Turning uncertainty into risk: cultural heritage and Western subjectivity models among unsuccessful return migrants of the Central Mediterranean route (Velingara, Senegal)

Journal article

This article develops the concepts of uncertainty and risk (Calkins 2016) in the context of a particular phenomenon of human mobility: unsuccessful return migrations from the Central Mediterranean route in Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, the article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Velingara (Senegal). Among the Fulɓe Fulakunda, empty-handed homecomings are a moment of crisis where people have to rethink their life trajectories. Return migrants interpret the journey and return through historically local concepts such as shame, honour and independence, questioning their meaning to escape social stigma and to value their experience. In this context, the International Migration Organisation (IOM) programme of assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) comes into play. IOM's programme aims to educate migrants into businessmen capable of reading their current situation and planning their future in terms of managing risks and local economic competition. This article shows how the moments of uncertainty created by the economic and social marginalisation experienced by return migrants and their social networks become a contested field where aid programmes appear as forms of governmentality to tackle ‘irregular migration' by producing new neoliberal subjectivities.

Authors: Masi, GM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 243-261
• Publication date: 2023-12-19
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-w4pxoa5oj
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: Fulɓe; Fulakunda; Central Mediterranean route; return migration; JASO; AVRR; risk