Performing return: victims, criminals or heroes? Senegalese male returnees engaging with the stigma of deportation

Abstract

In Senegal, migration can both be a stigma and a privilege; it can increase social standing but also lead to stigmatization and suffering following aborted migration projects. This article uses performativity as an analytical lens to explore how Senegalese male migrants narrate and perform their return to Senegal in reaction to diverse social expectations. It focuses on men who were deported from Europe or who lived there under threat of deportation before returning voluntarily. Despite appeals by migration scholars to go beyond a limited discourse of victimhood, few studies explore returnees’ agency and even fewer the agency of deportees. Based on almost a year of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, we examine multiple simultaneous performances and narrations by returnee men. Despite the numerous difficulties they experience, returnees narrate success post-return by engaging with hegemonic masculine discourses of being a provider, protector and devout Muslim. But ambiguity about return is common, including silencing of suffering in public and private spaces. Performing return as an agentic act, regardless of the duration of return or whether it was voluntary, can enable returnees to conceive of belonging to Senegalese society. By recognizing returnees’ agentic performativity, this article moves beyond common categorizations of deportees as victims or criminals.

Keywords:

• African masculinities
• performativity
• post-deportation
• return migration
• Senegal

Introduction

Returning migrants to their so-called countries of origin has become one of the main tools of European migration management via forced and semi-voluntary return programs. Voluntary return is considered less costly, more successful and politically and socially less painful than forced return (Blitz, Sales, and Marzano 2005). Yet research has shown that the boundaries between voluntary and forced returns are blurry at best, and little is known about how migrants fare upon their return (Hasselberg 2018). Most studies focus on the impacts of the threat of deportation on migrants while they are abroad (e.g. Hasselberg 2016). Less is known about the fears and challenges that persist after migrants are deported and the agency that returnees show in navigating these challenges.

In the last decade, studies have begun to focus on the experiences of migrants who undergo deportation or state-assisted voluntary return. These studies tend to foreground intense emotions relating to suffering and distress. Communities and families stigmatize deported migrants who are seen as having failed in the land of opportunity and portrayed as lazy, criminal, stupid or unlucky (Alpes 2012). Studies have found that deportees, their family members and those in their wider social network often suffer financial, occupational, familial, social and cultural losses (Turnbull 2018, 39; Boehm 2016). Including a loss of masculine status (Schultz, 2021). They face a higher risk of psychosocial problems, and the stigma of deportation (Petit, Lye, and Pizzolato 2014). This can lead to additional pressure to migrate again (Schuster and Majidi 2015). Deportation studies have recently turned to the relationship between deportation and the development discourse that surrounds return migration (Åkesson and Baaz 2015; Coutin 2015; Hasselberg 2016; Leerkes, van Os, and Boersema 2017; Ruben, Van Houte, and Davids 2009; Sinatti 2015). Migration can increase the social standing of migrants and their families but also lead to stigmatization and suffering in case of aborted migration projects. This applies in particular to males from West Africa who face difficulties in fulfilling the role of breadwinner and household head (Schulz and Janson 2016; Prothmann, 2018). Migration can therefore be both a stigma and privilege (Andersson 2014).

Despite the appeals by migration scholars to go beyond a discourse of victimhood (Hasselberg 2018), few studies analyze the creative repertoires of returning migrants, especially those considered to have returned involuntarily (Piper 2009, Ruben, Van Houte, and Davids 2009). Studies started to show the different ways in which returnees depict themselves and the agency and political struggle involved in their self-narrations (see Fine and Walters 2022; Galvin 2015; Lecadet 2018; Sinatti 2019), including the ways they sometimes hide their deportation status (Alpes 2012; Schuster and Majidi 2015). We aim to contribute to this emerging field of study by focusing on male Senegalese migrants to Europe who returned to Senegal either because they were deported or because, threatened with deportation, they chose to return. Drawing on data collected during almost one year of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, mainly Dakar, we explore how men who have lived in Europe under conditions of ‘deportability’ (De Genova 2002) narrate and perform their migration and return experiences in relation to the different societal expectations about masculinity and returnees in Senegal. All the participants in this study could have been removed from the space of the nation-state where they were residing in Europe before their return to Senegal due to their legal (or illegalized) status, though not all were forcefully returned. By focusing on deportability rather than actual deportation, we acknowledge the legal production of migrant illegality and avoid the dubious distinction between forced and voluntary return, as many so-called voluntary returnees have limited choice but to return (Cleton and Chauvin 2020).

Studying the narrations of deportable returning migrants as they are performed and performative allows us to understand the possibilities and limitations that returnees face when trying to re-establish their lives in Senegal. Such narrations communicate a wide range of experiences that include pain and suffering but also success, gratitude and personal growth. While cases of extreme suffering exist, we expressly analyze non-extreme cases as these were more commonly encountered, and they show the variety of performative acts that returnees engage in after their return. We aim to shed light on cases that are less researched and to build a different story of deportation and return than is commonly found in the literature.

Studying ‘failed’ migration and masculinities through performativity

In the last decade, scholars have increasingly looked at the relationship between performativity, agency, migration management and the subject positions these interactions (re)create. Most studies exploring migration and performativity focus on the performative acts of emergent ‘refugeeness’, humanitarianism and bureaucratic practices in the countries of arrival (e.g. Huschke 2014; Ticktin 2011; Ingvars and Gíslason 2018). Fewer studies look at the performativity and subject positions of deportees, returnees or rejected asylum seekers (but see, Cleton and Chauvin 2020; Spathopoulou, Carastathis, and Tsilimpounidi 2022).

The terms ‘performative’ and ‘performative speech act’ were coined by the linguist Austin (1962) in his famous 1955 lectures, where he argued that language can perform an action. Judith Butler (1988) introduced the term ‘performative’ to feminist philosophy and argued that gender is not a condition one has, but is the materialization of reiterating practices. The utterance ‘It’s a girl’ is, for Butler, not a statement of fact, but an interpellation that initiates a process of ‘girling’. In Butler’s (2009, 2015) later work she develops a politics of performativity and transfers the concept of performative gender construction to people in a vulnerable and precarious situation. A central example is provided by illegalized migrants in the United States who, by singing the anthem of the United States and Mexico on the streets, make ‘themselves very public, exercising a right that belongs to citizens precisely because they do not have that right’ (Butler 2009, v). Here performativity is no longer an individual matter but a collective practice of resistance and by taking place in public space where migrants become visible, they excersize a ‘right to appear’ (Butler 2015, 24).

Just as gender, and in our case masculinity, is enacted through repetitive interaction with regulative norms, so too is being a migrant, deportee or refugee. And it is exactly the performative repetition of powerful conventions that can open spaces of subversive agency. In Butler’s reading, agency comes from the moments of ‘failure’ and ‘rupture’ within the repetition, from resistance to social norms and the subordinating function of discursive political power. The critical task is to locate strategies of subversive repetition, or resignification, in individual self-narration and in embodied performative actions. This provides the first form of agency in this paper, the immanent possibility of contesting the constituted identity (Butler 1990, 147), and the second form of agency of making politically visible what is deemed invisible (Butler 2009, 2015).

Mahmood (2001) builds on Butler’s early work but emphasizes that agency involves more than the sort of political transformation Butler was concerned with. In line with Goffman’s (1959) reading of performativity, Mahmood allows more room for intentionality and the framing of self. She thereby pays attention to the individual desires and possibilities that come from a specific subject position. Mahmood (2001, 212) argues that ‘agentical capacity is entailed not only in those acts that result in (progressive) change but also that aim toward continuity, stasis and stability.’ This includes the capacity to ‘endure, suffer and persist’ (ibid, 217). In this paper, we therefore not only focus on forms of agency that aim at ‘rupture’ but also those that enact specific relations of subordination and do not necessarily aim for transformation. Such forms of agency arise when people endure an ascribed status and is the third form of agency in our analysis.

Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio (2017) analyze a fourth form of performativity and agency in their study of how migrants and asylum seekers in Cairo employ political subjectivities related to ‘becoming refugee’. Migrants show a heightened awareness of the discursive ‘figure of the refugee’ and the performances they are expected to enact to achieve refugee status, such as the need to create certain narratives about their flight. They therefore individually use performative acts to engage with the discursive and institutional expectations of the international refugee regime. The authors interpret these actions not merely as performing what is expected as sites of governmentality (Zagor 2014), but also as ways that asylum seekers show political agency by being attentive to their positions. Being attentive to their positions enables a ‘subjective distance’ to the figure of the refugee (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017, 7). They (ibid, 14–15) also emphasize the role shared awareness of their precarious situation plays to mobilize the social potential of embodied performative politics and subjectivity. This shared understanding has the potential to encourage dissenting agency among asylum seekers, including organizing public demonstrations where they fight for their position in public spaces. This is the fourth form of agency in our analysis, one which is close to Butler’s later theory of the performative. It focuses on the capacity for action that the shared awareness of subordination creates and simultaneously enables individual distance and collective acts of resistance.

We thus explore four forms of performativity and its related agency in this paper: contestation of negative norms of ‘the deportee’ through narrative acts of ‘subversive reiteration’; embodied political performances of resistance; acts of ‘enduring’; and performative ‘self-distancing’. We connect masculinity to the ‘figure of the returnee’ and investigate their interconnected performative production. In doing so, we aim to capture the multilayered experiences of male returnees in Senegal. We focus on diverse narratives and performative acts and how these help returnees to deal with post-deportation and return and to create meaning and (regain) agency.

Discursive regimes about migrants, men and returnees

Migration has been part of the lives of Senegalese families for centuries, both within Senegal and internationally (see e.g. Maher 2017). Migratory travel is a social practice that meets familial and communal needs and is considered a form of solidarity (Degli Uberti 2014; Sinatti, 2011). In predominantly heterogeneous Islamic Senegalese society, it is also considered a moral experience (Bredeloup 2016). Being a migrant offers an alternative form of social prestige and a way of dealing with unemployment and underemployment (Ludl 2008; Prothmann, 2018). Senegalese migration flows have historically been and still are male dominated (Mazzucato et al. 2015). Norms of masculinity entail expectations of men being wealthy, providing for the family, building a house and marrying. This applies especially to male migrants who went to Europe and the United States (Diatta and Mbow 1999; Sall, 2011). Furthermore, in Senegal there is a strong discourse of the migrant as a development actor (Kabbanji 2013). This reflects the myriad of foreign-funded initiatives by the Senegalese state, national and international non-governmental organizations, and European states that propagate images of migrants as entrepreneurs and potential developers of their country. Since the early 2000s, pirogue migration, which has seen young men especially trying to travel by boat to Spain, has been common (Poeze 2013). Such migration has resulted in many deaths, a criminalization of illegalized migration, and practices of silencing and secrecy surrounding migrants’ journeys (Gueye 2020).

In European discourses, the ‘illegal migrant’, especially when black and male, is both a pitiable object of rescue and a massing threat at the borders.’ (Andersson 2014, 280). He is a daunting, sly intruder who needs to be repatriated but also an innocent ill-informed victim. In Senegal, this discourse has resulted in enhanced border controls, return and readmission agreements, and numerous awareness-raising campaigns, funded by European states, that aim to reshape the aspirations for mobility of potential migrants and local communities by demonstrating the risks and dangers of irregular migration, especially pirogue migration (Bouilly 2008). The pirogue migrant is portrayed as ‘kamikaze’, ‘victim’ or a ‘naïve adventurer’ driven by unrealistic expectations about Europe and the possibilities of gaining economic wealth (Degli Uberti 2014). Various studies have looked at the effectiveness and side effects of campaigns and the role of returnees in them (see Rodriguez, 2019; Vammen, 2022). However, few studies look at the roles of return migrants outside of these activities or migrants who do not want to be associated with them. In addition to migration campaigns, repatriates who return empty handed are considered to serve as the ideal advertisement against illegal migration (Andersson 2014). Interestingly, assisted return from Europe to Senegal is relatively rare, and removal of undocumented immigrants seems to involve a limited, although not insignificant, number of migrants in Europe (Schoumaker, Flahaux, and Beauchemin 2018, 39).

Besides the international migration regime, returnees respond to implicit cultural modes, including gendered ideals, in their narrative acts of self-making (Bruner 2003). We use Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) theory of hegemonic masculinity to investigate how male Senegalese migrants perform their return as gendered event. Though contested (Messerschmidt, 2012), the theory of hegemonic masculinity is useful for its relational and contextualized approach to cultural masculinities. Hegemonic ideals of masculinity refer to the highest-status way of being a man and require other men and women to position themselves in relation to this hegemonic ideal (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Connell and Messerschmidt’s approach complements Butler’s theory of performative gender constitution and enables us to study masculinities as relational and dynamic, made and remade in their specific social, cultural and geographical position. The concept of hegemonic masculinity thus accounts not only for dominant masculinity types but also subordinated, complicit or marginalized masculinities (see e.g. Brunotte 2022). The way in which individuals conduct, narrate and perform their intimate lives leads to rights to claim privileges or to social marginalization. For instance, disenfranchised and unemployed young men can adhere to a hegemonic form of masculinity but they might not fully perform manhood based on it (Perry 2005; Silberschmidt 2005). We aim to understand how male returnees perform their return and engage with discourses about migration, return and masculinity that are propagated in Senegalese society and in translocal and transnational spaces such as international and non-governmental organizations working on migration. Doing so, we aim to challenge simplified and homogenizing understandings of African migrant men as violent, in crisis or in danger of emasculiniation (see also Ammann and Staudacher 2021; Musariri and Moyer 2021) and contribute to nuanced understandings of returnee masculinities.

In light of the criminalization of illegalized migration and secrecy surrounding migrant’s journeys, we investigate practices of discretion and silencing through the lens of sutura to analyze the repertoire of narrations and performativy of male returnees. Sutura is a term in Wolof, the main group in Senegal and the dominant language, that signifies ‘discretion, modesty, privacy, protection, and the happiness that the previous terms are said to ensure’ (Mills 2011, 2–3). It serves to differentiate between the state of honor and dishonor. Sutura is connected to Muslim forms of morality and is considered to apply across the different ethnic groups of Senegal. Sutura protects information about the household, its residents, the extended family and ensures the reproduction of an honorable life within the hierarchically structured family and the community (Pfeil Gretchen 2020). It involves forms of active self-silencing and of being silenced by others. Those who are not classified as honorable cannot make the same claims to the right of protection and care of the community (Mills 2011). Maintaining sutura is a form of self-protection. If a bad deed is not visible to others, it does not lead to disgrace (ibid). It creates communities of secrecy and engenders practices that keep one invisible or unspoken to outsiders. While the notion of sutura has mostly been used to analyze the gendered experiences of women (Sow 1985, Oudenhuijsen 2021; Pfeil Gretchen 2020), we find it useful to investigate discretion practices by Senegalese male returnees and their performances of masculinity.

Methodology

Data were collected by the first author during almost a year of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, conducted between 2017 and 2021, and ongoing online contact. She spoke with 40 men and five women who had a migratory experience in Europe. We opted to focus on men who lived in Europe under conditions of deportability, i.e. on those who risked deportation due to their immigration status, to underline the continuum of return and deportation. Thus we explore the experiences of both deportees and those who returned to Senegal voluntarily but who could have been deported. At least fifteen of the 40 men had direct experience of deportation to Senegal at some point of their lives. Twelve out of the 40 became our core participants as the fieldreseacher interacted with them various times. We focus on men to reflect the reality that most returnees are men.

Participant observation, interviews and informal conversations were conducted in participants’ homes, workplaces, recreational spaces, at NGOs and organizations working with returnees, and at cultural events such as religious celebrations, naming ceremonies and marriages. In addition to talking with men who returned from Europe, interviews and informal conversations were also conducted with Senegalese returnees from the United States, Brazil, Mauritania, Gambia, Libya and Sierra Leone. Besides migrants and their family members, people from (international) organizations that work with returnees were interviewed. The results were supplemented by participant observation with Senegalese who do not have migration experience.

To gain insights into the diversity of returnee experiences, we approached participants through a variety of entry points: via colleagues at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and the University of Maastricht, through NGOs working with returnees, fellow researchers, volunteers, friends, acquaintances both in Europe and in Senegal, and chance encounters in Senegal. Fieldwork was interspersed with periods of analysis during which participants’ narratives and performances were coded to discern themes related to social expectations about masculinity and return. These themes were further investigated once back in Senegal. Prominent themes that emerged include silence and the role of remigration. These were subsumed within larger themes about migration, return and masculinity.

Fieldwork was mostly conducted in the cities of Dakar and Thies. Occasionally the field researcher went to other regions of Senegal, for instance when she accompanied migrants during family visits. In between stays the researcher maintained contact with participants via social media. Most data collection occurred between February and August 2019 and from December 2020 to March 2021. Communication was mostly in French and sometimes in English, German and/or Dutch. Three interviews were conducted with the help of an interpreter in Wolof and one in Italian. The field researcher is a Dutch woman who many Senegalese considered young due to her unmarried and childless status. While this often facilitated access to men, including returnees from Europe, at times it also solicited mistrust and assumptions that she was working for a European NGO, government or migration campaign.

We obtained ethical approval from Ethics Review Committee (ERCIC) of Maastricht University and all names used in this article are pseudonyms. We see informed consent as a process and therefore the first author regularly verbally reminded participants of her position as researcher, the purposes of the study and stayed open to any wish to withdraw from the study. The researcher was supported locally by Prof. Papa Sakho at Cheikh Anta Diop University who informed her of common practices for ethnographic fieldwork.

Engaging with discursive regimes: producing migrants, returnees and men

We analyze two cases, those of Amadou and Oumar, that together show a variety of agentic acts, complicities and ambiguities of return also performed by returnee participants in our wider sample. Their narrations and performative acts encompass the four types of performativity and related agency explained above. The same person can perform these forms at different times. Through an in-depth account of the performative acts and narrations of Oumar and Amadou, we show that a combination of factors leads them to perform in particular ways. Oumar and Amadou are both in their mid-thirties and lived in Europe for over ten years, yet they engaged in different types of migration. Oumar arrived as a student by plane and Amadou as a pirogue migrant. According to European migration categories, they are opposites: one, the ‘wanted’ highly educated migrant; the other, the ‘unwanted illegalized’ migrant. Yet we will see that such distinctions do not correspond to their experiences, narrations and performances back in Senegal.

Amadou

Amadou (36) and I met in Dakar via a shared contact. With a big smile, he playfully asks where I am from in Wolof to test my language skills. Three months before, he was deported. For the last month, he has been living in his room in Dakar. In 2008, Amadou was repatriated for the first time from Spain to Senegal after three years in Europe. About a year later, he left again to Mauritania and Morocco. After three failed attempts to get to Europe from Morocco, he succeeded. He stayed about 8 years until he was deported for the second time to Senegal. Despite his experience of deportations, he wants to return to Europe. Just after his second return to Senegal, this feeling dominated and he did not want to hear of people who said he must stay. Now, about two years later, this aspiration to return to Europe has not disappeared, but Amadou seems pickier about the conditions of his return: he only wants to go if he is invited. Fieldnote extracts, March 2019; February 2021

The public interview: contesting the image of the deportee as a man

In this section, we zoom in on a broadcasted interview Amadou gave to a Senegalese reporter about his deportation experiences a couple of weeks after his second return to investigate the performative acts it enables. The reporter contacted Amadou because his case was known due to public protests against his deportation in Europe. Representing the collective, mostly disregarded and silenced group of fellow-returnees, Amadou used this opportunity to talk publicly and performatively embody the cause of deportees. By sharing his story in Wolof to a Senegalese audience, he aimed to improve the situation for Senegalese citizens abroad and to question common views of deportees in Senegal.

In the interview, Amadou resists stereotypical portrayals of the deportee and ‘failed masculinity’ by refusing the repetitive performances that are expected (Butler 1990, 2009, 2015). Rather, through the interview, he engages in a public performative act of appropriating a ‘space of appearance’ (Butler 2015, 48). He resists the political norms of the migration regime and aims for transformation. By speaking up as a deportee on camera, he questions the perception that deportation represents an individual failure and a threatened masculinity due to laziness, criminality, stupidity or bad luck. Instead, he shows the social injustices inflicted upon deportees by both European states and the Senegalese state. Instead of warning against the danger of illegalized migration and serving moral migration governance, as often done in information campaigns and AVRR programs (Fine and Walters 2022), he questions the state’s roles in the migration regime. While he accepts the category of a deportee, and in so doing reiterates the norms of the migration regime, he uses the interview as an opportunity to question the stereotype of the deportee. He emphasises that he was doing well in Europe: he was integrated, worked hard, sent remittances, learned the language and was not deported due to criminal acts. Amadou’s act of speaking up publicly also enables him to distance himself from negative and gender coded views about the ‘figure of the deportee’ (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017).

Amadou uses various hegemonic discourses to contest negative views of the deportee, such as by referring to Islam, the dominant religion in Senegal, that he also adheres to in everyday life beyond the public interview. He invokes the image of the good citizen and Muslim:

I can swear on the Koran that during the seven years in [country in Europe], I never had any problems with the police, except once.

By swearing on the Koran, Amadou creates a performative utterance, appeals to the moral authority of the Koran and aims to be taken seriously as a Muslim man. His aim to challenge the migration regime is visible when the television interviewer asks Amadou why he applied for political asylum even though he knows Senegal is not at war. He responds:

There are many countries which are not at war but who [whose citizens] live well in Europe. [.] Other states take care of their nationals. Only the Senegalese state does not care.

Amadou invokes the responsibility of the Senegalese state and questions the idea of deportation as an individual failure. To show the weakness of the Senegalese state and the social injustice of deportation, Amadou points to the violence inflicted on him and others by the Senegalese state in collaboration with European states and urges the Senegalese state to do something about this. He sees it as his duty to protect others to whom this happened or might happen to. When the interviewer asks why he was deported, Amadou says that to this day he does not understand:

The only thing I can say is … Macky Sall [president of Senegal] was there for a conference, he told us [migrants] to stay calm and not to worry. I believed his speech.

Amadou invokes Senegalese masculine ideals. Amadou re-narrates and re-interprets his masculine role as protector and provider of the family. Not only is he adversely affected by his untimely and unjustified return, but a whole group of people are:

The fact that I am deported to Senegal does not hurt me personally. But when I think about my family members who count on me, who want me to succeed, that hurts. I am not married, but I have a father, a mother, sisters who count on me. But I admit, it is not easy.

Rather than being de-masculinized by the vulnerability and precariousness that might come with deportation (Butler 2009), Amadou portrays himself as a selfless person who wants to do good for others while invoking notions of social justice. This makes it possible for him to be celebrated for his solidarity and manliness. He might not be able to fulfil all masculine expectations now, but he used to do so, and he is aiming to do so in the future. He explains in the broadcast interview:

Everyone who needed help was at my door [while in Europe]. But [in Senegal] it is the contrary. That is what hurts me, but not being back in my own country.

Besides questioning the migration regime in the interview, Amadou contests the Senegalese value of sutura in discussions with the researcher and problematizes the common practice of protecting oneself and the family through silence. He explains to the researcher why it is better to talk than to remain silent:

You have to talk your history. It is your own. […]. If you stay [silent] like this, the people think badly or they think that you sold drugs or made something bad in Europe. That is why they bring you [deport you].

Visiting the hometown: performing the successful migrant and faithful Muslim

While the public interview described above shows Amadou’s performative act of resistance against his deportation, at other times he showed ambiguity vis-à-vis talking about his deportation status. He rather emphasized hegemonic Senegalese masculine norms, including those related to the successful migrant. Here we continue the analysis of Amadou’s performative acts by focusing on a visit to his hometown some months after his deportation and interview.

Waiting for transportation to his hometown, Amadou met an old friend. The friend was unaware that Amadou was back and did not directly recognize him due to his new hairstyle. They greeted, laughed and exchanged updates. After the conversation, the researcher asked Amadou what he told his old friend. He explained:

I told him the entire story; I do not want to lie about it. But when people do not ask, I will not tell them about it.

Even Amadou, who questions the practice of deportation and who spoke up publicly as a deportee, admitted that there are times when keeping silent about one’s reasons for return may be the best option. Keeping silent and portraying one’s return as temporary were common performative narrative strategies for managing information about aborted migration projects among our participants. Participants suggested they were back in Senegal for a holiday, a business trip or, more recently, a prolonged stay due to COVID-19. During this trip home, Amadou embodied the successful migrant. He wore fashionable clothes, had a smartphone, generously donated to a wedding, gave watches to the children and bought tickets for various events. These performative acts all invoke Senegalese masculine ideals. Despite being a victim of deportation, Amadou expressed his streetwiseness, worldliness and craftiness though material signs of success, cosmopolitanism, modernity and masculinity (Scheld 2007). These were acquired partly through migration even when his migration project was aborted.

The researcher shared her surprise about the relative ease with which Amadou seemed to deal with the difficult situation he found himself in. She knew several stories about the tough circumstances of deportees. He said that coming back was not easy but that difficulties such as starting over again, dealing with negative views of others and leaving his European life behind are part of life:

God has sent me to there and now he sent me to Senegal. I cannot sit with my arms crossed. I need to make a plan.

By transforming dangers and sufferings into tests, migration experiences can become spiritual experiences where Muslim migrants demonstrate their faith (see also Packer 2019) and manliness. Amadou’s comments above can be understood as part of Sufi Mouride brotherhood ideals where migration is seen as training, an ‘initiation rite’ through which men grow and develop themselves (Riccio 2004; Kaag 2013; Timera 2001).

Amadou’s various performative acts can thus be seen as aiming towards continuity and stability with regards to masculine ideals of being a provider, protector and good Muslim (Mahmood 2001). But he also challenges and interrupts repetitive norms with regards to migration categories through performatively appropriating public space (Butler 1990, 2009) and by creating subjective distance from the ‘figure of the deportee’ (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017).

Oumar

Oumar (35) and I met at an international NGO. He had studied in Europe and had been back in Senegal for almost three years. He listened carefully to my ideas for my project, gave me tips on what to research, and talked about how people migrate not just for money but also status. Two days later, we were, to my surprise, on the way to the airport as his new student visa had been approved. In three hours, his flight to France was leaving! The trip to Europe also came as a surprise to most of his family and friends: he had prepared his trip in silence and only showed his bags to his family on the day of departure. Two and a half years later, I met Oumar again. Oumar’s story is one of success: he finished his studies, came back to Senegal on a voluntary return program and obtained funding to start his own sustainable agricultural business. It was only after some time that an unspoken part of Oumar’s journey came out: Oumar had partly lived in Europe as a ‘sans papiers,’ an unauthorized migrant, and he had been deported the first time he came back to Senegal. Fieldnote extracts, January 2017; June 2019; December 2020.

Meeting the researcher: keeping silent and distancing from illegalized migration

Oumar’s hiding of his first deportation experience from the researcher allowed him to accentuate other categories within the migration regime: student, entrepreneur and voluntary returnee. He performed the young smart student who was back in Senegal to work. His attentiveness to available migrant positions and subjectivities enabled him to distance himself from the ‘figure of the deportee’ (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017). He did not look like a deportee with raffled clothes or in a mental state of stress, as deportees are often depicted by other migrants, NGO workers and in Senegalese society at large. On the contrary, Oumar was well dressed, spoke eloquently, and expressed himself in a nuanced way. He embraced the discourse about return migration and development where migrants are seen as entrepreneurs who come back to invest in their country (Kabbanji 2013). Oumar’s performative act of keeping silent in front of the researcher shows how politicized categorizations of migration such as voluntary and involuntary return can be used in agentic ways and silence can be a meaningful absence. Oumar did not aim to change the migration regime or to challenge migration categories. Instead, he engaged with existing discursive categorizations and used available subject positions.

Notwithstanding his experiences as an illegalized migrant in Europe and being deported, Oumar dissociated himself from other migrants, such as Amadou, who left Senegal for Europe without the appropriate papers. At one point, Oumar narrated what Kleist (2017) calls the safe migration position: if one studies hard, works and thinks of innovative ideas, one can migrate legally. Oumar emphasized how he was patient and smart enough to deal with migration rules without putting himself and his family in danger and how he acted therefore as a responsible adult man. He distanced himself from the ‘naïve’ ‘irresponsible adventurers’ often linked to pirogue migration:

They don’t have the same profile [as me]. They take enormous risks. They take the boat and leave their families behind. That is not human. If you are able to take the boat and go there [to Europe], I think you are also able to resist the pressure here and have the means to live here and to create an activity or business.

Connell (2005) recognizes more than one kind of masculinity and argues that masculinities are relational. In the quote above Oumar narratively performs distance from other migrant men. This could be seen as a compensatory strategy where he serves as an ideal exemplar and creatively reduces other men’s masculinity. However, he ignores the fact that for many migrants, the legal opportunities are limited, and he negates the experience he shares with them of being a migrant without the appropriate documents to stay in Europe. Migration, according to Oumar, should not be discouraged, but risky migration should. Through his performative narration of difference, he distances himself from other deportees by viewing his deportation as a calculated risk. He successfully managed to navigate his insufficiently documented status in Europe for a long time and was even at ease doing so. He was ready to go back to Senegal, even when he was deported the first time.

Being silenced by family and friends: distancing and enduring pain as a man

The researcher was not the only one with whom Oumar didn’t share his full story. For him, his deportation was ‘unspeakable’ to close family members. He was expected to keep silent, even though they probably knew. Oumar explained: ‘Everybody knows but nobody knows. Until we say it, we do not know.’

Secrecy and silence are a mutually constituted interaction between the returnee and the people around them. Both sides play an active role, not just the party concealing knowledge (Bakuri, Spronk, van Dijk, 2020). But not speaking about his experiences was difficult for Oumar. He described being seen as a deportee, the imposed silence and the looks others gave him as acts of violence.

Today you are not the same person. You have grown, developed things. But why do they [family] not see this? Instead, they just see the deportation, like it is written [points at his forehead]: ‘deportee’ […]. That is a very violent view. It is VERY violent.

Despite a culture in which emigration is often seen as training for young men, the value of his journey was not recognized by the people around Oumar. He explained to the researcher:

For them it [talking about his experiences of deportation to Senegal and his previous life in Europe] is like you are complaining. You are complaining about your situation, but no, it is just like that you want to share.

By keeping silent about his experiences, he performatively re-constitutes and materializes his manliness in the capacity to ‘endure, suffer and persist’ (Mahmood 2001, 217). Oumar sees himself as a victim, but he does not internalize this view completely as he also narratively performs how he grew and developed himself. He thus distances himself from the deportees while at the same time embracing part of the pain associated with deportation.

Leaving to Europe again in silence: challenging the personal stigma of deportation

To show to those around him that he remained a person, not merely a deportee, Oumar prepared his second return to Europe in silence. He wanted to show he was capable of going to Europe again and erasing his deportation experience and the contagious shame deportation brought to him and his family. With this third silence, Oumar re-invented himself. Through the performative act of leaving again in silence, Oumar challenged the stereotype of deportees as incapable of doing things. Due to his capacity to endure (Mahmood 2001), he carved out a new path for himself and his family and erased the stigma of deportation. Oumar explained:

It leaves aside the shame and everything, so they forget the situation [the deportation] and think of the current situation [that he left Senegal again and is back in Europe].

Oumar’s story shows how sutura in combination with masculine ideals can be painful and empowering at the same time. Oumar’s silences aim at continuity and stability (Mahmood 2001) with regards to masculine ideals of being a protector, being a good Muslim and being able to suffer and endure for the sake of the family, but his silences also challenge his experiences of deportation and are self-distancing (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017). Contrary to Amadou, Oumar does not engage in public action for progressive change in the discursive migration regime in which there is a strong differentiation between illegalized pirogue migrants and non-pirogue migrants in Senegal, but he applies his awareness of migration categories to distance himself and his family from them. He acknowledges the existing categories but explains why they do not apply to him.

Both Oumar and Amadou position themselves and their experiences within the existing hegemonic norms of masculinity in Senegal. They performatively reinforce these norms with minor differences and the responsibilities that come with them. Like Oumar, Amadou reiterates masculine ideals of being a provider, protector and a good Muslim (Mahmood 2001). On the other hand, in publicly claiming solidarity with his fellow returnees, he uses the normative stereotypes of masculinity to challenge and ‘undo’ the norms and regulations (Butler 1990) of migration and the stigma attached to deportees (Butler 2009). Both men distance themselves from stereotypical notions about deportees and, despite their deportable status, attribute agency to their return by explaining how they were at ease and well connected in Europe.

Conclusions

In this article we have analyzed the multilayered experiences and performative narrative acts of male returnees in Senegal. We argued that returnees move beyond stigmatizing notions about deportees as victims or criminals. Despite the numerous difficulties that migration can bring and the pain experienced when migration projects are aborted, returnees such as Oumar and Amadou also perform and narrate success. This helps them to feel that they belong to Senegalese society, to create meaning and to assert agency.

By focusing on deportability rather than deportation, thus avoiding the dubious distinction between forced and voluntary return, we were able to identify how migrants who would often be categorized in opposition to each other (e.g. an illegalized pirogue migrant, Amadou, and a highly educated legal migrant, Oumar) use similar performative acts to navigate normative discourses once back in Senegal. Although their emphasis was different, both men exemplify two forms of agency: they engage in acts of continuity and stability (Mahmood 2001) with regards to normative models of Senegalese masculinity that have to be repeated (Butler 1988) and they engage in acts of performative ‘self-distance’ in relation to other migrants and the stereotypical image of the deportee (Häkli, Pascucci, and Kallio 2017). In addition, Amadou’s performative act of speaking out in a public interview illustrates a third form of agency: he shows his awareness of shared grievances and embodies the possibility of a collective performativity of resistance or ‘rupture’ of the norms in the migration regime (Butler 1988, 2009, 2015). Oumar’s case, and Amadou’s to a lesser extent, show how ambiguity and the performative act of keeping silent as a fourth form of agency can help to reconstruct their belonging as men in Senegal after their return. Even though Amadou spoke publicly about his deportation experiences, he admitted there were times and places both in the public and private sphere when keeping silent was preferable. Being discrete and presenting one’s return as temporary were common performative narrative strategies that our participants and their families enable to manage information about their aborted projects.

Methodologically, stories like those of Oumar and Amadou show that researching return migration and deportation is a delicate endeavor. Researchers should remain aware of agentic practices of silencing and the limits of politically loaded categorizations, also in a less studied geographical setting such as in the country of origin. Seeing a migrant’s return as one stage of a complex migratory trajectory, instead of the end of the migration cycle, encourages a longitudinal approach. Understanding that someone can migrate and return multiple times in various politicized categories helps to turn attention to the nuances of returnees’ stories and the agentic elements within their performances and narrations, thus challenging a single story of deportation. Researchers have acknowledged agentic practices of discretion, ambiguity and silence in other return contexts (e.g. Alpes 2012; Schuster and Majidi 2015; Schultz, 2021). We have extended such research by differentiating between the role of self-silencing, imposed silence and public secrecy. To advance the study of deportation and return and to improve understanding of its situational, temporal and collective dimension further, more scholarly attention needs to be given to the existence and functions of agentic silences. We have also shown in this paper how hegemonic masculine ideals can be empowering as well as painful. This questions the assumption of European states that deportation is an ideal encouragement against illegalized migration, as not all deportation has to result in a loss of masculine status. This opens up avenues for further research into the gendered nature of return.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the people who shared their stories with us. They cannot be named for reasons of confidentiality and anonymity. We thank Prof. Papa Sakho for hosting and integrating the first author within the Geography Department at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. We acknowledge all who commented on earlier versions of this paper. All errors remain ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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).

Notes on contributors

Karlien Strijbosch

Karlien Strijbosch is a Ph.D. candidate at Maastricht University and a member of the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development research group and the Centre for Gender and Diversity. She was awarded a ‘PhDs in the Humanities’ grant by The Dutch Scientific Organisation (NWO) to carry out research on masculinities, return migration and the institution of marriage. Before starting her PhD, she worked in various roles in the field of migration in the Netherlands

Valentina Mazzucato

Valentina Mazzucato is Professor of Globalisation and Development, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. She is PI of international research projects on transnational families that live between Africa and Europe. She was recently awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to study the mobility trajectories of transnational youth (www.motrayl.com).

Ulrike Brunotte

Ulrike Brunotte is Associate Professor for Gender and Diversity at Maastricht University (retired September 2021), since 2008 she is Adjunct Professor at Humboldt University Berlin (Institute for Cultural Studies). Expertise among other in Masculinity and post-colonial Studies, Cultural (religious) History and Studies in Performativity. https://ulrike-brunotte.de