Paper short abstract:

Migrants who returned to Senegal under conditions of deportability are, despite their suffering and distress, not only victims. Ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal shows that migrants narrate and perform their return. By doing so they show agency in a context of unequal power relations.

Paper long abstract:

Literature on migration in West Africa shows that migration can have positive effects on the social status of men and their social context. Returning home too early can nevertheless lead to an ambivalent situation, including negative social stigmas, such as failure, 'laziness', or criminality. Studies on deportation and state-assisted voluntary return show that return is in most cases an existential experience that triggers intense emotions and often times suffering and distress. Despite the appeal of returnees and migration scholars to go beyond a limited discourse of victimhood, few studies show the agency of migrants and their social context. As self-narrating and using elements of performativity can be a form of empowerment, this article investigates how and to whom Senegalese men who have been in the occident (Europe & United States) and returned under conditions of deportability, narrate and perform their return in Senegal.

Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Senegal, the article argues that in order to fulfill hegemonic ideas of masculinity migrants who returned from the occident, situate their distress and suffering by emphasizing, silencing and/or adjusting part of their migration and return experiences. By doing so these men show agency in a context of unequal power relations.

Keywords: return migration, Senegal, ethnography, self-narration/ performativity, hegemonic masculinity