Everyday life after deportation

What happens when African migrants return involuntarily from Europe or North Africa to their country of origin? How are they removed from one place to another? And how do their lives evolve back ‘home’ – if it still is home?

In a new article in the journal Geoforum, senior researcher Nauja Kleist explores these questions with focus on Ghana. She has followed a group of Ghanaian return migrants who have been deported from North Africa, the Middle East, Europe or North America or who were evacuated or fled from the civil war in Libya. During three fieldwork stays over the course of four years, Kleist has interviewed these returnees about their life stories and often multiple migratory journeys, the challenges of coming back unexpectedly and perhaps empty-handed, and their hopes, dreams and fears. Not least, she has observed how their lives, livelihood strategies and their outlooks on the present and future may change over time.

Based on this, Kleist identifies four types of forced relocation: deportation by air, overland deportation, evacuation and individual flight from conflict. These modes of return differ in terms of legal implications and the level of violence and discomfort that migrants encounter. Yet, most returnees described their return experience as characterized by despair, anxiety, regret, sadness and often a sense of shame of coming back empty-handed. The forced relocation to Ghana is just one aspect of return, however, and the second part of the article analyses post-return in a longer time perspective. Here Kleist finds that many returnees remain trapped in situations of continued precariousness, aggravated by debt, or that they engage in high-risk re-migration, often several times. Yet, some returnees get back on their feet socially and economically, establishing livelihoods and (re-)positioning themselves as respectable persons.

The article is part of special issue of Geoforum on Re-routing migration geographies, guest-edited by Joris Schapendonk, Ilse van Liempt, Inga Schwarz and Griet Steel.