Deported before experiencing the good sides of migration: Ethiopians returning from Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

In the period November 2013–April 2014 more than 160,000 Ethiopians were deported from Saudi Arabia after a seven months amnesty period for undocumented migrants came to an end. This large-scale regularization campaign of the Saudi government must be seen in light of the ‘Arab Spring’, when popular uprisings in the Middle East were threatening dictatorial regimes. The effect of the Arab Spring was felt globally; the uprisings impacted upon migrants living in countries in the Middle East and on their countries of origin. This paper looks into the experiences of Ethiopian deportees prior, during and after their forced return. We argue that the fact that the migrants were not prepared for their sudden return affected their economic, social network and psychosocial embeddedness back in Ethiopia. In addition, the Ethiopian government has not been able to improve the returnees’ economic embeddedness, which has affected their social and psychological status negatively.

KEYWORDS:

• Deportation
• forced return migration
• globalization
• preparedness
• embeddedness
• Ethiopia
• Saudi Arabia

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Nathalie Peutz and Giulia Sinatti for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Saudi government had launched earlier policies that aimed to reduce foreign labor in favor of Saudi nationals (see De Bel-Air 2014, 4; RMMS 2014, 10). Yet, these efforts had limited result, which was mainly because Saudi nationals were unwilling to engage in low-skilled jobs, expected higher salaries and were lacking the skills and training required for much of the work in the private sector (De Bel-Air 2014, 5).

2. In the spring of 2015, the increasing death toll of migrants in the Mediterranean led to new debates about undocumented migrants and their possible return in Europe.

3. For training purposes, to process papers for the businesses they intended to set up, for meetings with government officials to ask for support, for work and for study.

4. The five areas were the Ethiopian Assembly Hall, the Yeka sub-city meeting hall, the Bole sub-city meeting hall, Misrak TVET and Gulele area, where some returnees started working through government support.