Deportation, Anxiety, Justice by Heike Drotbohm Ines Hasselberg

Author:Heike Drotbohm, Ines Hasselberg [Heike Drotbohm, Ines Hasselberg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367074715
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

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Nicolas Fischer is a tenured researcher at the Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales (CESDIP), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France.

‘We Deport Them but They Keep Coming Back’: The Normalcy of Deportation in the Daily Life of ‘Undocumented’ Zimbabwean Migrant Workers in Botswana

Treasa M. Galvin

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among ‘undocumented’ Zimbabwean migrants in Botswana, this paper examines the complex strategies ‘undocumented’ migrants employ to deal with the threat and occurrence of deportation. In particular, the paper considers the manner in which strategies used to cope with forced repatriation are discernible at different levels, namely in the way official immigration categories and associated terminologies are contested through definitions of self; in the experience of daily life as a constant need to respond to the threat of deportation; and in the process of return to Botswana. Though the event itself is stressful and disruptive, it is not conceptualised as a barrier to migration as a livelihood strategy. The paper shows how ‘undocumented’ Zimbabwean migrant workers do not experience deportation as a single event but as a constant threat to their transnational livelihoods and an unwelcome interruption to daily life. It reveals that strategies to cope with deportability and deportation can become a normal part of daily life for ‘undocumented’ migrant workers as they seek to safeguard livelihoods that depend on cross-border mobility.

Introduction

One of the most striking features of current immigration systems is the extent to which changes have occurred in the nature, scope and use of deportation or forced repatriation as a state practice. Yet, despite its global reach, the practice of deportation takes place in specific contexts. Though there is an extensive body of literature on the forced repatriation of migrants to the Global South from North America and Europe, deportation as a state practice in Southern African countries remains largely unexplored (see Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2014). This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of deportation by focusing on the forced repatriation of ‘undocumented’ Zimbabwean migrant workers from Botswana.

Several case studies highlight the plight of deportees confronted by the disruptive, traumatic and irreversible outcome of deportation as they are returned to countries where they have never lived (Peutz 2006) or which they barely remember (Drotbohm 2012), are excluded from the deporting country for long periods (Zilberg 2004; Coutin 2010) or unable to ever return (Peutz 2006; Willen 2010; Drotbohm 2011). But, to what extent are deportees' experiences shaped by particular socio-economic and political settings? Are there circumstances in which migrants can experience deportability and deportation as simultaneously disruptive and mundane? As stressful and traumatic yet also as routine and ordinary?

Bearing these questions in mind, this paper examines the complex strategies ‘undocumented’ migrants employ to deal with the threat and occurrence of deportation. In particular, the paper considers the manner in which strategies used to cope with forced repatriation are discernible at different levels, namely in the way official immigration categories and associated terminologies are contested through definitions of self; in the experience of

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