Return, Readmission and The EU Revised Visa Sanctions: A Normative View from Gambia

Most origin states do not openly contest the EU over return and readmission but engage in mock compliance and then covertly obstruct return and readmission bureaucratically. A rare case of openly political contestation, however, is that of Gambia, whose public refusal to readmit in was championed by its president in 2021. The EU responded with the use of a new policy instrument, the revised EU Visa Code and its article 25a, which enables it to sanction 'uncooperative' origin states through more restrictive visa policies. This paper explores how the sanctions were perceived by key stakeholders in Banjul, de-centering a conventionally Eurocentric bias. Based on interviews with more than 20 stakeholders in the Gambian capital, including Gambian public officials in the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and affiliate public agencies, as well as a few international diplomats and non-state actors such as journalists and returnee NGOs, the empirical analysis examines (a) the extent to which the EU Revised Visa Code sanctions were perceived as appropriate by interviewees; (b) the specific international and domestic norms invoked by interviewees to assess the legitimacy of the sanctions; and (c) the narrated lived costs of the sanctions for the smallest country in mainland Africa and its resource poor, fragile and transitional state.