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Paper short abstract:

This paper views migration management campaigns in The Gambia through containment development, which aims to geographically localize African’s desires and imaginations. Grounded in an aspirations-capability lens, the psychological impacts of the EU's efforts to impose a sedentary bias is presented.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the results of ethnographic field work undertaken in the Gambia, West Africa from 2018 through 2022. Border externalization measures are having dire consequences for the youth of the Gambia. Interviewees in this study commented that (containment) development initiatives tend to be in only a few select communities and not available in many rural locations. Against the backdrop of Gambians pleading for more open visa acquisition, the EU is far more likely to spend their time and money working on campaigns to do just the opposite: keep Gambians sedentary. This paper views migration management campaigns through the critical lens of containment development, which aims to geographically localize African’s desires and imaginations, to the extent that they are being subjected to border controls that discriminate and dehumanize irregular migrants. Gambian youth are making choices to take dangerous routes to Europe and other international destinations because visas are elusive and their economic prospects at home remain bleak. This work is grounded in an aspirations-capability lens, illustrating the psychological impacts of involuntary immobility that has resulted from containment development imposed by border externalization efforts in West Africa. This work additionally contributes to the recent and growing literature on cognitive immobility in the sense that Gambians in this study described in detail their feelings of mental entrapment as a consequence of border control measures. Bettering the understanding of the connections between desire, motives, actions and deprivations will allow us to consider migration as mobility justice.