»Failed« Migratory Adventures?

Front matter

Susanne U. Schultz

“FAILED” MIGRATORY ADVENTURES?

Malian Men Facing Conditions Post Deportation in Southern Mali

Contents

Abbreviations sen cect 20am nsratecdon gts exe vicon gan datent nette st nt animent ant Nl ORG WONG 555 ne Seca crac shack diem de ud ube d daedae a teens cn ameah 0 den ean 13 Chapter 1 Toward the topic and question: “failed” migratory adventures Chapter 2 Contextualizing and historicizing deportations and situations post-deportation in Mali .. 41

Concluding. teMarks: rarase ranae e e a nn me dénude 72 Chapter 3 Extending the site to the village. Researching post deportation in-the:rural hinterland ssori asinantes nanai esae aus 85 Chapter 4 “The adventure is not easy.” - Narrating forms of suffering in deportation experiences 103 “Having something in the head.” - Stress, violence, and pain åfter deportations ts ni sateen ne ne aids oc cn dect 108 Symbolism of thestate cesan aa ad nn me EEO REY 121 Concluding: remarks su eee te Meet M TN ESTNE 124 Chapter 5 “It's [not] all about money.” - About returning with empty hands and relational

The ambivalent role of money and debt

Foreword

The past two decades have witnessed growing attention to forced mobility as refoulement, i.e., deportation in the wake of growing immigration restrictions and the externalization of migration control to places of transit and origin countries of migration. The growing restrictions and attendant securitization attest to the significance of the universalization of the nation-state form: refoulement is regularly taking place not only from Europe to Africa but also from some African states to others. Susanne U. Schultz’s study contributes to the rapidly emerging field of deportation studies with a focus on various types of forced return as a form of what she calls “legally produced violence” in the wake of what the late French sociologist Abdelmayek Sayad termed initially unsuccessful “emigration-aventures.” Deportation as a process has an impact upon the condition of irregular migrants and, in this case, on the post-deportation condition.

Susanne U. Schultz frames her investigations around supposedly “failed” migratory adventures, thus pointing toward the ambivalence of failure and success as reflected in the migration experiences of both young and older men from various regions of Mali. The experience of “failure” is interrogated as a notion that is materially, emotionally, and morally charged in its social dimensions. The study suggests that failure may eventually turn out to be “a productive category.” This finding provides one of the answers to the main question: how do the forced returnees (refoulés) deal with deportation?

This rigorous study pushes us to rethink the scope and the consequences of forced returns in the lives of migrant workers, their families and communities. Susanne U. Schultz’s way of tracing the processes of forced return points to a research line sufficiently rich to inform a research agenda for years to come, and her book offers a multi-perspectival analysis which considers the experiences of forced migrants in addition to the usual views of governments. This makes it a rare and convincing exemplar of providing reflexive knowledge on (return) migration,

“Failed” Migratory Adventures ?

something that is badly needed if better policies for European-African transnational social spaces are to be devised.

Bielefeld, November 2021 Thomas Faist

Acknowledgements

The political paths of ethnography from the field to the final book are to be followed prudently, for you never know where you may end up. This has been a long, sometimes turbulent, but very enriching journey and a true phase of transformation. I want to thank all of those who advised and supported me on the way and enabled me to arrive here.

Above all, I am deeply indebted and full of thanks to the people who made up my field — all the respondents, acquaintances, and people I met, who shared their stories and invaluable insights with an often overwhelming openness and warmth that has, in part, lasted until today. Among them, I want to especially thank the self-organized groups of former deportees, the AME and ARACEM in Bamako and Kita, AMRK in Kayes, and AJRECY in Yanfolila, who welcomed and integrated me immediately, and provided me with indispensable contacts. Without all of them, this work would not have been possible or would be completely different.

A workshop with an enriching group of anthropologists and Africanists of different ages and levels of experience provided me with an insightful and comforting starting point for entry into the field of southern Malian lifeworlds post deportation. For this I was, and remain, very grateful. The German-Malian research institute Point Sud in Bamako acted as my base throughout the fieldwork. This much appreciated, fruitful environment brought me into contact with a number of Malian doctoral students; together we passed long hours discussing and drinking tea, and I was able to report to them my “fresh” impressions from the field. There, I was introduced to Birama Bagayogo, who became an indispensable advisor and friend in collaborating on my research and much more. I am deeply grateful for his constant assistance, support, and inspiration that has continued until today.

Back “home,” I was generously supported by the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS), which allowed me to pursue my research topic in the first place. Throughout, the BGHS has been an inspiring and supportive environment in intellectual as well as social terms. A warm thank you to everybody there! My supervisor, Thomas Faist, was an invaluable support throughout this doctoral journey. I very much appreciated our thoughtful exchanges, the “work in progress” discussions in our (back then) Vlotho research class and in his colloquium. Many

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thanks are due as well to the colleagues in the working group “Sociology of Transnationalization” for their support, time, and advice.

I am also deeply grateful to Dorothea Schulz, who co-supervised my work after thoughtfully scrutinizing whether my approach and output would fit into her domain. Her colloquium in Cologne has been incredibly helpful and a perfect anthropological and mostly (West) Africanist embedding for exchanges on my work: Another big thank you to all her colleagues for reading my manuscripts, providing insightful feedback, sharing and exchanging their work and lives. I was able to meet and engage with enriching scholars on this journey at academic events, workshops and conferences, and, importantly, was associated with the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), all of which contributed greatly to developing this research.

Finally, I want to thank my family, who have always supported me, my friends, who were there when needed in the ups and the downs, my partner, who joined in supporting this journey for the last few meters, and, not least, my thoughtful copyeditor, who provided the finishing touch. My deep and warm thanks to all of you.

Bielefeld, January 2022 Susanne U. Schultz

Chapter 1 Introduction: Toward embedding “failed” migratory adventures in southern Mali

It is a hot and dry December morning in the main square of a hub city in southwest Mali. I am here with a group of activists from Mali and Europe in order to participate in and document an event organized by a transnational activist network. Together with community representatives and bereaved families we have come to commemorate the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean — their “martyrs,” as some call them. In this region there are communities with long histories of mobility and migration that take many forms and established practices regarding them. Everybody here has some relation to being on the move, whether through previous or prospective migratory experience of their own, or as a relative, acquaintance, or dependent of a migrant. The numerous chairs set out under sun canopies on the square are still empty. It is early Saturday. The commemoration event, which was preluded at first light by the sacrifice of an ox at the imams house, will start soon.

As we pass through the square and observe the site, people start to arrive. They are mostly men, middle-aged and young, who come and sit. After a little while, the chairs are filled. More official representatives of the city and members of the bereaved families take their places in the broad main stand flanking the square. We sit with them in the shadow of the canopy as the event is rolled out. As we shortly learn, a large majority of the men seated on these rudimentary chairs typical of the locality have previously been deported.’ They are what people commonly call refoulés”: former adventurers (anciens aventuriers) who “have not made it.”

1 The term “deportation” here refers to different forms of forced return, including push-backs, refoulements, expulsions, repatriations, and, importantly, transit or emergency returns. My intention is to emphasize the often coercive and above all involuntary nature of these returns without focusing on legal differentiations. This derives from my observation that legal terms are sometimes arbitrarily or dissimilarly used by (Malian and other) representatives of authority and above all by the returnees themselves (cf. Alpes, 2020, 2017; Kleist, 20174).

2 A term that literally translates as “people who have been pushed back” and that deportees and other “involuntary” returnees most often use to refer to themselves. | will deal with this

“Failed” Migratory Adventures?

Most of them were forcibly returned from the Maghreb states externally bordering the European Union (EU), that is, from Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, or Algeria; others come from Gabon or the two Congos. Few of those who are here have been forcibly returned from European states directly; only a small number have come from Spain, France, Germany, or, most recently, Italy. Many of the latter prefer to stay in Bamako, Mali’s capital city. Together with the few from Germany and from other West African countries, the former migrants and deportees form an international crowd to commemorate and value the migrant “heroes,” who went out for the well-being and betterment of their communities expecting to return “in triumph” (Latour, 2003). Now they are presumed dead; they cannot even be buried according to the Muslim rule (cf. Sylla & Schultz, 2020).

The day is primarily an occasion to express and share mourning. Several of the parents burst into tears when offered the chance to bring in their testimonies describing the difficulties they have faced. But, in addition, the families and civil society actors are able to express their political discontents, challenging the “neoliberal state,” “international donors,” and the “development” regime. In their introductory speeches during the main commemoration, representatives of the local authorities harshly denounce the attitude of the Malian government regarding the treatment of Malians abroad. They appeal for agriculture to be properly valued as that would retain “the valid arms on the spot” (field notes, 12-19-2015, in other words “keep fit and effective workers in the country”), and avoid young people “being forced” to leave. The activists’ declaration places the central responsibility squarely on the EU, denouncing the political and economic inequalities of restrictive border protection policies and their corollaries, the extinction or distortion of many migrants’ lives (Afrique-Europe-Interact [AEI], Mali Section, December 18, 2015, unpublished statement). The Europeans’ established discourse on “irregular” migrants will eventually legitimize these policies, including deportations, dividing those on the move into desirables and undesirables (Agier, 2011). Even if it took place out of sight of most participants, the ritual sacrifice element was of central symbolic significance for commemorating the absent, dead bodies. It allowed the dead to be integrated in the “normal” order of a funeral practice, thus ensuring “their rest and salvation,” and recovering something from the great loss caused by the politically externalized borders (see Sylla & Schultz, 2020, p. 5).

This situation is a snapshot of the contemporary state of the global deportation regime (De Genova & Peutz, 2010) and of the unequal practices in place at its externalized borders. It marks a very specific historical moment at which border controls, mobility restrictions, and deportations have created everyday realities of term in more detail shortly. Stefanie Maher (2015) makes similar observations in Senegal. For further explanation see the subchapter headed “Everybody is a réfoulé” (p. 33).

Introduction: Toward embedding “failed” migratory adventures in southern Mali death, abuse, trauma, and destruction. Not only have the “migratory failures” produced by these restrictions and forced returns had devastating consequences for individuals within these communities, the expectations of a better life and development for all, in terms of potential economic and social mobility, have been reversed. Albeit a deportee has some chance of continuing and potentially finding new opportunities, a shipwrecked young man cannot be brought back to life. More concretely, the death of a young breadwinner can imply the loss of social status for an entire family and the impossibility of achieving the economic goals expected from the migratory project (see Bredeloup, 2017; Koenig, 2005). The repercussions are substantial and hard to redress. Against this background, contestations and responses evolve far beyond this region of southwest Mali with its long-established migratory patterns and cultures. While experiences are collectively shared and publicly expressed, an individual “failure”?

through deportation may still be received ambivalently by the community. After deportations, the collective imaginary of success through migration may be particularly contested.

Hazards, survival, and loss in adventure - the emblem of returning empty-handed

Salif’s* account captures this central ambivalence of returning to one’s community involuntarily and with empty hands very well. He comes from a village close to where the commemoration I have just described took place and thus allows me to dive straight in to the micro level of my study. His story illustrates the entanglement of the different political, economic, social, emotional, moral, and cultural dimensions at stake. Now in his late forties, the father of eight children and husband of two wives, Salif is someone who embodies not only the suffering and hardships of the adventurous journey, but the financial loss it can entail as well. All the money Salif earned between 2008 and 2010 in Libya while working on a construction site was lost when the rubber boat he was in went adrift in the open Mediterranean and was finally returned by the Libyan Coast Guard. His journey ended in an odyssey through various prisons. He recalled:

3 Throughout this book, the term “failure” will be set in inverted commas to underline the relative stance | take towards this morally and emotionally charged judgment, as | will explain below. Particularly in the case of deportations, an unwanted return is to be seen first of all as the result of a politico-administrative measure that is potentially economically driven.

4 The names of the respondents have been changed to preserve their anonymity, and information relating to individuals has been partly modified. For the same reason, the deportees’ villages and living and working places will not be named specifically and are only roughly characterized.

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Yes, the motor broke. We had one day and two nights when the motor was good, but on that second day, the motor broke down. We spent nine days like that on the water, without motor. This was the water that would help us to get anywhere. We were 152 persons in the Zodiac. And 70 people died in the water. (Salif, 11-1-2015)

The water “that would help [them] to get anywhere,” water full of hope and promise turned out to be full of desperation and misery, hardly traversable by Zodiac, a small rubber boat often used to transport people without legal papers over the Mediterranean to enter Italy, Spain, or Greece. The Zodiac becomes a microcosm of the horrors of an unequal world experienced in the suffering and death of the migrants and in the helplessness and despair that follow the conviction that originally persuaded them to get into the boat. It embodies the violence and distress as well as the hope on the high seas that live on in many refoulés’ memories. At the same time, it represents the contingencies deciding over death and life. The survivors were captured; their journeys were disrupted and reversed. Having lost everything, Salif had to return with empty hands. He had invested all his money in this journey of hope. He forfeited a fortune. He laughs a little bitterly, when recalling his arrival back in the village, but the picture he draws has two sides to it:

It is a pity, but it is a pleasure, and also disturbing, the money that you've lost and you spent eleven days on the sea and you saw the people die and you are not dead and when you have met your family again, that’s a pleasure. But it’s a pity for an adventurer to lose all his money like this without gaining anything, and return and start with the hardship here. That’s a pity. (Salif, 11-1-2015)

5 venture out, like Salif, to “search for

Many men, young ones and older ones, money” (Bambara: warignini)® in their youth in order to grow, become someone (ka kè waritiguiyé), and contribute (ka gwa dèmè) to their families. Their migratory journey is called “the adventure” (French: “'aventure”) in large parts of West Africa, as I will shortly elaborate further. But this short episode points up what I call the ambivalence of the “failed” migratory adventure. Salif feels obliged to return to the narrow social space of the village and to the hardships he had left behind. He

5 “Young” or “younger” men refers in emic terms to those aged between 16 and about 40, and very much relates to a person’s capacity for mobility and migration and thus for actively contributing to the family income; “older” refers to men outside this broad category.

6 Bambara is the main local language in Mali and the one most frequently used in newspapers, media, and politics as well. | will provide more information on the language and translation of my research in Chapter 3. French is the official language of Mali and is also frequently used in everyday communication. Throughout the text, terms in Bambara and French will appear in italics. The annex includes a Glossary for the main Bambara terms used, and some French equivalents.

Introduction: Toward embedding “failed” migratory adventures in southern Mali considers it a pity, a shame, for an “adventurer” to return without the thing he adventured for. Still, it’s a pleasure to be back with the family alive and well.

This book will showcase emic conceptions of peoples’ leaving and their often forced and unwanted returns on the one hand, and their going on after deportation on the other as revealed in deportees’ (retrospective) narratives and everyday practices. My aim is to develop a differentiated picture of supposed breakdown and “failure” after deportation, showing how it can be a productive category for some people as well, and an indicator of how to go about one’s life. This introductory chapter is intended to provide the reader with a theoretical and contextual base for the analysis to come. First, I briefly explain what makes Mali a particularly interesting research setting. Second, I lay out the central question dealt with in the study, which derives from an instance of a supposedly “failed” adventure, and describe my major aim in tackling it. This gains substance in a third section where I introduce the main theoretical lines I have followed and summarize the concepts and terminology that emerged from my research. I then close this introductory chapter by providing an outline of the chapters to come.

The specificities of (post-)deportation in Mali

There are a number of reasons that make Mali an extraordinarily interesting place to study situations and conditions after deportation in general and so-called “failed” adventures in particular. In Mali, the different social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions as well as the relevant actors who are affected by and respond to the global deportation regime intersect in very particular ways. As the country has longstanding cultures of migration (Hahn & Klute, 2007) and different forms of mobility, expatriate Malians constitute a quarter to a third of the country’s population. Conversely, Mali has also become a country of immigration and transit for many people journeying northward. In 2008 it was strategically selected by the EU as a pilot country to implement its new approach to migration and development in a place of transit toward the Mediterranean and the outer shores of Europe. Throughout the last few decades, Mali has been impacted by high numbers of forced returns, starting from the time when many African states

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gained their independence. Meanwhile, the country has never implemented large-scale deportations itself.”

Apart from that, Mali has developed a specific political context, favorable to the establishment of civil society engagement (Lecadet, 2017; Siméant, 2014). In light of the size and importance of the segment of its population living abroad, the Association Malienne des Expulsés (AME; the Malian Association of Expellees) was founded in 1996 by a number of former deportees from different African and European countries politically inspired by the movement of the sans-papiers in France (cf. Lecadet, 2018, 2011; Cissé, 1999). Over the years, the organization has gained a critical role in the debate on deportations in Mali and beyond and been involved in the reception and reintegration of deportees. It was the organizations activist presence that called my own attention to post deportations in Mali as the flipside of the EU border externalization regime in the nexus of migration and development. I found all these entanglements highly interesting. They demanded more insight and analysis.

Today, there are generations of deportees in Mali, particularly since the externalization of the EU’s borders into the African continent received a major new push in the follow-up to the so-called “refugee crisis”? and the issue of transit returns became particularly virulent (Alpes, 2020; Zanker & Altrogge, 2019). Since then, deportations, including transit returns, have become an ever more public phenomenon in the country, debated first of all on radio and television, in the newspapers, and at public events. Though the commemoration described at the beginning of this chapter was in itself a unique event, it has to be seen as part of a process of commenting on and contesting national as well as international (migration) policies through civil society actors and former deportees in particular. Today it may no longer be rare, for instance, to see deportees as spokespersons at public events, such as debates about the meaning of migration, return, and opportunities in society, organized by a Malian radio station at the French institute

7 Mali and Tanzania have been unique in this regard on the African continent, though lately the situation has been changing. Individual cases of deportation have been reported from Mali, and the country has been involved in transit returns as well (see Chapter 2). Similarly, Tanzania is said to have been involved in forced repatriations of Burundian refugees: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/tanzania-confidential-document-sho ws-forced-repatriation-of-burundi-refugees-imminent/, accessed 31 October 2021.

8 While the “refugee crisis” dates back to the protracted situation in which millions of refugees from the Syrian civil war arrived in the Middle East and Turkey and decided to journey on, it was mostly the dilapidated boats setting out from the Libyan coast “full of Africans” and the increasing number of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean that imprinted our image of and approach to this “European crisis.”

Introduction: Toward embedding “failed” migratory adventures in southern Mali

(l'Institut français), or an academic workshop aiming to engage in the public debate on migration” (cf. Lecadet, 2018).

Meanwhile, one can now speak of collective experiences of deportation rather than experiences of individual “failure” - as Plambech similarly finds for Nigeria (2018) — and a certain “normalcy” in deportations (Galvin, 2015). Increasingly, these are becoming collective memories of (post) deportation, too, though deportees may still react with shame and may easily be stigmatized (cf. also Plambech, 2018, 2017; Drotbohm, 2015; Diinnwald, 2011; Lecadet, 2011). We know too little about these interrelations and conditions post deportation, above all about individual social experiences and the practices that develop afterwards, particularly over the longer run and in different geographical contexts. This book aims to contribute to filling these gaps in our knowledge. In all this, Mali serves as a particular case of experiencing and reacting to (post) deportations.

Toward the topic and question: “failed” migratory adventures under post-deportation conditions in southern Mali

Within this debated, contested, and simultaneously devastating setting, this book will develop and critically question the concept of the “failed” migratory adventure on the basis of narrative representations (collectively) experiencing and dealing with situations post deportation and the practices developed to help people cope with them. At stake are social, emotional, and material interrelations and perceptions, which often center on loss of money and thus failing the expectations of one’s kin. All this indicates what I call the “ambivalence of the ‘failed’ migratory adventure.”

Literary reminiscences - the “failed” hero?

The term “adventure” conjures up a series of literary motifs of the hero who went out into the wilderness and came back broken, unrecognizable, but also changed and enriched in some way, such as the ancient Greek hero Odysseus, the prodigal son in Jesus’s parable recorded in St Luke’s Gospel, and the medieval knight Parzival (Percival), in a romance written by the knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German (13th century). Siddhartha, the rich and sheltered Indian prince who later became the Buddha, is another example. Siddhartha lived years

9 Programme Point Sud 2019, Récits et débats locaux sur la migration. Dits et non-dits de l'expérience du départ et du retour, 2-6 October 2019, Point Sud Bamako, Mali, Rapport; see online : http ://pointsud.org/wp-content/uploads/PPS-2019-R%C3%Agcits-et-d%C3%Agbatslocaux-sur-la-migration-Bamako-Rapport.pdf, p. 5, accessed 31 October 2021.

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of ascetic apprenticeship in mostly solitary withdrawal in the Indian wilderness, which brought him eternal wisdom and enlightenment in the end and became the origin of Buddhism. Eventually, all of them grew wiser. They went out to search for something and come back as heroes, but “failed” in one way or the other as a result of the obstacles and trials they had to overcome, before they returned differently than expected, but bringing back something more precious than what they had set out to find. Siddhartha Gautama founded a new religion; Odysseus was eventually recognized, reintegrated and could govern his kingdom well; Parzival had to acknowledge his God-given culpability and sinfulness, his unconscious guilt for the death of his mother and his relative Ither. Eventually, however, after passing through numerous 4ventiures'®, he found the Holy Grail and was received into the circle of the knights of the Round Table (cf. Schwietering, [1944]; 1946, pp. 18ff).

None of these heroes was forced to return, they struggled on to achieve their goals, enduring years of suffering and apprenticeship. The heroic masculine qualities of courage, bravery, steadfastness, and persistence are intrinsic to the stories. Similarly, some migrants continue the struggle when they come back, or refuse to return because they have been unable to live up to the social expectations of a considerable income and contribution to the family that were placed upon them, even though return, if only perhaps for a visit, is the ultimate aim of many (see, e.g., Hernandez-Carretero, 2015; Le Courant, 2014). Deportations come as radically unexpected, unprepared for, and most often deeply unwanted interruptions to their quest. Even if there are substantial differences between them and the literary heroes, the deportees too originally went out to search for something. Their years of suffering before, during, and after deportation also make up a true phase of transition and becoming. Furthermore, former adventurers may show dedication and courage after deportation similar to that of the literary and religious heroes, a theme that will be particularly developed in Chapters 6 and 7.

Like Odysseus, for instance, whose 10 whole years of struggle had rendered him unrecognizable by the time he made it home, many returnees and their social circles report how the former’s experiences made them unrecognizable after deportation — physically, but also mentally. They have to recover, to find themselves again and get back to their lives. I will develop this process of arrival, and what deportations can do to people along with presenting their narrative depictions of experiencing deportation in the first analytical chapter. In Kafka’s story “Homecoming” (Kafka, 1971), the returned son never verifies whether he is recognizable. He stops in front of the closed door of his parents’ house, feeling more and more alienated the longer he stands there. The reader is left with the impression that he

10 In Middle High German; Old French aventure, avanture). The New High German term “Abenteuer” finally developed from this. See online: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventiure, accessed 31 October 2021.

Introduction: Toward embedding “failed” migratory adventures in southern Mali will turn around and walk away. Possibly, his time of being away and what happened in between cannot be overcome.

Deportees who have stayed abroad for a long time and far away have the greatest difficulties in finding their way back into their previous lives. They have changed “too” greatly. Some immediately take to the road again in such a situation. Migrants who return of their own volition and well prepared after long periods of time in faraway countries may report a similar change in mind, body, and perception (e.g., Konzett-Smoliner, 2015). Odysseus is finally recognized and reintegrated. Eventually, many deportees are too, even if their traumatic experiences and memories keep impacting them and they did not return as expected. In this sense, references to literary motives of adventure, heroism, and return can be a fruitful source of inspiration and analytical understanding of migratory journeys and their forcible, involuntary interruptions. These motives accompanied my thinking in the further development of the book. First, though, I will throw some light on the relevant local and emic conceptions.

The migratory adventure

In West and Central Africa, the “adventure” (tounkan, literally: “going to the wilderness”) is the term mostly used to describe migration and departure abroad. Central aims of the migratory adventure are described as striving for social (financial) responsibility, above all for the sake of the family, and becoming independent, “someone” (ka kè waritiguiyé), and globally connected. The term captures the different facets of risk, success, and potential “failure” implicit in such an undertaking, referred to elsewhere as “high-risk” or “irregular” migration. The term apparently originates from the time of French colonization and was formerly used for all forms of migration. “Emigration-aventure” was how Abdelmayek Sayad (2004) referred to the experience of Algerian emigrants to France in the 1960s, for instance. It implied a necessary process of getting along (“débrouillardise”) as an individual, in which you had to learn to rely on yourself and which was, not least, a form of learning and making a career.