Paper Short Abstract:

Based on the "morality check" as a postcolonial legacy in Niger, this presentation argues that moral taxonomies by lay people may occupy a formal place in naturalization procedures.

Paper Abstract:

Conventional theories of citizenship have long focused on legal rights and obligations and the formal criteria to acquire them. To undo such narrow and Eurocentric definitions of citizenship, political anthropology has highlighted the constitutive role that brokers, social affiliations, and social norms play in shaping citizenship (Lazar 2008, Berenschot/van Klinken 2018). While this research has often considered norms as informally shaping citizenship, this presentation argues that morality may occupy a formal place in naturalization procedures. In Niger and in other French ex-colonies, accessing citizenship requires passing a “morality check” (enquête administrative de moralité). In Niger, an intelligence unit from the national police draws on several state and societal sources to determine whether an applicant has “good” or “bad” morals. Apart from interviewing the applicant and file research, police officers interview neighbors about an applicant’s social behavior. Thereby, lay taxonomies on applicants’ everyday lives, shaped by its routines and little escapes (Das 2020), enter the naturalization procedure as formal, but confidential file knowledge, which remains beyond an applicant’s control. This has especially affected migrants who do not conform to hegemonic gender and sexuality norms, which have become increasingly restrictive with the rise of political Islam (Sounaye 2018). The morality check points to the formal role of morality in regulating citizenship and the expertise ascribed to ordinary citizens in assessing and policing migrants’ private lives. This presentation is based on longterm ethnographic research in Niger’s asylum and migration bureaucracy in 2018-2019 and update interviews in 2020-2021.