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- Convenors:
-
Judith Altrogge
(University of Osnabrueck)
Kwaku Arhin-Sam (Friedensau Adventist University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Flight and migration
- Location:
- Room 1231
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses knowledge creation about return migration from Europe to Africa, focusing on how and why post-return processes are sidelined in many debates. We discuss dissonances between various interests and capacities in knowledge creation along theoretical and empirical contributions.
Long Abstract:
Rising immigration to Europe over the past decades has moved return migration to the political attention of European policy stakeholders, African immigration being no exception. Migrants returning voluntarily could contribute to development in Africa, while returned irregularized migrants strengthen European migration control. Although the so-called 'success' of returns unfolds after return, most European debates revolve around before and during return. Although demands for evidence-based policy making have recently increased empirical attention on post-return, the role of migrants' agency in knowledge production is questionable.
In this panel, we discuss knowledge creation on return migration in a reflexive manner, assuming dissonances between interests and capacities to create post-return knowledge. We seek to address this knowledge gap from theoretical and empirical directions. Theoretically, the gap represents a research subject in itself, considering reasons for the limited focus on post-return, and what the recent attention implies. The panel seeks to discuss which kind of knowledge about (post-)return is and which is not produced by whom and with which consequences. The debate will include postcolonial reflections that question European biases in (post-)return knowledge production.
Meanwhile, the knowledge gap also demands for more and diversified empirical studies that also uncover epistemological limitations of existing understandings. Here, imaginaries of return and the role of post-return therein both in Europe and in Africa are key. How is post-return incorporated in such imaginaries, both by policy and management actors, migrants and their networks alike? The panel seeks interdisciplinary contributions addressing the depicted limitations of return migration knowledge.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates how returnees’ reintegration processes are shaped by gender. We identify specific challenges that emerged from gender identities, either experienced by the returnees themselves or attributed to them by family members and policy actors in the Gambia, Guinea and Senegal.
Paper long abstract:
Return migration is not only a temporal and spatial process, but a far-reaching social and personal experience, which goes beyond the reintegration of return migrants into the labour markets. This paper engages with the social contours of reintegration, namely with the complex array of gender aspects inherent to the return process. Our main focus is to investigate how returnees’ reintegration processes are shaped by gender. We identify specific challenges and stigmata that emerged from gender identities, either experienced by the returnees themselves or attributed to them by family members and policy actors.
The paper draws from ethnographic work conducted among non-assisted and assisted returnees by IOs and NGOS, family members, and key actors in the Gambia, Germany, Guinea, Senegal, and Switzerland. The data collection is part of an ongoing transnational project, funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies.
Our preliminary findings reveal that the returnees’ reintegration experiences are strongly inverwoven with male and female identities. Overall, male and female returnees face different struggles in their reintegration process. Hence, it is crucial that support structures are tailored more specifically to these needs. Secondly, the gender-specific obstacles encountered by returnees are controversial among all actors involved; e.g. contested conceptions of the impact of ‘coming back as a looser’ on the male breadwinner returnee or on the female returnee, often viewed as disobedient future wife.
The paper aims to contribute to a more nuanced approach to gender dynamics inherent to reintegration in the broader discussions surrounding return migration and gender.
Paper short abstract:
Based on research in Mali, this paper addresses the gap of knowledge production between academic and public policy discourses on post-return. Considering different role perceptions and ascriptions, it reflects potentials of more “serious” exchange, also signaling the (migrant) actors’ entanglements.
Paper long abstract:
Empirical incidence hints at an increasingly collective quality of post-return realities in some West African countries, e.g., Mali, confronted with considerable numbers of assisted and forced returns over time. Post-return research, including the one this paper bases on, has been reiterating findings such as upholding the migration cycle for sustainable return and reintegration, prepared and embedded, including the possibility of onward mobility for contributing to development and social well-being. Few of these findings have been transferred into political practice, even if some tendency towards more evaluation and reflection can be observed; rather, so-called voluntary assisted returns are often perceived as refoulements by migrants themselves. The gap between academic and public policy discourses not least derives from different role perceptions and ascriptions.
Based on extensive field research in Mali, this paper links herein, underlining that the complexity and ambivalence of sociological and ethnographic research may be hard to translate into immediate policy advice. Likewise, in-depth detail is indispensable for understanding and potentially contributing to returnees’ survival, their dignified and autonomous way to go on. Simultaneously, one could attest a lack of more systematic research on post-returns, their impacts and adverse effects on societies and people concerned: longitudinal analysis, statistical and mixed-method data can enable broader comparisons. The paper sheds light on these discrepancies of knowledge production, reflecting potentials of more “serious” exchange, even if running the risk of being policy driven. Moreover, it signals the involved (migrant) actors’ entanglements with discourses, practices of return and migration and a potential social change.