Abstract
This chapter examines three ‘ghettoes’ set up by African migrants in Mali after their expulsion from Algeria. These are respectively located in Tinzawaten, at the border with Algeria; in Gao, along the route and in Bamako, the capital city and a hub of regional migrations. The chapter explores the essential meanings and functions of ghettoes in relation to expulsion, representing them not only as places of exclusion and marginalization but also of autonomy, solidarity and resistance. As expulsion from Algeria largely reflects European pressures on Northern African states to prevent African migrants from reaching Southern Europe, the chapter also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the spatial reconfigurations induced, though not entirely determined, by the externalization of European borders into Africa. It equally highlights the role of African contexts and migrants in forging particular political cultures in response to such border regimes.
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Notes
- 1.
This fieldwork was carried out for my PhD thesis entitled The moving tide of expelled migrants. Centres of displacement, collective mobilisation and the risks experienced by expelled migrants in Mali (EHESS, 2011). Its aim was to offer a general description of places, networks and associations formed by expelled migrants after deportation.
- 2.
The tontine is a system for raising capital, and in Sub-Saharan Africa it is generally supported by associations or groups of people who pay contributions that can be used to provide assistance to deported compatriots.
- 3.
This association, founded in Bamako in 1996 by Ousmane Diarra, played a pioneer role in the self-organization of expelled migrants in Mali and in the emergence of protest movements against, and political criticism of, the policies and practices of the expulsion of undocumented foreigners from western countries and within Africa.
- 4.
This association, set up in Bamako in 2006 by Roméo Ntamag and Patrice Boukar, had the specific aim of representing non-Malian migrants expelled into Mali. In particular, it allowed the attention of various associations to be focused on the inhabitants of the Magnambougou ghetto and it was responsible for the opening of an institutionalized reception center for expelled migrants in Bamako in 2009, a center that was supported by the NGOs Medico International and Médecins du Monde.
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Lecadet, C. (2017). Deportation Ghettoes in Mali: Expelled Migrants Between State Exclusion and Self-Organization. In: Gaibazzi, P., Dünnwald, S., Bellagamba, A. (eds) EurAfrican Borders and Migration Management. Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94972-4_5
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