The Enrolment of Gambian CSOs in the Externalisation of Europe’s Border to The Gambia

Guest post by Rossella Marino, Joris Schapendonk, Ine Lietaert. Rossella is a PhD student at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy of Ghent University, Belgium and the United Nations University – CRIS of Bruges, Belgium. Her main area of interest is assisted voluntary return and reintegration, both from the European and African perspective, for which she has carried out extensive qualitative research in the West African country of The Gambia. Joris is an Assistant Professor at the Geography, Planning and Environment Department of Radboud University, and an active member of Nijmegen Centre for Border Research (NCBR). His research concentrates on the im/mobility trajectories of African migrants towards, and within, Europe and the ways migrants navigate migration industries. His latest book Finding Ways in Eurospace (2020) is published by Berghahn Books. Ine holds a PhD in Social Work and works as an assistant professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy where she teaches International Social Work. She combines this with a position as assistant professor in Migration Governance and Regional Integration Studies at the United Nations University- CRIS, where she is the coordinator of the Migration and Social Policy research cluster. Her research focuses on the impact of international/regional and national policies on social work and social support practices.

In the past years, The Gambia, the smallest country on mainland Africa, has come into the spotlight because of the staggering ratio between its population and emigration rate. The Government of The Gambia estimates that 200,000 Gambians live abroad, from a less than 2.5 million population. A large number of the people, who have left the country because of unemployment, social expectations and cultures of mobility, have recurred to irregular means, or what is commonly known as the backway. Since 2014, the Gambian was in the top ten nationalities of irregular migrants entering Europe with arrivals peaking in 2016. This is the year of the end of the 20-year-long autocratic rule of Yahya Jammeh, who had estranged the international community because of its record of human-rights violations.

The succeeding democratic government led by Adama Barrow opened the way for international funds and partnerships to re-enter The Gambia. These streamed into two main objectives. On the one hand, the reintegration of Gambians through assisted returns. On the other hand, the fight against the so-called root causes of irregular migration, aiming to deter young Gambians from embarking on the backway. The European Union (EU) has been particularly active in developing The Gambia’s new migration-management machine through the European Union Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), adopted as a reaction to the so-called migration crisis of 2015-16, as well as the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF). The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Trade Centre (ITC) as well as the Belgian, German and Portuguese development agencies are the main implementers of EU-sponsored migration-management activities.

However, these organisations rely on Gambian-led civil-society actors to increase the effectiveness of their operations vis-à-vis local communities. These civil-society actors include faith-based and humanitarian NGOs as well as returnee groups. These actors derive from and are fully embedded in a local context of social and historical propensity for migration. Therefore, European entities have to incentivise them to participate in migration management as well as align endogenous and exogenous interests; thus, leading to their gradual transformation. The process of evolution and transformation of the migration-management network in The Gambia is outlined in this post, drawing on extensive qualitative research conducted in the country by the first author between 2020 and 2022.

The network of migration management is made of social and material facets. The former mainly involves all the individuals and organisations active in migration management in various capacities, while the latter primarily relates to funding. Since 2017, the EUTF has financed migration- and reintegration-related activities implemented by IOM. Additionally, it sponsors the Tekki fii (Make it in The Gambia) programme, which is operated by ITC and European development agencies. Since 2019, the AMIF has financed ERRIN, the EU-level mechanism for assisted return and reintegration. ERRIN has so far been implemented by the Gambian-led faith-based organisation CaDo.

Reintegration activities entail the provision of limited funding for assisted returnees. This funding is mostly utilised to set up small-scale businesses. Tekki fii provides business start-up funding, cash for work and vocational opportunities to potential migrants. Furthermore, individual EU Member States such as Germany and Italy have sponsored reintegration coaching provided by the Gambian Red Cross as well as sensitisation campaigns against irregular migration implemented by the returnee group Youth Against Irregular Migration (YAIM). This funding connects the aims of the EU and the interests of the local CSOs. Both aim to prevent Gambians from emigrating and keep returnees in place but for different reasons.

First, the quest for national development. As explained by representatives of these local NGOs, the departure of tens of thousands of predominantly young Gambian males, many of whom tragically lost their lives on the way, has resulted in the scarcity of manpower to contribute to the development of The Gambia in the delicate political transition it is undergoing. Second, the interest in returnee reintegration, which should avert the risk of communities being destabilised by traumatised and unemployed returnees, as further highlighted by our NGO respondents. The mantra of making it in The Gambia resonates with returnees themselves, who, unable to stay legally in host countries or even reach their intended destination, convince themselves that being successful in The Gambia is possible. With their advocacy work, returnees attempt to instil this conviction in Gambian communities, persuading them that investing in the development of their own countries is more advisable than sponsoring daring irregular journeys to the West. Presenting themselves as champions of national development additionally helps returnees to stem the stigmatisation and discrimination that they routinely face from their communities of origin for having failed in their migration plans.

While these interests, cemented by European funding streams, motivates local CSOs to take part in migration management, their participation is also heavily criticised. Firstly, the European design of migration-management strategies is portrayed as deficient. Programmes for potential migrants mostly revolve around the attribution of start-up grants and loans for which the access requirements are too high; the provision of trainings which are normally short-term and hardly translate into stable employment; and the allocation of circumscribed cash-for-work opportunities.

Reintegration support is equally short-sighted, as it expects traumatised, burdened and poorly-trained returnees to turn into successful entrepreneurs despite the precarious socio-economic context they find themselves in. Other points of contention highlighted by representatives of local CSOs are the EU’s excessive immobilisation of Gambians. Regular migration opportunities are virtually absent for the average Gambian citizen, and the European appropriation of Gambian resources such as fisheries, which deprives local communities of their livelihoods, thus, running counter to the fight against the root causes of irregular migration.

In this context, the EU is compelled to meet the requests and demands coming from its local partners in The Gambia. This would translate into limited transportation and participation allowances granted to the participants of migration-management activities as well as the possibility for returnees to obtain cash for their immediate needs upon return beyond their in-kind reintegration assistance. In lack of this, the EU would lose its ability to enforce its border control outside of its geographical frontiers.  

Regardless of the incorporation of Gambian requests and demands into EU externalisation projects, local CSOs still deviate from the EU approach to migration management and think of alternative ways to implement these programmes. A CSO representative suggested that Gambian migrants could be allowed into Europe to learn skills before being sent back to The Gambia with greater capabilities to contribute to national development. For example, a returnee group voluntarily managed a garden which turned into an informal space of self-support. These examples show that, while external funding in a global context of unequal economic relations motivates local partners to collaborate with the West, this expansion could potentially force the migration-management network to incorporate bottom-up requests of greater equality and justice in the way in which migration is governed. This points to a gradual yet inevitable transformation of EU’s migration-management project, as it expands into more countries and contexts.

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