Bad luck, bad behaviour and laziness: an ethnographic outlook on the causes of deportations in Anglophone Cameroon

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Maybritt Jill Alpes
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/2
Language English Pages 16 P. 7-22 File size 173 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2017-002001
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This article focuses on people’s perceptions and experiences of deportation policies in an emigration context, such as Anglophone Cameroon. In view of the dominant view in the policy domain that high deportation rates are likely to discourage people from wanting to migrate, the article asks how the direct or indirect experience of a forced return influences people’s migration aspirations and expectations. Based on ethnographic material and life stories of deported migrants gathered over the span of 17 months between 2007 and 2016 in Anglophone Cameroon, the article relates understandings of deportation in Anglophone Cameroon to normative assumptions within migration policy in Western Europe. Deportations do not lower people’s migration aspiration because they are not understood as being caused in a linear fashion through illegality. Instead, causes of deportation are experienced and interpreted as contingent and rooted in individual circumstances.

Keywords: Deportation, Cameroon, migration aspirations, illegality, legal consciousness.

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  • Trajectories and Imaginaries in Migration Maybritt Jill Alpes, pp.77 (ISBN:9781351119665)

Maybritt Jill Alpes, Bad luck, bad behaviour and laziness: an ethnographic outlook on the causes of deportations in Anglophone Cameroon in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2017, pp 7-22, DOI: 10.3280/MM2017-002001