Katharina Potinius – Migration Diplomacy: Externalisation in African-European relations

In the last decades, the European Union and its member states have sought to control and restrict migration into the Schengen area through a plethora of measures, amongst them agreements on migration control with countries outside the EU. The rationale behind African governments’ cooperation appears incomprehensible in the light of governments’ commitments to regional organisation favouring free movement policies, the political importance of remittances and emigration, as well as many countries citizenries opposing involuntary readmissions. Hence, the (ongoing) dissertation project which will be presented aims to shed light on why African governments conclude restrictive migration agreements with Europe. Therein, the presentation will focus on the first, tentative results from a two-month research stay in The Gambia, which focused mainly on the governments’ motivations for its (non-)cooperation with Europe and the effects of those policies.