Dahinden 2021; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019), how romantic or sex tourism can lead to marriage migration (Cabezas 2004; Fernandez 2019; Jacobs 2009), the impact of migration and marriage on actors outside Europe (Acedera and Yeoh 2020; Buggenhagen 2012; Hannaford 2017; Hannaford and Foley 2015; Niang-Ndiaye 2020) or, more recently, how various state and non-state actors are coming to converging positions with regard to marriage norms (Longo 2022; Partridge 2008). In discussions on marriage migration, there is an inclination to concentrate on how non-citizens seek stable and secure juridical status. Yet, there is relatively little research on migrants who refute marriage as a way to gain stability, rights or dignity (Andrikopoulos 2021; Ingvars 2023). This applies even more so in relation to return and deportability (Groes 2016 on women in Mozambique; Mai and King 2009; Plambech 2017), and in particular for men (Van Houte and Davids 2018).

This paper investigates how men who have returned to Senegal, often in the context of deportability, narrate their experiences of relationships in Europe. It draws on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork on Senegalese migrant men and masculinities conducted by the first author. It explores how Senegalese men navigate the different contextual logics of morality and masculinity related to intimate relationships and marriage just before and after return to Senegal. Some Senegalese men choose to return rather than marry, and some divorce a partner before gaining an independent residency permit. In so doing, they contest stereotypical European notions of black Muslim masculinities and the moral economy they are based on. As the opening vignette of this article suggests, they produce morally dignified masculinities by reversing stereotypical narrations about black migrant men and by claiming normality. And they capitalize on their return to show themselves as honorable and dignified men by arguing that if they had wanted to stay in Europe, they could have, due to a (white) desire for black men.

In what follows, we engage with literature concerning the intimate relationships of black men in relation to European migration discourses. In the main analysis, we explore the narratives of two returnees and their immigration-related experiences in Europe. We encountered narratives such as these often during fieldwork in Senegal.

Norms and assumptions about masculinities that underpin the moral economy of European marriage migration management

In European discourses, most African migration is seen as a “problematic” type of migration that needs close monitoring and regulation. Following understandings of the moral economy (D’Aoust 2018: Fassin 2005; Longo 2022), we pay attention to how legislation and state practices of marriage migration are not neutral but entangled with values and norms, feelings and stereotypes. Dominant forms of masculinity do not portray migrant men as victims and vulnerable instead, they are often seen as deceptive, hypersexual, opportunistic or even criminal (Griffiths 2015; Partridge 2008). Besides normative assumptions of masculinity, immigrations regulations reflect a moral understanding of who constitutes a family and “how people ought to live their family life” (Pellander 2015, 473; see also Wray 2006). Moral understandings of the family thus help to shape regulations of who can enter and stay in a national territory. Such moral frameworks also apply to forming and maintaining a family through marriage (Strasser et al. 2009, 169; Bonjour and de Hart 2013). Those who fall outside the dominant norms and values of the family come under additional scrutiny (D’Aoust 2018), and understandings about family often intersect with those about class, gender and race (Yuval-Davis 2011; Anderson 2017, 1532; Pellander 2021). This produces some unsavory stereotypes of in particular migrant men.

Tension between “love” and “interest”

In the current moral economy underlying marriage rules in Europe, love is assumed to be a crucial aspect of marriage. Yet, migrants are assumed to be motivated by self-interest and their alleged affective lives and emotions are viewed with skepticism and disinterest (Griffiths 2024). Bonjour and de Hart show how “the representation of migrant and Dutch women as passive victims rests on the representation of migrant men as oppressive, violent, deceiving and motivated by material gain – never by love” (2013, 73). When men are cast in these terms, it becomes easy to justify suspicion towards them, which can lead to non-admission or deportability. Regulations regarding migration therefore require European bureaucrats to assess the authenticity of private relationships, including narratives of intimacy and love (Eggebø 2013; Maskens 2015; Salcedo Robledo 2011). They are charged with evaluating the genuineness of the union through documents such as marriage certificates, love letters, photographs showing the couple spending time together, and more. In addition, the non-European partner needs to earn enough money not to be a burden on the state, and often have a minimum level of the European country’s language. After marriage, enquiries can continue, with officials seeking evidence that the couple is still living together (Kringelbach 2016a). In countries, such as the Netherlands, any form of marriage that is judged as not based on romantic love is considered contrary to national values (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; Fair 2010).

This creates an inherent tension between an individual’s right to have a family and the state’s wish to secure its borders (Carver 2016; D’Aoust 2022). Forms of marriage, such as “forced”, “arranged” or “sham” marriages, are portrayed as dangerous for European women and made questionable in state discourses (Moret et al. 2021). Marriage is portrayed as the “weak” link in European migration management as spouses become involved in decision-making processes about who enters the national territory (Wray 2006).

Legitimatization of the state as a protector against “dangerous foreign men”

The state, in this logic, becomes a protector of “vulnerable” or even “disabled” female citizens (Carver 2016; Maskens 2015; Pellander 2015). This is used to justify the monitoring, securitization and intrusion of the state in private lives, despite its paradoxical (Tran 2021), patronizing and disempowering effects on (female) citizens (Block 2014; Kwak 2019; Odasso 2021). With the legitimacy of a marriage always at issue, migrant families are often perceived as suspicious. This is particularly true of Muslim families, where migrant men are considered traditional, patriarchal, oppressive or even dangerous and violent (Bonjour and Kraler 2015, 1409). Furthermore, black and other men of color are perceived as hypersexual (Partridge 2008). This too is seen as posing a threat to European women and by corollary represents European men as modern and emancipated (Scheibelhofer 2017). Through intimate ties, migrants might be able to get out of a deportable situation, but intimate relationships are also places where deportability can be felt (Luibhéid, Andrade, and Stevens 2018, 18). In this article, we investigate the perspectives of migrant men who returned to their country of origin, Senegal, and how they respond to the masculinities that underpin the moral economy of European marriage migration management.

Following earlier research on (migrant) masculinities, our starting point is the assumption that identities, including migrant masculinities, are relational, multiple and complex and that they differ depending on the intersectional variables including, gender, race, personal biographies and space (Crenshaw 1991; Gallo 2006; Huizinga 2022; Wojnicka and Pustułka 2017). In the upcoming analysis, we pay particular attention to how migrant men reverse stereotypical narratives about themselves. We then explore how they capitalize (Jensen 2011; Yurdakul and Altay 2023) on their return to position themselves as honorable and dignified. In doing so, we extend the literature on migrant masculinities and the institution of marriage in the context of migration by focusing on the country of origin.

Studying migrant masculinities and intimate relationships

This contribution draws on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork. Fieldwork consisted of six stays in Senegal between January 2017 and March 2021, ongoing online contact, and two weeks of fieldwork in Germany amongst volunteers who support migrants, friends and (former) partners of Senegalese migrant men. In Senegal, the first author spoke with forty men and five women who had a migratory experience in Europe. Twelve men out of the forty became core participants and were followed over several years. The two-week field trip in Germany focussed on a matched sample of fourteen women who maintained connections with the male returnees to Senegal. Communication was mostly in French and sometimes in English, German and/or Dutch. In a few cases, an interpreter helped in Wolof or Italian. To gain insights into the diversity of returnee experiences, we approached participants through a variety of entry points: via colleagues at Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar and the University of Maastricht; through NGOs working with returnees; through fellow researchers, friends and acquaintances both in Europe and in Senegal; and via chance encounters in Senegal. Fieldwork was interspersed with periods of analysis during which participants’ narratives were coded to discern themes related to social expectations about masculinity and return. These themes were further explored once back in Senegal.

All Senegalese participants had been or were in relationships with women. None specified their sexuality, except for one who self-identified as bisexual. Practices and discourses of (regaining) masculinity and morality prevalent in Senegal informed the research findings. Contemporary ideologies and practices of intimacy and love are, in Senegal as elsewhere, a product of complex historical processes and practices (Cole and Thomas 2009). In Senegal, to achieve social adulthood, a heterosexual marriage is necessary (Adjamagbo and Koné 2013). Polygamy is permitted and practiced with up to four wives (Dial 2008), which can create tensions in relationships with European women (Kringelbach 2016a). Davids, Van Driel, and Van Eerdewijk (2011) point to the contradictions of the moralities surrounding masculinities in Senegal. On the one hand, one is considered a “real” man, especially by peers, if one has penetrative sex with women, while on the other, “a good man” is seen as a heterosexual male who is in control of himself, serious and responsible, and who only has sexual relations within marriage. Senegalese men who marry European women may be less likely to be stigmatized for doing so than Senegalese women who marry European men (Kringelbach 2016b; Rodríguez-García 2006). A possible reason for this is that it is believed that children born of a Senegalese father can still be raised as “proper” Muslims, as the religion of the father is key. Islam prevents marriage with a non-Muslim man but allows marriage with a non-Muslim woman as long as she is Jewish or Christian. Fieldwork interactions occurred in relation to the broader European border regime present in Senegal but also in relation to international tourism and the development sector in which many Europeans come to Senegal for leisure, work or volunteering. In Senegal, it is well known that marriage could be a way to go or remain in Europe and also those working in the tourist sector are often suspected of engaging with Europeans as a way to travel. Participants would therefore share how fellow Senegalese had asked them in response to their mostly unforeseen return: “Why did you not marry or get a child in Europe?”

The field researcher’s positionality as a white, European, highly educated woman in a committed relationship, yet who was unmarried and alone in Senegal, played an important role in interactions during the fieldwork and highlighted frames of reference about black masculinities used in European migratory discourses. It sparked many questions, jokes and at times marriage proposals – to become a first, second or third wife – during her stays in Senegal and Germany. These could be uncomfortable, tiring, at times funny, but the questions and jokes also opened opportunities to discuss relationships in each other’s “home” contexts and to share vulnerabilities and ways to deal with them. As performativity influences every form of interaction, including interviews and observations, it is likely that interlocutors’ narratives about intimate relationships, love and affection for their now mostly exes was itself part of the performance of strategic intimacy (Meier 2020). They could tactically position themselves as desirable and safe conversation partners towards the field researcher. While keeping this in mind in data interpretation, we see the field researcher’s positionality as an opportunity to observe emotional border work (Ingvars 2023), which comes into play when returning to Senegal and studying migrant masculinities. Like any interaction, these processes are dynamic and dialogical.

Producing moral and dignified masculinities by returning to Senegal

We analyze the stories of two returnees, Mamadou and Mas, to show how returnees to Senegal can challenge gendered and racialized European narratives about black Muslim men. Despite their unique return experiences and their different migration trajectories – one an unauthorized migrant and one a former marriage migrant – Mamadou and Mas resist dominant discourses in various way but also reproduce stereotypes in relation to black Muslim men. We focus on two cases to provide detailed and contextual information on instances where returnees are confronted with and react to stereotypical masculine images. Similar narrations were found amongst other returnees in our wider sample. While the gendered and racialized narratives are part of European migration discourses, the negotiations and narratives of the men we studied were performed in Senegal.

Refusing stereotypes about migrant men by reversing narratives

Mamadou, who we introduced in the opening vignette, met the field researcher in Senegal via his friend Rebecca. Mamadou’s asylum application was denied, and after over eight years in Europe, he was deported back to Senegal. Mamadou experienced his deportation as a humiliation and demonstrated a lack of respect towards him. After this deportation he hardly went out, and Rebecca was very worried about him. Mamadou initially distrusted the researcher, and he only wanted to talk because Rebecca encouraged him.

As the opening vignette attests, field interactions could be ambiguous. Social and research exchanges are part of complex social positions as well as interactions between persons (Jensen 2011, 6). In some situations, the researcher, as well as participants in the research, speak and react to each other not as persons, but in relation to positions they are put in. Rebecca’s jokes in Germany had, from Mamadou’s point of view, mistakenly placed him in the category of the hypersexual, bad black male. In response to the mocking, he reversed the narrative and shared to the field researcher how white European women, like Rebecca, could subject African men to a sexual gaze. He mentioned how he had kept her a bit at a distance as he thought she might have been interested in him. He also emphasized to the researcher that he was a good communicator and had many friends. He showed Facebook pictures of him and his friends together, including one with a European female professor. Perhaps he wanted to show the researcher that friendships with him were possible and safe, something that would not likely be an issue if he would be talking to Senegalese peers.

He further articulated the possibility of friendship by sharing his experiences with one woman whom the researcher had met in Germany after Mamadou was deported: Jessica. Mamadou knew the researcher had met Jessica, and he was worried that the researcher might have gotten the wrong impression about him after talking to Rebecca. It seemed like Mamadou did not want the researcher to think his intentions were merely sexual or related to the possibility of obtaining papers through her. He elaborated how Jessica and he were very close and other people often thought they were a couple. Mamadou explained how he was helping Jessica to de-stress, as she was having a rough time following her divorce. They would go on bike rides on Sunday afternoons, and he would take and pay the train to visit and help her. Mamadou did not understand why Jessica had moved out of her house and not her husband. Their possessions were under her name, and yet she found herself paying the rent for a new apartment, and she took the train while her former husband used their car. Mamadou advised her to go back to her family and to talk to her husband about her struggles and not purpose something with him. Mamadou explains:

I made a sacrifice. I thought rationally [about the situation] and told her she has to go back to her house, find a solution. […] I want the best for her. (Conversation, Dakar, January 2021)

By sharing this story, Mamadou emphasized how he was putting Jessica’s interests above his own. He contested discourses that white women need to be protected from African men. Instead, he explained how he was taking care of Jessica, protecting her against her former husband and sacrificing things for her. Yet, he did not question the idea that white European women are vulnerable and need protection. He reversed the dominant narrative about migrant men and suggested that women did not have to be protected from him, but from other (European) men. He performed a form of “desirable masculinity” (Ingvars 2023) and distanced himself from the stereotype of the dangerous migrant man.

Mamadou was not the only participant who challenged stereotypical portrayals of black Muslim migrant men. The case of Mas also shows how stereotypes are questioned. Mas had been back in Senegal for over five years and was in his forties when the first author met him in Dakar through a mutual friend who told her that Mas would be relevant for her study about deportation and return. Being in Senegal is not easy for him due to the economic situation and the responses he received from his surroundings due to his unexpected return. Yet, he is getting by together with his Senegalese wife. He explains how he met his European ex-wife Ella when he was in his mid-twenties in Senegal while she was on holiday.

Before leaving Senegal, Mas earned a decent living by managing holidays for tourists. In 2006, when Mas arrived in France, stricter laws and regulations regarding mixed marriages were implemented. Under the new laws, after three renewals of a temporary one-year permit, spouses could apply for a ten-year permit, conditional on the couple validating that they had been living together uninterrupted since the visa was approved (Kringelbach 2013). After a number of years that Mas was married to Ella in Europe, their relationship became strained. Mas challenged the stereotypical image of the instrumental migrant who marries for a residence permit and argued that, instead, it was his wife who was the troublemaker and who had taken advantage of him. Mas felt mistreated, like a “tennis ball” being hit from left to right without much say of his own. Like other research about husband migrants showed, his marriage undermined his sense of self, his feelings of independence and his understanding of what it means to be a man and a husband (Charsley 2005; Hoogenraad 2021). Eventually, Mas and Ella got divorced, which meant the end of Mas’s residence permit.

While Mas wished to stay in France, he drew a moral boundary for himself and did not want to be in a relationship just for the residence documents. He explained:

It is not the papers that make me live. I have worked enough. […] She always takes advantage of me. Of my presence, physically, morally, financially, everything! (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

Mas here actively reverses societal ideas present in migration discourses of danger and vulnerability, in which European women are vulnerable and African men are dangerous and seek to use them. For Mas, Ella was using him.

There were other ways that Mas reversed the narrative about black African men. Ella regularly attended a sports club where he would often go to pick her up. During one of their disputes, Ella told him that a woman at the sports club said she would “commit suicide” if her daughter came home with someone with a black skin like Mas. Mas was tired of stories like this, and the atmosphere of alcohol at the club did not help, as he did not drink himself.

She would stay until 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. I would wake up from her message on my phone and go there, search for her. […] then I said, ‘when you have been drinking, I will not look for you anymore. I will not search for you, [I will] not drop off anyone. The song has ended’. (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

During evenings like this, there would sometimes be other problems:

Such nights, she would be in need of sex. She would wake me up while I wanted to sleep. The police came afterwards because we would have an argument. Every Sunday it was like that. (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

Instead of the hypersexuality that is often associated with black men, Mas emphasized how he became an object of desire and was in need of protection from Ella.

While Mas felt that he could be vulnerable in relation to dangerous white women, he refused stereotypical notions of migrant or refugee men as only vulnerable, incapable or ignorant. In one interview, he spoke of a situation with Ella just after his arrival in Europe. Ella was showing Mas the city, including a part where there were prostitutes from African countries. Ella remarked to Mas: “all the prostitutes used to be married with French men”. This insulted Mas as it emphasized his dependency and the geo-political power inequalities in their relationship (Griffiths 2015). Mas said he did not even look, as he was ashamed to watch the women. He explained:

I am not in need of instructions. I am not from the countryside. I saw things she did not even see. (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

He disliked the way Ella assumed he needed explanations about the situation and needed to be instructed on how things worked in Europe as a “fresh” migrant. Mas distanced himself from this and wanted to be recognized for his knowledge and cosmopolitanism. He refused to be seen as marginalized, uncomfortable and refused the idea that his masculinity was under threat, something that other research among migrant men in Europe has found (Charsley and Bolognani 2017; Gallo 2006; Leutloff-Grandits 2021). Coming from a high-status family in Senegal and growing up mainly in Dakar, he wanted to be seen as a man from the city, which in the Senegalese context implies knowledge, power and worldliness. Earlier during the interview with the field researcher, he had emphasized that he had a good life before leaving Senegal, questioning the idealization of Europe as the ultimate destination for migrants. Furthermore, by highlighting that he saw things Ella did not even see, Mas emphasized his life experience and questioned Ella’s assumption that as European, she had more knowledge about the situation.

Mas and Mamadou furthermore challenge the prevalent narrative in European discourses of migrant masculinity as predatory and dangerous by showing their roles as father and son. Mas shared how he fulfilled his masculine duties vis-à-vis his daughter in Senegal. Mas minimized his vulnerability and explained how he was a morally honorable man by finding a job not too long after his arrival in Europe, paying his share of the bills, having a car, providing remittances to his daughter in Senegal, and contributing to the household in France.

She [my daughter] had to have the money. […] Nothing was missing. €350 was the minimum that I sent. (Conversation, October 2019)

He presented himself as the breadwinner, an ideal which is an important part of hegemonic masculinity and fatherhood in West-Africa (Poeze 2019). In practice, men do not always manage to provide for their families, especially when they were not together with the mother (Bouland 2021), which served to signal Mas’s commitment as a father. Sending remittances helped to justify his separation from his daughter and showed responsibility. Furthermore, by sharing that he was working, he emphasized that he was not making use of the welfare institutions in Europe.

Mamadou also talked about how, despite the limited opportunities to work in Germany as a Senegalese national, he would still earn a little bit and send this to his mother, thereby fulfilling some of his responsibilities as a son. Both men adhered to a hegemonic masculine ideals in the context of inequalities and migration. By presenting themselves as responsible men as part of a family, they counted the idea that they were different from other men and appealed for sympathy and understanding (Jensen 2011; Griffiths 2015).

Where Mas questions the dominant narrative of vulnerable white women in need of protection by portraying Ella as dangerous and disrespectful, Mamadou emphasizes female vulnerability and reinforces his own masculinity in his protection of Jessica. In addition, their stories show that although racialized ideas in the couple’s surroundings can put relationships under pressure, both do not want to see themselves as merely vulnerable. It is important to acknowledge that Mas and Mamadou are narrating themselves to a European female field researcher, which might have embolden this narrative. Both had previously asked the researcher if Senegalese men did not approach her in Senegal with sexual intentions. The researcher shared her experiences which may have opened space for them to share their own experiences. In conversations with peers, they may have emphasized other aspects such as in Mas’ case his ex-wife disrespectful behavior towards him.

Capitalizing on return: being a dignified and honorable man despite hardships

Research on return migration has shown how moral ambiguities, intense emotions, suspicion from various sides and negotiations are part of the experience of return (Onoma 2021; Riccio 2005; Wanki, Derluyn, and Lietaert 2022). When a migration project is aborted, there is potential for a returnee to be considered a hero, criminal or a loser who is coming back without enough means (Kleist 2017; Strijbosch, Mazzucato, and Brunotte 2023). The ambiguities that surround return and the need to re-position oneself were visible in the stories of Mas and Mamadou.

When the relationship between Mas and Ella eventually broke down, they faced each other in court, a scenario which other migrants have found to be humiliating (Ingvars 2023). The judge asked Mas if he was aware that a divorce would mean he had to leave the country. Mas explained his response to the judge:

I said: ‘Yes. I know. I know.’ Then he asked me what I was going to do, divorce or not. I was in the middle. I could not yet, I did not want to go back [to Senegal] yet. But I did want a divorce. (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

Through his performative sentence (Austin 1962) in front of the judge, Mas shared his dilemma: he wanted to stay but not under existing conditions. He placed himself outside the stereotypical image of the calculating African man who just marries for papers, which he knew he would have obtained if he had been more submissive towards his wife and stayed in the relationship without speaking up against his experiences of emasculation and racial stereotypes towards African men. He explained:

I did not tell the story of all Africans. This is a story of love. I am not the one who did all this shit. It is not me who wants to go back to the country. […] I came to explain my situation. Not the situation of others. Did I want to go back? No, I did not want. But you tell me I have to go back, that's the law. (Interview, Dakar, February 2021)

By agreeing to the divorce, Mas acknowledged his vulnerability in relation to state authorities and made himself visible to bureaucracies as a deportable subject, but he also held to the masculine ideal of staying in control of his life. He mentioned how he went to the deportation center himself, despite his jobs and his new girlfriend. Earlier he had said that he had “become a child” through his relationship with Ella, as she kept him under a sort of surveillance. Ingvars (2023) shows how the migrant men in her study were conscious of a loss of masculine autonomy through the regimes of white desire and its sexual scripts but had difficulties articulating such loss. By returning to Senegal, it seems to be easier for Mas to articulate this loss and to justify return, even if returning was hard.

Mas challenged the idea that obtaining documents was his only goal in life. He spoke of the risk of being treated with disrespect in a context where the European wife has a considerable advantage over the African migrant man. While he disagreed with the reading of his situation by the state, he did not oppose or resist the law or the idea that one needs to love the person to whom one is married to be granted the right to stay. Instead of being against ideals of marriage represented in the law, he wished that enforcers of the law could let go of direct and implicit stereotypes against non-European men that are intertwined with the moral economy of European migration management (Strasser et al. 2009; Turner 2020). Mas’s case demonstrates that instead of the state and migrants existing in antagonism to each other, there is a dynamic relationship between them where sometimes their interests diverge and at other times converge. Mas did not really wish to go back to Senegal, yet he did not want to remain an undocumented migrant in Europe despite invitations by friends to join them in Italy or his relationship with his new girlfriend.

His return to Senegal did not go as planned, yet he did not come entirely unprepared as he had worked and saved money. He insisted on going in December, as this is the month many Senegalese migrants come back for holidays from Europe. Mixed in with this group of diasporic tourists (Akom Ankobrey 2023), he did not stand out as he also came back with presents and money. He and his family kept quiet about his state-assisted return and the duration of his return, reflecting the importance of silencing narratives about state-induced return (Strijbosch, Mazzucato, and Brunotte 2023). It was not easy for him because he did not want to come back, he could no longer access all his belongings in France, and he had to start from scratch again. Luckily, he did not have debts to his family, as they did not finance his trip, and he did not have to directly pay rent upon return.

Mamadou felt like, a failure, after his deportation but at least an honorable failure in that he did not marry for residency papers. He used his handsome features and perceived racial hypersexuality (see also Nyanzi et al. 2005) to argue in Senegal that if he had wanted to marry he could have: “I am very tall and black”. He shares that he attracted quite a lot of attention from women. By saying this, he was confirming that he knew what (white) women look for and he could have made use of this knowledge to stay in Europe if he had wished to do so. When he found himself back in Senegal, he turned it to his advantage on return and distanced himself, like Mas, from other migrants who did marry and were dependent on it for their papers. As Hernandez-Reguant (2006) has argued about black Cuban men, Mamadou undermined a sexual Western gaze by claiming a position of power rooted in his racialized heterosexual masculinity. He made clear he had refused to marry for papers, despite the fact that he could have and despite his precarious legal situation. Putting his hand on his heart, he said:

I am not like the others, I cannot just give myself like that [for papers]. Marriage is important and something you do for your life. I do not joke around with that. If I did, then I would not be in my current situation, right? (Conversation, Dakar, January 2021)

Mamadou both reproduced and contested the norm, which is also present in European migration law, that marriage is founded on deep emotions. He emphasized the seriousness of marriage and the need not to take it lightly. He did not deny that some use it instrumentally, yet he questioned whether that was appropriate for him personally. Though his return was unwanted, it provided evidence of a decent morality. In Senegal, he used his morality as a compensatory strategy to self-valorize his masculinity (Kukreja 2021) and to deal with his feelings of failure as a man in other realms. He also refused the sexual objectification of by white Europeans where black men are treated as temporal objects of desire and not as full persons who have diverse social engagements and desires beyond sex or papers (Ingvars 2023). He said:

I have my own ideology: not going to clubs to look for a woman and all that. My ideology is to find freedom for myself. You go clubbing and find a woman […] after I got my papers, what am I going to do? I will leave her. Afterwards she will tell me, all Africans are the same. Me, I am not like that. When I am with you, I aim to be there forever. (Conversation, Dakar, January 2021)

Mamadou distanced himself from narratives of the “scam marriage” and referred to masculine dignity to justify his vulnerability. He did not contest the norms surrounding the spousal visa. Yet, he questioned why someone who was willing to work, was well integrated and spoke the language was excluded from working and eventually deported. By distancing himself from other migrant men, Mamadou, like Mas, also reinforced dominant stereotypes within the European majority society about migrant men being “macho” and "bossy" towards women and thus strengthened the boundaries between members of ethnic minorities and the majority in Europe (Leutloff-Grandits 2021). He also referred to negative aspects of marriage with a legal resident of Europe, such as the ongoing dependency. Similar to other Senegalese men (Kringelbach 2016a), Mamadou was weary of European women who were overly interested in African men. He mentioned they could be “a bit lost” and you could get stuck in a bad relationship. Mamadou also wished to be honest with people:

I do not want to deceive people. If I am the being deceived, that is no problem. But if I cheat on someone, it hurts me. (Interview, Dakar, January 2021)

He talked about women who could be dangerous or make you vulnerable. Like in Germany, he thought that in Senegal there were also many “Homme-nizers” (mbaraan in Wolof), women who seduce men, have several boyfriends at the same time and are impressed by material things and money and deplete your resources (Foley and Drame 2013).

Migrants who came back in Senegal, were viewed with caution as they could be a threat to Senegalese culture, norms and values and they risked contaminating their “homeland” (Angotti, McKay, and Robinson 2019; Fouquet 2008; Riccio 2005). While migration is celebrated in Senegal, there is also suspicion that migrants bring bad influences from outside such as radicalized ideas about Islam or too Westernized ideas about gender and sexuality (M’baye 2018). Mamadou was also careful and avoided places in Dakar that were considered to be “too European” or where “bad” behavior took place, such as smoking, drinking and “loose” interactions. Senegal has a thriving development cooperation sector with many (white) female workers and volunteers who might seek sexual encounters with (black) men in the leisure or tourist spaces of Dakar. Men who interacted with European tourists and international, so-called “expat”, workers in Senegal could also have a bad reputation (Venables 2009). Mamadou was thus re-negotiating suspicions about his morality in Senegal as well as in relation to European discourses that traveled to Senegal.

Mas and Mamadou thus both made the most of their return by presenting themselves as “good” men and reinforcing moral hierarchies about the importance of “authentic” relationships, love and companion marriage implied in European migration regimes. In doing so, they reinforce the moral economy of European marriage migration management, yet they also deploy morality differently. By adhering to norms contained in European and Senegalese discourses, they questioned stereotypical notions about non-European migrant men but also reinforced stereotypes with regard to other migrants. Yet, they were both critical of European migration policies. Their narratives thus are not only individual responses to particular norms of masculinity, but are shaped by the broader moral economy of migration management that is created in Europe and travels to Senegal.

Conclusion

Marriage migration and deportation are topics that are highly politicized and where gendered and racialized understandings about migrant men flourish. Research on migrant masculinities has shown the difficulties migrant men face and their possible vulnerabilities, in particular with regard to marriage migration. We extend this research by exploring the ongoing connections between the European discourses of marriage migration in interactions in the country of origin. We show that despite wishing to stay in Europe, Senegalese men do not marry or stay married under all circumstances, thus contesting but also reinforcing European stereotypes of black migrant men. In so doing, we connect heretofore separate literature on marriage migration and migrant masculinities to literature on return and deportation.

We find that men who come back following aborted migration projects can capitalize on their return and express their morality through stories of their non-marriage or divorce. It is by returning to Senegal that men challenge stereotypical notions about black migrants in the moral economy of European marriage migration and at the same time reinforce moral hierarchies about love and marriage. These moral hierarchies are relevant in Senegal as some norms coincide with Senegalese ideals of what it means to be a good, responsible and honorable man. Moreover, European residents and members of the diaspora come and go as for instance as tourists, workers in the international development sector, marriage partners or researchers. By reversing the narratives about dangerous men and presenting themselves as responsible and moral in comparison to other men and white women, they maintain their masculinity. These feelings and moral narrations are not only expressions of self-reinvention away from the pain experienced in Europe and after return to Senegal, but also show how gendered and racialized discourses about migration can continue to play a role outside Europe as returnees use similar narratives of romantic love and genuineness to explain their return. As research has shown (Luibhéid 2020, 33), this strategy can be fraught with risk because it implies that only some black Muslim migrants are capable of the correct behavior it does not question underlying (historical) inequalities in relation to racial privilege, economic means or the criminalization of illegalized migrants.

The stories of those who have ended relationships and returned to their country of origin or who did not engage in trajectories of marriage migration are important because they help us to understand connections between migrant masculinities, deportability and the moral economy of marriage migration. These stories are often hidden as most research on marriage migration takes place in Europe and has concealed the ways in which migrants, through return, contest European discourses, while also strengthening moralistic discourses about “the good man”. Such stories offer an entry point to explore the potentially contradictory roles men (and others) play after return in relation to migrants in Europe, and they help us to reflect upon power hierarchies within intimate relationships.

Ethics statement

After examination of the Ethics Review Committee Inner City faculties of Maastricht University (ERCIC_097_30_08_2018) ethical clearance for this project was obtained. Additional approval was obtained from the Ethics Review Committee Inner City faculties of Maastricht University to extend the fieldwork to Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic (ERCIC_097_30_08_2018 approved on 23-09-2023). All names used are pseudonyms, and some personal details have been changed to protect participants’ privacy.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the people who trusted their stories to the researcher and let her into their lives. They cannot be named for reasons of confidentiality and anonymity. We thank Professor Papa Sakho for hosting the researcher within the Geography Department at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. We acknowledge all who commented on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Gwyn Williams for editing the article.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The research on which this paper is based is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the project entitled “Challenging masculinities: The institution of marriage for young Senegalese migrant men under conditions of involuntary return to Senegal” (project number 322-98-002).