Paper long abstract:

European states increasingly fund migration information campaigns in West African countries to discourage youth from migrating irregularly to Europe. The making of campaigns counts on a variety of actors, including local staff members of NGOs and IOs in origin countries responsible to carry out campaign activities. Yet, little is known on the actual functioning of campaigns on the ground and how campaign implementers perform their tasks. Despite studies on information campaigns have burgeoned in recent years, these mainly look at campaigns as instrument to manage migration and create borders or have focused on quantitative analysis to evaluate the impact campaigns have on youth’s aspiration to migrate. Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Senegal observing the implementation of migration campaigns, this paper employs a performativity lens to show how campaign implementers enable the borderwork in their daily activities while at the same time they make use of the ambiguity campaigns create. We find that local staff ‘plays the part’ by embodying campaign’s message and executing practical tasks; they turn their position to their own advantage by finding opportunities for personal gain; and they develop strategies of noncompliance and withdrawal that allow them to counter campaign’s imaginaries. This paper contributes to the literature by combining literature on brokerage from the anthropology of development, on performativity and literature on migration campaigns.