(Im)mobile Islanders: Forced Migrants’ Experiences of Onward Movements from Malta

The Maltese government often touts its successful containment and control of so-called ‘irregular’ (that is, forced and largely racialized) migration through its increasingly stringent detention and deportation strategies. This obscures the fact that most migrants, including those who are granted protection, do not settle in Malta permanently, but either leave through EU resettlement schemes, or more commonly, unauthorised routes, though often only after having spent years and built lives in Malta. Through narrative biographical interviews, this paper traces how individuals who have migrated to/through Malta navigate the small island nation’s (in)formal immigration policies and practices. The paper highlights the untransparent, arbitrary and punitive nature of Maltese migration and asylum governance, arguing that these features, not only restrict mobility, but impose it, ultimately ‘nudging’ migrants out. The variegated experiences of ‘being nudged’ are further explored: how do migrants understand and exert their mobility and agency despite of, and due to the impositions and restrictions made by Maltese/European migration and asylum governance and the protracted uncertainty they experience in Malta? How does their awareness both of official migration policy, and of the government’s less publicly promulgated efforts to ‘nudge’ migrants out, inform their decisions to resume their migration journeys? The paper argues that the notion of ‘nudging’ helps us better understand the interaction between government policy and migrant agency. Beyond this, it helpfully prompts us to question the established dichotomies of ‘forced’ vs ’voluntary’, and ‘regular’ vs ’irregular’ migration.