European attempts to govern African youths by raising awareness of the risks of migration: ethnography of an encounter

ABSTRACT

Contemporary EU governance of migration outside its territorial borders aims to control mobility through policing measures, but also to shape the subjectivities of potential migrants so that they ‘discipline themselves’ to fit European immigration priorities. This is illustrated by the organisation by intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies, in several African countries, of ‘information’ campaigns and participatory activities to convince youths to stay rather than emigrate. Through an ethnographic account of my encounter with the leaders of a youth group involved in participatory activities in Dakar (Senegal), this article explores the assumption that youths can be governed in this way. I argue that awareness-raising initiatives had little hold over the thoughts of local youths, and were reappropriated by the association leaders I met. This was largely due to ‘discontinuities’ between agencies’ and local youths’ perceptions of migration and development, as well as NGOs’ past and present work with youth group leaders. Theoretically, these conclusions add to research emphasising the force of human mobility over EU policing measures, whilst also highlighting the agentive role of local dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• Governmentality
• awareness-raising
• migration
• development
• Senegal

Acknowledgements

For their insightful comments and constructive feedback, I wish to thank Parvathi Raman and Johan Pottier, the participants at seminars where earlier versions of this paper were presented, as well as the anonymous reviewers of JEMS. I am also indebted to the members of the youth groups in Dakar who participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See https://www.iom.int/news/iom-italy-launch-aware-migrants-campaign; http://www.awaremigrants.org/. The use of ‘information’ campaigns as a tool of migration control is, however, not recent. Campaigns depicting the unattractive conditions of asylum-seekers and migrants in Europe have been organised in many countries since the early 1990s in the context of IOM activities against human trafficking (Nieuwenhuys and Pécoud 2007: 1682–1683).

2 In other words, leaving without a visa (rather than just entering Europe without one) has been portrayed as illegitimate.

3 A pirogue is a wooden fishing boat.

4 In total, three youth groups were studied: a student association, a youth association in a ‘middle-class’ area of Dakar and a youth group in a deprived suburban area of town. Data were collected during a one-year fieldwork including participant observation, interviews and focus groups. Meetings on the topic of migration held between youth groups and NGOs, as well as with other youths, were attended. However, rather than providing a comprehensive account of these sessions, the objective was to understand how these activities translated into the lives of young leaders. This involved accompanying them in their daily routines, within and outside their associations. All names have been changed to respect privacy.

5 This comment referred to the French government’s then newly announced possibilities of ‘legal migration’ for those with specific professions in demand in the French market, as well as to legal-migration contracts issued sporadically by Spain.

6 CFA 4 million was then about £5,000, and CFA 300,000 a little less than £400.

7 That is, their engagement can be understood as a way to instrumentalise their access to, and dependency on, the outside world.