Post-Deportation Movements: Forms and Conditions of the Struggle Amongst Self-Organising Expelled Migrants in Mali and Togo

Abstract

This chapter draws a comparison between the Association Malienne des Expulsés (AME), created in 1996 in Bamako, Mali, a pioneering initiative in terms of self-organisation and mobilisation of deportees, and the Association Togolaise des Expulsés (ATE), created in 2008 in Sokodé, Togo, which has been deliberately following the footsteps of its Malian counterpart. Those associations help to turn the deportees into a public feature and to diffuse a political movement against deportation measures. However, they form a complex pattern; their capacities of mobilising depend on their national contexts. Since 1991 onwards, the democratisation process in Mali allowed marginalised populations to get their voices heard in the public space. At the same time, the failure of democratic transition in Togo hindered any form of public protest. The analysis is supporting the hypothesis that the possibilities and difficulties for deportees to organise collective action are revealing of the nature of political power, of the degree of organisation of civic life and of the forms of expression and gathering accepted within the State.