Migrant Returnees as Migration Managers? Outward migration and street-level bureaucracy in Senegal

In West Africa, where state institutions tend to be weak, the implementation of migration policies often entails the involvement of international organisations and donors. These may include the International Organisation for Migration or development aid delivered by bilateral development agencies and foreign-funded local NGOs. The aim of such programmes is to inform future potential migrants about the opportunities and risks of migration, thereby externalising the ‘fight’ against irregular migration beyond EU borders. In terms of implementation, these programmes often rely on migrant returnees, who operate as ‘legitimate voices’: by sharing their own migration experiences they are meant to help locals make ‘informed mobility decisions’. In doing so, they interact directly with local citizens and have considerable room for discretion in the ultimate message that is being spread on the ground. In that regard, they are (internationally funded) street-level bureaucrats and active members of the migration management apparatus. Exploring the case of Senegal, this qualitative research investigates how such migrant professionals at the frontline of migration management negotiate their role. It focuses on the ambiguities of such mandates between spreading a message of migration deterrence, as construed by their employers in the Global North, and potentially subverting messages in unexpected ways, developing alternative narratives about migration and development. The findings build on two types of interviews: (i) 10 interviews with migrant returnees employed by the IOM’s campaign of ‘Migrants as Messengers’, as well as bilaterally funded programmes, primarily by the German development cooperation GIZ, such as migrant advice centres in Dakar and Thies, along with some small-scale local third-sector initiatives, and (ii) 10 interviews with allegedly ‘less successful’ migrant returnees, mostly from the Southern Casamance region, who either hide their migration experience or only share it informally within their own social networks. Analysing why and how migrant returnees become involved –or not— in external migration management in Senegal, this study contributes to the literature on the delivery of migration policies in practice and addresses how knowledge on migration decisions is produced locally. In more detail, this article first discusses how such externally funded actors in migration service delivery understand and handle their conflicting role expectations and ambivalences, where they are meant to represent both the interests of the international donors they work for and those of their own community. Second, the article focusses on the rationales and hopes of these migrant returnees to become ‘bureaucrats’, seeking to leverage their migration experience as capital for securing employment, and hence their own livelihood. Here, the findings critically engage with questions on whose voices may be heard, and whose remain silenced, as not all returnees can or want to capitalise on their status as migrant returnees. Ultimately, by investigating returnees’ role as policy implementers at the frontline, this article contributes to the literatures on street-level bureaucracy and representative bureaucracy, as well as the research on actor diversification in policy delivery. It does so by focusing on the less explored context of developing countries and West Africa in particular.