Insubordinate and captive mobilities: Time and agency in irregularised return trajectories between North and West Africa
| Dates: | 27 November 2025 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 14:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Global Development Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
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A Migration, Refugees, and Asylum Research Seminar
Speaker: Dr Sabina Barone, UCL
In this seminar, I examine how the IOM’s ‘Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration’ (AVRR) programme plays out in the overall return trajectories of West African migrant men and women I could accompany before, during and after the AVRR procedure. Contrary to IOM’s normative narrative of unidirectional mobility (people enrol on AVRR to return and reintegrate in their ‘home’ countries), I show how this programme is but a part of migrants’ broader migration plans, whereby returnees weave together different temporalities and tactics to further their mobilities. The result is a plurality of return trajectories, alongside the IOM’s scheme. Returnees engage in discontinuous return itineraries by alternatively opting out and back in the IOM’s programme, while re-emigration upon return may take place at any time. I draw some implications as to returnees’ agency, which lies at the crossroads of individual resilience and policy denial, and the problematic adherence of AVRR to the restrictive logic of migration policies vis-à-vis African mobility towards Europe.
Travel and Contact Information
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1.69/70
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
