Franzisca Zanker in the Public Anthropologist on African agency

African agency in the face of EU externalization efforts
 

In this recent Public Anthropologist blog entry, ABI's staff member Franzisca Zanker discusses African states' nuanced agency in response to EU pressure to cooperate on returns:
 

In recent years, West African countries have faced increasing pressure from the EU to cooperate on migration issues, particularly concerning return agreements. The EU's 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum and earlier initiatives have emphasized the importance of return as a cornerstone of their migration strategy. However, despite EU pressures, the actual return rates from countries like Senegal, Nigeria, and The Gambia have remained low, with return ratios hovering around 17% by 2019. 

Franzisca Zanker shows, based on extensive research, that while the pressure to comply with the EU is high, with consequences such as diplomatic fallouts or visa sanctions if they fail to, African states develop subtle and often implicit ways of responding to the pressure, ranging from compliance to incompliance, both reactive and proactive.

Read the whole article on the website of the Public Anthropologist.