ma thesis h ould moctar 10862935
TRANSCRIPT
“The European Border Starts in Nouakchott”: Examining the effects of external imperatives on
West African labour migration in Mauritania
Graduate School of Social Sciences
Msc. Sociology: Migration and Ethnic Studies
Hassan Ould Moctar: 10862935
07/02/2015
Supervisor 1: Dhr. Dr. E. (Manolis) Pratsinakis
Supervisor 2: Dhr. Dr. S.M.G. Chauvin
2
Acknowledgements
I would like to sincerely thank all those who made this thesis possible.
This means first and foremost thanking my thesis supervisor Dr. Manolis Pratinakis and my course
coordinator and second supervisor Dr. Sébastien Chauvin.
Secondly, I would like to extend my appreciation to the Association Mauritanienne des Droits de
l’Homme for facilitating my research through an internship with the organisation. I would like to
express my sincere gratitude to its president, Maitre Fatimata M’Baye, its secretary general Hadj
Amadou Mbow, as well as the AMDH activists with whom I shared an office and many enlightening
conversations during my internship.
I would also like to thank Ibou Badiane, journalist and former president of the “association de
ressortisants sénégalais en Mauritanie,” to whom I am deeply indebted for his friendship and guidance
over the course of my fieldwork.
Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who agreed to be interviewed for this
research.
3
Summary This thesis will analyse the effects in Mauritania of a migration policy regime born out of external
imperatives based upon preventing unwanted migration to Europe. This regime emerged following
emergency measures taken in 2006 to put a stop to irregular migrants making their way from
Mauritania to the Canary Islands. In particular, it will focus upon West African labour migrants in the
capital city of Nouakchott and how their situation and relationship to the state has evolved as this new
migration policy framework has been implemented. Regional migration patterns oriented toward
West Africa have played a structural role in Mauritanian society since the country’s independence in
1960. In order to comprehensively understand the effects of recent policy shifts, it is necessary to first
understand this migratory context. This thesis will therefore lay emphasis on Mauritania’s regional
migratory role and how the new approach to migration management departs from it. For this reason,
my interview respondents consisted mainly of West African migrants who are long-term residents in
Mauritania, as they were in a position to make comparisons between the contemporary context and
that which initially greeted them. I adopt a global power perspective as the theoretical framework for
this thesis, and posit that the process of European Union border control externalisation and the
importation of migrant ‘illegality’ to the Mauritanian context underscore this perspective’s emphasis
on the importance of global power disparities in determining migratory processes. I conclude with a
reflection on how the Mauritanian case reinforces this perspective’s main precepts while also
highlighting its limitations.
4
Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 5
Research question and sub-questions .................................................................................................. 6
2. Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................................... 7
2.1 The global power perspective ....................................................................................................... 7
2.2 EU border control externalisation ............................................................................................... 10
2.3 A word on ‘illegality’ .................................................................................................................. 14
3. Methods and Limitations .................................................................................................................. 16
3.1 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 16
3.2 Fieldwork experience .................................................................................................................. 17
3.3 Limitations and reflections on researcher subjectivity ................................................................ 18
4. The Mauritanian Historical and Social Context ................................................................................ 20
4.1 Pre-colonial society ..................................................................................................................... 22
4.2 Change and continuity during the colonial period ...................................................................... 25
4.3 The modern period ...................................................................................................................... 27
4.3 Evolving legal and political contexts .......................................................................................... 30
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 33
5. Findings ............................................................................................................................................ 36
5.1 The ‘carte de séjour’ ................................................................................................................... 36
5.2 Ethnic relations and the ‘nationalisation’ of employment .......................................................... 40
5.3 Migrant community organisations: between rights and responsibilities ..................................... 44
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 47
6. Concluding Reflections ..................................................................................................................... 50
6.1 The invisible hand: examining the role of the EU ...................................................................... 50
6.2 A new conceptual schema of migration and belonging in Mauritania ........................................ 52
6.3 Theoretical implications: against the pitfalls of Eurocentric assumptions .................................. 53
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 56
Annex: Tables of respondents ............................................................................................................... 61
5
Introduction After stepping off the airplane and into the airport of Nouakchott at the end of March 2015, I was
greeted with a very different scenario to that which I had encountered five years previously. Back in
2010, depending on one’s social position and the prestige attached to it, one could move rather freely
between baggage handling, security and visa controls. This was apparent as I was ushered through
the different entry points by those awaiting my arrival, seemingly exempt from the long, tedious
queues that one typically expects to be confronted with in an airport. For those of somewhat high
standing, such as judges, senior civil servants and businessmen, security restrictions did not apply, or
were applied very loosely. At the time, the airport in my mind represented a microcosm of how
power functions in a society in which tribal ties and affiliations are interwoven into government and
private sector positions; certain people are given access to privileged areas by virtue of their
connections and status, while others must wait unspecified amounts of time in order to be attended to.
In 2015 however, things have changed rather dramatically; in order to get a visa, one now has to
queue up at a booth in which your picture and fingerprints are taken by a visa officer, before
proceeding to fill out the necessary forms regarding identity and duration of visit provided by police
at a separate window. There is less scope for connections and status to play a role in navigating
different areas of the airport in this standardised and bureaucratised system. The forces that brought
about this transformation, their underlying causes, and the effects that they have had on Mauritanian
society, and in particular its migrant populations, constitute the subject of this thesis. As we shall see,
a transition away from tribal nepotism toward bureaucratic procedures in Nouakchott airport is but
one minor element in what has been a much broader, complex and multifaceted phenomenon.
At the time of my arrival in 2010, the Mauritanian government was in the process of drawing up a
national strategy for the management of migration in cooperation with the European Union (EU).
This policy framework signified a new approach to migration management in Mauritania, one that
departed quite radically from the informal manner in which migration largely governed itself up until
that point. The reasons for the adoption of this new approach lie in the classification of Mauritania by
the EU as a ‘transit country’ in 2006 following a sharp increase in the number of Sub-Saharan
Africans arriving in the Canary Islands from the Mauritanian port city of Nouadhibou. Underpinning
this classification was a desire on the part of the EU to prevent any further unwanted migration to
Europe from Mauritania. This imperative was manifestly clear in the emergency measures taken to
stop the influx of irregular migrants on European shores in 2006, and has since been embodied in the
new regime of cooperation between the EU and Mauritania that has grown out of these measures.
This regime consists of both normative/discursive layers and administrative/legislative layers. The
former entails the dissemination of European normative assumptions regarding migration through, for
example, the training of Mauritanian border and security personnel by international experts (Frowd
2014) and the organisation of conferences and workshops aimed at formulating ways of responding to
6
the ‘problem’ of migration in Mauritania (Poutignat & Streiff-Fénart 2010). Regarding the
administrative/legislative layer, the introduction of a biometric identification system has represented
an effort to digitise population management and registry in Mauritania and, incidentally, explains my
experience of having fingerprints taken in the airport in Nouakchott during my most recent visit. New
exclusive legal entry points have been created along the country’s border and several pieces of
legislation relating to migrants in Mauritania have been introduced, most noticeably a new residence
permit system, which has served to effectively import the experience of migrant ‘illegality’ into the
Mauritanian context. This topic will probe the effects of these policy shifts upon migration dynamics
in Mauritania via an analysis of the situation of West African migrants in Nouakchott.
Research question and sub-questions
In particular, I am concerned with analysing the Mauritanian case in its capacity as a regional
migratory space, and how the social and ethnic dynamics of this space have interacted with the new
policy framework described above. This concern means that an emphasis will need to be placed on
historical factors in my analysis in order to contextualise the findings. The following research
question has guided this thesis:
In what ways has the new migration policy framework affected the structural relationship between
West African migration and the Mauritanian nation-state?
This question can be broken down into the following two sub-questions:
Have the livelihoods and social position of West African migrants in Nouakchott changed
in tandem with the emergence of new policies regarding migration?
What does the situation of West African migrants in Nouakchott indicate about the
contemporary nature of belonging within the Mauritanian nation-state?
I will draw upon a historically informed analysis of my fieldwork interview data in order to respond to
these questions. The rest of this thesis is organised as follows: in the next chapter I will sketch a
theoretical framework for my analysis, which will be based upon a global power perspective on
migration, albeit nuanced to suit the case under consideration. I will then briefly outline my
methodology, its link to my theoretical framework, and reflect upon the limitations of the research.
The following chapter will develop a historical context within which the research findings can be
situated, which will also bring us up to the contemporary migratory context in Mauritania. I will then
proceed to analyse the research findings, highlighting three key thematic areas that emerged from my
analysis. Finally, I conclude with a synthesis of the theoretical, historical and analytical components
of the thesis.
7
2. Theoretical Framework
2.1 The global power perspective
The global power perspective posits that the most effective way of understanding contemporary
transnational migration flows is in terms of the power dynamics that exist between the different
localities across which people migrate (Glick Schiller 2010). In particular, it highlights global
disparities in power as being the single greatest determinant of migratory processes and how they are
analysed, responded to, or even whether or not they are considered to fall within the rubric of
migration scholarship. Glick Schiller takes the amount of barriers faced by people wishing to migrate
as being roughly indicative of the level of economic or military power held by the country or entity
from which they originate, with the likes of the United States and the European Union evidently being
located at the top of this global hierarchy. Over the past forty years, the global process of neoliberal
restructuring has been the most pre-eminent force in shaping global power dynamics, characterised in
particular by widening inequalities both within and between societies (Harvey 2005). Glick Schiller
lays particular emphasis on this process in her analytical framework due to the manner in which it has
resulted in what she characterises as the rescaling of the nation-state. On this point, she draws from a
debate occurring within the fields of geography and urban studies, where the term ‘rescaling’ has
emerged “as a way to address the repositioning of the status and significance of cities, both in
relationship to states and within global hierarchies of urban-based institutional power” (Glick Schiller
2010:119). As far as states are concerned, their influence and authority has not been diminished as
such as a result of this process, but rather, radically reconfigured to act primarily as a facilitator of the
global capital flows that occur between these newly-established urban nodes. Nation-states, in this
context, should “collectively seek and negotiate the reduction of barriers to movement of capital
across borders and the opening of markets (for both commodities and capital) to global exchange”
(Harvey 2005:66). This ‘rescaling’ has multiple implications where migration is concerned, perhaps
most noticeably in the form of a correlation between the resurgence of a national threat frame within
public discourse regarding immigration and the extent to which core state services are stripped back
as the reach of the private sector extends ever further (Glick Schiller 2010; Schiller 2009).
This theoretical perspective therefore favours considering different scales of analysis in equal
measure, rather than unreflectively taking the nation-state as an analytical starting point. This is
where her critique applies to migration scholarship and in particular a persistent tendency toward
‘methodological nationalism,’ a methodological approach that naturalises and takes for granted the
existence of the nation-state as a primary unit of analysis (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002). In partial
response to this tendency, the perspectives of transnational migration and diaspora studies have made
significant steps over the past two decades toward shedding the methodological nationalist approach
by emphasising the cross-border character of many contemporary migratory processes, and in
particular the propensity of migrants to be active in more than a single locality, rendering their lives
8
and movements ‘transnational’ in character (Basch et al. 1994; Portes 2001; Popkin 2003; Levitt &
Jaworsky 2007). However Glick Schiller argues that scholars of transnational migration have by and
large failed to take into consideration the global processes of restructuring and capital accumulation
within which transnational migratory spaces are formed and reproduced. It therefore does not place
adequate emphasis on the global power dynamics that she argues are of utmost importance in the
analysis of transnational migratory processes. It is based upon these critiques regarding the
inadequacy of methodological nationalism and the persistent shortcomings of transnationalism that
she proposes a theory that puts global power dynamics at the heart of migratory processes.
Applicability to the Mauritanian case
There are two main reasons why this is an appropriate angle from which to approach the case in
question. Firstly, and most presciently, the historical and contemporary relationship between Europe
and Mauritania encapsulates the global power disparity that Glick Schiller lays emphasis on in her
perspective. This disparity first became overtly apparent during the French colonisation of
Mauritania, which, among other things, entailed the establishment of the country’s contemporary
borders in defiance of pre-existing social and ethnic formations, a development that would have
lasting implications for ethno-linguistic dynamics in the country. A similar disparity has continued to
manifest itself in different guises since then, not least through the role that the neoliberal restructuring
process has had to play in shaping the Mauritanian economy. Ould Mey (1996) describes this process
as consisting of the ‘denationalisation’ of the Mauritanian state, whereby internal economic features
and trends are reconfigured to suit the needs of the global economy, via the influence of the IMF and
the World Bank. This integration into the global neoliberal order also had a role to play in shaping
migratory dynamics in Mauritania, since “neoliberal economic reform rapidly projected Mauritanian
populations into the monetary economy and gave rise to a strong informal sector” (Cross 2011:832), a
sector that absorbs a large proportion of West African labour migrants (Bensaâd 2008a). The most
recent manifestation of this disparity is in the form of the externalisation of EU border controls to
Mauritania. The effects of this process on migrant populations in Mauritania constitute the subject of
this research and as such, will be dealt with in greater detail in this theoretical framework. It is worth
highlighting however that the manner in which pre-existing realities have been subordinated to
external EU imperatives is similar to the process of ‘denationalisation’ described by Ould Mey in
relation to the Mauritanian economy. In both instances, decision-making power is ceded to external
actors in order to reconfigure internal trends and structures to comply with external needs. There is
thus a degree of consistency in the nature of the power disparity that exists between Mauritania and
global power actors.
The second reason for the use of the global power perspective is that the methodological nationalist
approach that Glick Schiller seeks to discredit is particularly ill-suited to explaining Mauritanian
migration patterns and dynamics. This is largely due to the tight link between the country’s colonial
9
history and the creation of its external borders, and the fact that this renders the existence of these
borders somewhat analytically arbitrary. This means that any research efforts regarding Mauritania
that take the nation-state as a natural and primary unit of analysis will be lacking significantly in
analytical terms. A similar issue arises when one looks at the case of Mauritania through a
transnational lens; as observed by Bensaâd (2008b), “it is the imposition of the border upon the
Senegal River that created a ‘transnational’ situation; the international character of migration that
followed . . . was just the result of this arbitrary division” (p. 8).1 So although the transnational
migration paradigm might satisfactorily describe the nature of migration flows in the region, it does
not adequately explain their roots or their mechanisms of continuity. As will be illustrated in the
fourth chapter, it is in fact necessary to delve into the pre-colonial period in order to gain a
comprehensive understanding of how contemporary migration dynamics manifested and sustained
themselves in Mauritania. Furthermore, in Nouakchott one can clearly see symbols of the different
scales of analysis (supranational, national and local) whose interrelations this perspective prioritises
over the nation-state as being of analytical primacy; the city contains the offices of international
institutions such as the IOM, UN and the EU, the national parliament buildings and the army and
police headquarters, as well as ubiquitous displays of migrant labour endeavours in the form of taxis,
fruit vendors, boutiques and clothes shops. Viewing the interplay between these different levels from
Glick Schiller’s perspective serves to shine a light on the power dynamics that exist between them.
Considering the importance of South-South migration
I conclude this section by highlighting one manner in which this topic departs from Glick Schiller’s
theory. Implicit in much of her elaboration of the global power perspective is the assumption that
migration flows occur primarily from what is called ‘the Global South’ to the ‘Global North.’ While
integrating diverse elements such as the process of global restructuring, the role of remittances in
development, and different scales of analysis, she works within an analytical framework that broadly
depicts the United States and Europe to be comprised of migrant receiving societies. Concomitantly,
the countries of the rest of the world are to be analysed in their migratory capacity as countries of
origin (Schiller 2009). This inbuilt logic in fact embodies a similar assumption to that which
underpinned the international designation of Mauritania as a ‘transit country’ and the subsequent
efforts taken to prevent unwanted migration to Europe, namely that international migration only exists
when it occurs in the direction of the ‘developed’ ‘Global North.’ Not only is such an assumption
evidently untrue, it is empirically at radical odds with reality, since the majority of international
migration flows occur within what is called ‘the Global South’(Abel & Sander 2014). Such an
omission may be explained by an adherence to what can only described as a Eurocentric conception
1 Translated from French
10
of international migration,2 resulting in the airbrushing of systems of mobility and hierarchies of
power that exist and function beyond the contours of the ‘Global North.’
I hope to bring these issues to the fore by highlighting the long-established regional mobility patterns
and associated social dynamics that have characterised Mauritania’s migratory history. Although the
policy regime that is currently in place in Mauritania was implemented as a result of a perception of
the country having become a source of irregular migration to Europe, I argue that the societal effects
of this policy shift only become visible by analysing the Mauritanian case from a point of view that
has its historical regional migratory role as its focal point. This is because West African labour
migrants who chose Mauritania as their migratory destination have borne a significant brunt of the
consequences of the external implementation of a policy regime centred on prevention and control. A
perspective that goes beyond methodological nationalism and incorporates theories of power into its
transnational outlook but retains the Eurocentric assumption regarding the nature of global migration
flows will thus still fall far short of explaining what the effects of policies are upon people who
simply do not exist within this conceptual lens. So although this observation may diverge in a sense
from the manner in which the global power perspective depicts migration flows, I posit that this
divergence can only enhance the perspective’s theoretical validity, since any migration perspective
that claims global explanatory power must necessarily take south-south flows into consideration,
along with the manner in which global power structures shape them.
2.2 EU border control externalisation
Grounding the global power perspective
On this note, I turn to one salient feature of contemporary global power structures that has had a
highly determinant role to play in shaping migration patterns in Mauritania, namely the process of EU
border control externalisation. As far as migration is concerned, Glick Schiller defines global power
disparities in terms of how easily people from certain parts of the world can move about compared to
people from other areas, and argues that migration scholarship needs to take this basic disparity as an
analytical starting point. Although she does not address the matter directly in her work, the
mechanisms of EU border control externalisation and the processes underlying it serve to maintain
and exacerbate this power disparity in a manner which corroborates these premises of the global
power perspective. This is because the context that gave birth to this process is essentially one in
which freedom of mobility is provided to those privileged persons residing within the European
Union, and in particular within the Schengen zone, at the expense of the mobility of the majority of
those residing beyond the external borders of the EU. This process can therefore be seen to embody
2 I use the term Eurocentric here to refer to a mode of thinking that views and analyses global processes from a
Western perspective. It is therefore not confined to the point of view of Europe, but rather to that of Western
civilisation in general.
11
the overlap between disparities in power and disparities in mobility emphasised by the global power
perspective.
In order to understand how this correlation between mobility within the EU and immobility beyond its
external borders is created, it is necessary to first elucidate the logic underpinning the area of free
movement in the EU. Huysmans (2000) argues that what is called the ‘securitisation’ of migration in
various national contexts has been elevated to EU level over the course of the 1990’s via the creation
of an internal market and area of free movement, through instruments such as the Schengen
Convention, the Dublin Convention, and the Tampere Programme which established of the Area of
Freedom, Security and Justice in 1999. The political framing in various national contexts of
migration as a threat and potential source of destabilisation would mean that in the context of
harmonising policies at EU level, migration would increasingly be considered to fall within the
exclusive domain of policing and judicial authorities (Huysmans 2006). It is worth mentioning that
the national framing of immigration that contributed to this supranational mentality is precisely that
which is highlighted by the global power perspective as being the result of the rescaling of the nation-
state and the rolling back of core state services, an observation that further empirically grounds this
theoretical framework. The implication of this security-oriented approach to migration was that the
tightening of external borders was a necessary corollary to any loosening of internal restrictions on
mobility. This logic was articulated in the presidency conclusions of the Tampere European Council
in 1999 which preceded the establishment of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. The
conference put forth a framework aimed at reconciling the apparent trade-off between greater internal
freedom and a potential increase in security threats. The manner in which this would be achieved
would reify the securitised approach to migration policy by obliging member states “to develop
common policies on asylum and immigration, while taking into account the need for a consistent
control of external borders to stop illegal immigration and to combat those who organise it and
commit related international crimes” (European Council 1999:2). Furthermore, the post-9/11
geopolitical context and the heightened perception of terrorist threats in Europe bolstered the security
apparatus within the EU, with additional predictably restrictive knock-on effects where migration and
asylum policies are concerned (Brouwer 2002).
Projecting norms and policies beyond borders
Rees (2008) discusses the ‘external dimension’ of this internal market-come-security project, namely
the impetus to ensure that Europe’s neighbours take measures to ensure that policies pertaining to
mobility of persons are consistent with the EU’s problematization of migration, effectively meaning
that priority is to be placed on restriction. This means that the policy overlap between migration and
security that was progressively constructed in Europe from the late 1980’s has been exported beyond
the external borders of the EU, with adherence to this conception often being a bargaining chip in
negotiations with ‘third countries.’ This can entail for instance, deepening cooperation between law
12
enforcement and military bodies on both sides of the southern border – such as that which has
occurred between Spain and Morocco and between Italy and Libya – or the signing of repatriation
agreements, whereby irregular migrants detained in an EU member state can be sent back to the
country from which they made the initial voyage to Europe, even if it is not their home country. This
‘externalisation’ of migration and asylum policies has been extensively discussed within migration
scholarship and within EU foreign policy literature (Carapico 2001; Boswell 2003; Goldschmidt
2006; Lutterbeck 2006; Rees 2008; Hyndman & Mountz 2008; De Haas 2011; Collyer et al. 2012),
with particular attention being paid to how it has played out in the Mediterranean, given this region’s
double-volatility as a potential source of both irregular migration and terrorism.
The establishment in 1995 of the EuroMed, or Barcelona Process, established the first framework for
economic cooperation between the EU and the Maghreb. According to Cardwell (2011), the
EuroMed was, and remains, “essentially a projection of the external governance of the EU” (p. 237).
The security-oriented approach to migration was immediately integrated into this agreement, with a
central goal being the restriction of irregular migration to Europe (Testas 2001). And this logic has
since been further consolidated and carried into EU-Maghreb relations with the introduction in 2004
of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Union for the Mediterranean in 2008.
According to Zaiotti (2007), the ENP embodies what he calls the EU’s ‘gated community syndrome’
through the manner in which it reproduces barriers between the EU and its neighbours by laying
emphasis on ‘security’ issues of purportedly mutual concern, such as migration. An example of how
such links are established and normalised in policy can be seen in the following European
Commission statement regarding relations with neighbours of the EU:
Threats to mutual security, whether from the trans-border dimension of environmental and
nuclear hazards, communicable diseases, illegal immigration, trafficking, organised crime or
terrorist networks, will require joint approaches in order to be addressed comprehensively
(European Commission 2003:6).
This logic was further consolidated and perpetuated with the launch of the Union for the
Mediterranean in 2008 aimed at strengthening the ties of cooperation created by the EuroMed. The
Union for the Mediterranean places further emphasis on migration, which “became the fourth ‘basket’
of cooperation and has since become the most dynamic of the baskets” (Cardwell 2011:235).
A central contradiction has characterised this extensive apparatus of policy coordination, namely that
rather than putting a stop to migration, visa restrictions and preventive policies serve to boost irregular
migration, thereby fuelling the phenomenon that they aim to curb (de Haas 2008). This was
illustrated as far back as the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, when Italy and Spain began to apply visa
restrictions to migrants from the Maghreb following the creation of “the Schengen space.” What
13
followed was an increase in the number of migrants attempting to enter Spain and Italy irregularly and
a bolstering of the network of smugglers willing to facilitate them (Goldschmidt 2006).
The role of Frontex
As the agency charged with regulating and responding to these unintended consequences of European
migration policy, the European border agency, known as Frontex, has come to embody the securitised
approach to migration that the EU has adopted over the 1990’s and 2000’s. As the body responsible
for “the integrated management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union”
(Counil of the European Union 2004:3), Frontex is charged with implementing and enforcing the
coordinated migration and asylum policies of the member states of the EU beyond its external
borders. The agency was established by European Council Regulation 2007/2004 on 26 October
2004. The context in which it was conceived was that of the internal security imperatives and their
external corollaries outlined above and as such, its mandate is based upon the goals of restriction and
prevention. This is done through a combination of providing technical and expert assistance to
European member states, carrying out naval and air operations, and producing classified intelligence-
based ‘risk’ and ‘threat’ assessments which monitor mobility trends beyond the external borders of
the EU. Frontex is therefore a highly visible manifestation of the EU’s securitised approach to
migration given that it is responsible for the prevention of irregular migration toward the EU and
adopts a militarised approach to its monitoring of Europe’s external borders. However it cannot be
said to be an active agent of this securitisation; it is not vested with decision-making powers and can
only act upon the request of a member state, and should thus be considered an implementer of a
particular policy approach whose origins and perpetuation lie primarily in the shared domain of EU
member states and institutions (Carrera 2007; Rijpma 2010).
Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that Frontex remains one of the most visible elements of EU
migration and asylum policy and has therefore been the subject of much scholarly attention. There is
a particular focus on what the agency represents in terms of the logic of European policies, with some
focusing on the origins of Frontex (Leonard 2009; Neal 2009; Ekelund 2014), while others lay
emphasis on its practices (Leonard 2010; Rijpma 2010; Reid-Henry 2013). Different scholars
naturally reach different conclusions depending on the aspect considered, the theoretical perspective
employed and the normative assumptions adopted. What is of interest however as far as this topic is
concerned is the frontline role played by Frontex in reinforcing global disparities in mobility
prospects and possibilities, disparities which, as the global power perspective postulates, are
indicative of global disparities in power. As Carrera (2007) observes, the ‘threat’ that Frontex
assesses in its risk analyses and seeks to contain in its military operations “is in fact human beings
who are in the process of moving toward EU territory without respecting the legal framework
institutionalised by the Schengen borders regime” (p. 14). In other words, depending on what side of
the external European border one happens to have been born on, the Schengen legal regime will have
14
significantly diminished or significantly enhanced one’s mobility prospects, and Frontex is charged
with upholding this discrepancy. From a global power perspective then, Frontex can be viewed as
playing a frontline role in the maintenance of disparities in mobility. The nature of this role is
apparent in the Mauritanian case, as will be illustrated in the fourth chapter.
2.3 A word on ‘illegality’
While the role of Frontex within the process of EU border control externalisation can be taken as a
stark visual representation of the power disparities that exist between Europe and Mauritania, this role
was nevertheless short-lived in nature; as we shall see, it was an emergency response to an
exceptional situation and thus constituted a relatively brief moment during which the power disparity
under consideration here became manifestly apparent in a new format. However, this format did not
dissipate following the termination of the Frontex operations, but rather was incorporated into the
regime of migration policy cooperation between the EU and Mauritania that ensued. The principal
means by which this has been achieved has been through the introduction of migrant ‘illegality’ in
Mauritania. Due to the particularities of the social and legal context in Mauritania prior to EU
intervention, the imposition of a legal regime aimed at formalising migration control resulted in the
production of ‘illegality’ as a social reality that represented a sharp departure from the previous state
of affairs. Given the significance of this divergence, a final step of this theoretical framework will be
to integrate this most recent development.
The phenomenon of the status of migrant illegality –the state of being undocumented or irregular in a
particular national context - has become a source of much scholarly interest, with a variety of
perspectives being highlighted, such as its political-economic function (Calavita 1998), its legal
production (De Genova 2004), the strategies and performances it engenders in those attempting to
evade it (Reeves 2013), its relationship to a moral economy based upon notions of civic deservingness
(Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas 2012), and the manner in which it is publicly framed as a ‘problem’
(Anderson & Ruhs 2010). De Genova (2002) conceptualises migrant illegality as being the
application to a person of “a juridical status that entails a social relation to the state” (p. 422). In
putting forth this formulation, De Genova highlights the overtly political nature of ‘illegality’ and in
doing so, warns about the methodological problems posed by naturalising it as a status, much in the
same way that Glick Schiller argues against the methodological naturalisation of the nation-state.
Continuing in the same vein, in order to avoid the partisan pitfalls of research that engages in such
naturalisation, it is necessary “to delineate the historical specificity of contemporary migrations as
they have come to be located in the legal (political) economies of particular nation-states” (De
Genova 2004:423). An emphasis on the historical processes that gave rise to the contemporary status
of illegality in a given context thus serves to avoid scholarly complicity in its continued bureaucratic
rationalisation and justification. This point is of particular relevance to this topic; earlier I observed
that considerations of history bring to the fore the incongruence between the realities of the
15
Mauritanian case on the one hand and the methodological nationalist approach and certain elements of
transnational migration perspectives on the other. In a similar fashion, ‘illegality’ as a reified
category in the Mauritanian context becomes equally shaky when cast in the light of the country’s
history, and in particular the political processes that gave birth to it, which will be illustrated in the
fourth chapter.
What will also become apparent in this chapter is that despite existing in Mauritania as an official
status since 1964, the notion of an ‘illegal’ immigrant was rarely of any practical consequence
throughout most of the state’s history, for a variety of political, economic and social reasons. With
the emergence of a new framework for migration management in 2010, and the introduction of a new
residence permit for foreign nationals in 2012, migrant ‘illegality’ came to be of much greater
salience than it had been previously. What this has come to mean in terms of lived experience
corresponds to De Genova's (2002) observation that “migrant ‘illegality’ is lived through a palpable
sense of deportability, which is to say, the possibility of deportation, the possibility of being removed
from the space of the nation-state” (p. 439). As is illustrated by statistics showing a sharp rise in
deportations after 2006 and by the statements of my respondents, ‘deportability’ became the most
prominent feature of the migratory landscape following the externalisation of border control policies
to Mauritania. This is indicative of a new form of lived experience being imported into Mauritania
along with a policy framework for governing migration. As De Genova highlights however, it is not
so much the physical act of deportation as the knowledge that one is, by virtue of one’s legal status,
‘deportable’ that characterises the experience of ‘illegality.’ This knowledge renders those subject to
this categorisation intensely vulnerable, marginalised and generally fearful (Calavita 1998), thereby
constituting a state of extreme disempowerment.
The ability to forcibly remove people from state territory is evidently an indication of a highly uneven
power relationship between government and those that are subject to this treatment, a relationship that
exists within the confines of the nation-state. From a global power perspective however, the increased
use of deportations in the Mauritanian context, and in particular the timing of this increase, is
indicative not only of an unequal power relationship between the state and migrants residing within it,
but also of a similarly unequal relationship between the state and the international actors and
institutions that have guided a particular approach to migration management. The manner in which
deportations act as a power mechanism at an international as well as a national level is demonstrated
by, for example, the nature of bilateral readmission agreements between EU member states and
Mauritania that oblige the latter to accept, process and deport (unless it is a Mauritanian national) any
migrant that is known to have entered the EU from its territory. This highlights the roles played by
the phenomena of ‘illegality’ and ‘deportability’ as a means of maintaining and reinforcing disparities
in mobility prospects and possibilities, disparities which, as has been illustrated, are indicative of
global disparities in power.
16
3. Methods and Limitations
3.1 Methodology
My data-collection tools in the field consisted of a combination of qualitative interviewing and
observational methods. The interviews constituted the bulk of my fieldwork, and were conducted in a
semi-structured manner. These were supplemented by observations intermittently carried out over the
course of fieldwork which served to supplement, corroborate as well as cast doubt on information
gathered in interviews. Qualitative interviewing has as its goal the elucidation of the opinions and
perspectives of the participants (Creswell 2009). For this reason, it served as a vital means of
ascertaining the effects of policy decisions on people that had no input in making them but to whom
they now apply. Naturally, the goal in a given interview is not to acquire an objective account of the
effects of a phenomenon, but rather to discern the interviewee’s perception of what the effects have
been, with a view to constructing a broader schema. In this regard, the sporadic use of observational
methods further contributed to an elaboration of this schema by allowing me to detect convergences
and divergences between the perceptions of my respondents on the one hand and events and
experiences that took place beyond our interviews on the other. The three broad themes around which
my findings are organised emerged from a coding process as the three most recurrent topics in
interview transcripts and observational notes.
My data sources can be divided into contextual data and findings-yielding data. The former is
comprised of two interviews with specialists with expert knowledge on the topic of migration in
Mauritania: a lawyer that works with a human rights organisation on behalf of migrants in Mauritania,
and a technical advisor on immigration policy at the Ministry of Justice. I also analysed the text of
the national migration strategy (stratégie nationale de gestion de la migration), the policy proposal
drawn up in 2010 in cooperation with the EU. In addition to the proposals it contains, it also provides
a detailed and broad overview of the legal, social and political contexts of migration in Mauritania,
and thus served as a vital means of constructing a context in which to situate my fieldwork. The
findings-yielding data consisted of thirteen in-depth interviews and one focus group session. A
breakdown of my respondents, their occupations, duration of residency in Mauritania and an
indication of involvement in migrant community associations can be found in the annex. The
following nationalities were represented in my interviews: Burkina-Faso, Senegal, Benin, Guinea-
Bissau, Central African Republic, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Gambia. The most common
nationality among my interview respondents is that of Senegal, roughly reflecting the demographics
of the migrant population in Mauritania. In addition to interviews, I kept field notes in which I
assembled general observations made, thoughts upon completing interviews and impressions of the
dynamics of the workspace in which I was based.
17
3.2 Fieldwork experience
This research was carried out within the framework of an internship with l’Association Mauritanienne
des Droits de l’Homme (AMDH). The internship lasted from 28 March 2015 until 4 May 2015. I was
based in the AMDH office in Nouakchott, where I developed initial contacts, arranged interviews and
attended meetings between AMDH officials and individuals seeking assistance. This latter aspect
meant that in addition to the interviews, I was able to make observations regarding the follow-up of
certain cases I came across, as some of my respondents came into contact with the AMDH following
our interviews. The internship therefore provided me with an opportunity to get a broader insight into
the situations of my respondents than I would have gained if the extent of my contact and interactions
with them had been limited to the time allocated for interviews.
Due to the fact that I was concerned with assessing a process of change over a long period of time, the
majority of respondents contained within my sample are long-term residents in Mauritania. The
nature of this sample of respondents means that it is possible to assess the effects of new policy
measures in Mauritania upon those who in a sense embody its status as a country of firmly entrenched
regional circular migration patterns, and who are thus in a position to make comparisons between the
contemporary situation and that which greeted them upon arrival. This sample therefore served to
create a link between my theoretical framework and my methodological approach; if a central
analytical and theoretical concern of mine was to avoid the assumption within much migration
scholarship that international migration occurs uniquely from the ‘Global South’ toward the ‘Global
North,’ then a logical methodological choice would be to seek out respondents whose final migratory
destination was Mauritania.
Over the course of fieldwork, I attempted to gather information pertaining to the effects of the current
policy environment at both an individual and community level. My sample therefore consisted
mainly of active members of migrant community organisations, but also included laypeople.
Juxtaposing these two perspectives revealed interesting dynamics between community and individual
interests and the tensions that can arise between the two in a restrictive policy environment. The
prevalence within my sample of prominent members of community organisations has both merits and
drawbacks. On the positive side, the prominent position held by many of my respondents within their
respective communities meant that they had experience of, and were able to comment on, issues that
relate to their communities as a whole, giving me a broad insight that I might not have achieved had
my sample not contained respondents in such positions. This also constituted a shortcoming of sorts
however; perhaps due to the nature of their role as semi-public figures, many (but not all) of these
respondents were more inclined to speak at length about these broad community topics than about
their own personal lives, rendering it somewhat difficult to draw extensive conclusions pertaining to
individual personal narratives.
18
Table 1:
Numbers of migrants residing in Mauritania according to nationality3
Country of origin Number of nationals in Mauritania
Senegal 35,000
Mali 16,000
Guinea 30,000
Guinea Bissau 300
Togo 600
Côte d’Ivoire 750
Burkina Faso 200
Central African Republic 150
Gambia 1,600
Total 84,000
3.3 Limitations and reflections on researcher subjectivity
An obvious shortcoming of this research is that not every West African nationality that is present in
Mauritania is represented in my interviews, and there are migrant communities based in Nouakchott
that I did not manage to make contact with. One may expect a degree of commonality of experience
across nationalities, given that residency laws apply equally to all foreigners in Mauritania.
Nonetheless, there are obviously particularities to each national group, some of which will be
unrepresented in my findings. Another limitation relating to my sample is that since the majority of
my respondents are long-term residents, they did not have first-hand experience of what it is like for
those who have arrived more recently, in particular following the formalisation of migration
management in Mauritania. This drawback was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the social
position of many that I interviewed gave them a bird’s eye view so to speak of those within their
community, including new arrivals. Evidently however their thoughts about the experiences of others
cannot be taken as first-hand accounts, and are not treated as such within my findings.
Prior to entering the field and over the course of the research, I have been quite conscious of my own
social and ethnic position in Mauritania both in relation to those whom I would be interviewing and in
terms of my own perspective on Mauritanian history. As the son of a Mauritanian Moor, I was very
much aware of the fact that I was entering the field with possible connotations attached to my own
3 These figures are drawn from a combination of sources: the national migration strategy document, news
articles and the Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration’s Mauritania migration profile
document. Unfortunately I have not been able to find figures relating to the Benin community or the
Cameroonian community and as such they are not included here. Nonetheless the table should give a rough
impression of migrant demographics in Mauritania.
19
identity in the eyes of the research participants. This was illustrated by my first experience in
attempting to speak to people outside the church in Nouakchott where unemployed manual labourers
congregate to look for work. Upon seeing me approaching, the crowd of migrants sitting outside took
me for a young Mauritanian looking for domestic workers and thus crowded around me in the hope
that I would hire them, my attire and complexion being prime indicators in their eyes. On the other
hand however, the fact that I have not grown up in Mauritania meant that I was not as familiar with
the symbols and social dynamics of the local context as a native-born Mauritanian would be. This
meant that I had to navigate these subtleties progressively and learn from mistakes as I went through
my fieldwork. Concerning my approach to Mauritanian history, which constitutes the subject of the
following chapter, I have been conscious of the fact that I have more direct experience and knowledge
of those elements of Mauritanian history that relate to its Moorish population than to its black African
populations. I have thus consciously sought to avoid letting this influence my historical narrative and
have attempted to the best of my ability to devote proportionate historical consideration to all of the
different elements of Mauritanian society.
I have thus far put forth a theoretical framework, described my methodological approach and
highlighted the link between the two. This places us in a position to analyse the research findings.
Before doing so however, an in-depth look at Mauritanian history will be necessary in order to have a
backdrop against which to situate my analysis.
20
4. The Mauritanian Historical and Social Context In order to gain a substantive understanding of contemporary Mauritanian ethnic and migratory
dynamics and what underlies them, it is necessary to delve into the history of the country, its ethnic
and social cleavages, the traditional economic roles played by different segments of Mauritanian
society, and the vast and successive waves of social transformation that the country has been subject
to over the course of its history.4 This approach is also consistent with the nuance I have added to the
global power perspective regarding the importance of taking south-south migration flows into
consideration; if we are to lay emphasis on Mauritania’s diverse and deeply entrenched regional
mobility patterns, then it follows that an in-depth historical and social analysis of this migratory
context will be required in order to satisfactorily contextualise the research findings. It should
become clear over the course of the chapter why it is necessary to analyse the Mauritanian case from
this perspective in order to properly understand the effects of changes in policy that have taken place
over the past ten years. The rest of the chapter will analyse the roots of Mauritanian social dynamics
in a roughly chronological fashion, with the main trajectory going from the pre-colonial period to the
present day. However it is at times necessary to back pedal and jump forward depending on the
historical or social aspect under consideration.
Before proceeding, it must be stated that there are numerous and vast elements of each time period
and social group treated here that are not included in my analysis. Insofar as possible, I have sought
to strike a balance between being analytically comprehensive and staying within the theoretical and
empirical confines of this topic. As a rule, I try not to stray from that which is of consequence for the
subject of my research. One outcome of this strategy is that there are certain other elements that
appear marginally within this analysis but which would be of much greater significance and
consequence if we were to take a different angle. This is no doubt the case concerning, for instance,
the subject of the formerly enslaved class, the Haratin, and the nature of the ongoing ethno-linguistic
dispute between French-speaking black Africans and Arabic-speaking Moors, to cite but two
examples. Furthermore, discerning what precisely falls within the brackets of relevance is more
easily said than done because it becomes clear when reading history that virtually every factor is a
precursor to the rest.
With these caveats in mind, the rest of the chapter is organised as follows: I will first outline the main
ethnic and linguistic groupings in the country and trace their historical origins, traditional economic
roles and pre-colonial systems of governance. I will then turn to the colonial period and the manner in
which it interacted with these pre-existing ethnic dynamics and social structures. The next section
4 In this chapter, I will be referring to ‘Mauritania’ in order to denote the territorial space currently delimited by
the country’s borders. However this name began to be used in reference to this space much more recently than
some of the periods that will be dealt with here. For reasons of clarity and simplicity, I will use the terms
‘Mauritania’ and ‘Mauritanian populations’ when speaking of this geographical space and those residing within
it, even when referring to historical periods that predate the creation of the borders of the Mauritanian state.
21
deals with the period since independence and how an intricate combination of persisting traditional
social structures and economic activities, the legacy of the colonial period, and processes of rapid
urban expansion and industrial development resulted in a climate which was, on measure, favourable
to immigration, although not without its problems. Finally, I will look at the legal and political
regimes governing immigration and how they have changed over time. This will bring us up to the
contemporary context and particularly, the rupture of this historically rooted migratory dynamic
following a temporary re-orientation of migration flows from Mauritania toward Europe, and the
subsequent arrival of the process of EU border control externalisation in Mauritania.
22
4.1 Pre-colonial society
Ethnicity and pre-colonial social structures
In somewhat crude ethnic terms, Mauritanian society could be said to consist of Moors, black
Africans and Haratin, or black Moors. Historically the dominant social group in Mauritania, Moors
collectively refer to themselves in the local Hassaniya dialect as bidhan, which is derived from the
Arabic word for ‘white.’ The black Mauritanian population can be further divided into at least four
ethnic groups, namely the Tokulur, Peuls, Soninke, and Wolof, with the former two collectively
forming the Hal-Pulaaren (meaning those who speak Pulaar). An indication of the traditional social
position of the Haratin can be found in the name itself, which means ‘former slaves.’ The Haratin
share Berber origin with the white Moors and speak the same Hassaniya dialect, but they are also of
black African descent. The roots of the social structure that exists among and between these groups
can be found deep in Mauritanian history. Over the course of the 7th century, the northern territory of
Mauritania, which had up until that point been largely populated by Berber tribes, was conquered by
Arabic speaking Beni Hassan tribes from the Arabian Peninsula. The subsequent spread of Islam and
the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic laid the foundation for the integration of local Berber populations into
the trans-Saharan caravan trade and led to the establishment of centres of religious learning
throughout the territory, leaving a strong legacy of religious identification that persists up to the
present.
The structure of pre-colonial Moorish society – which still nominally exists today, albeit in a looser
format – was organised along rigidly hierarchical lines. At the top of this pyramid is the warrior class,
which is descended almost exclusively from the Arab Beni Hassan tribes. Immediately below and
sometimes alongside this group, there is an educated, religious class, called the Zawya, which is more
closely linked to local Berber populations (Ould Cheikh 1995). Both of these social classes held
positions of prestige and authority, the former based upon physical strength and honour, the latter
upon religious prestige and scholarly repute. A symbiotic relationship often existed between the two,
with warrior tribes providing protection to the Zawya, who in turn provided religious guidance and
advice to warrior tribes. The constant threat of raids from hostile tribes and the ubiquity of Islam as a
means of mediating virtually all social affairs meant that each group to an extent depended upon the
other. Beneath these two dominant groups, there are the artisanal classes, which specialised in hand
crafts and in particular the fabrication of the tools and materials necessitated by nomadic lifestyle. On
a similar social rung one finds the griots, comprising musicians, poets and storytellers, whose
penchant for rich, animated depictions of diverse aspects of traditional ways of life continues to enjoy
a prominent role in contemporary Mauritanian society via modern media and public concerts. At the
bottom of this hierarchy are the Haratin, the enslaved class whose traditional role was confined to
domestic and agricultural tasks such as herd-keeping. Although the institution of slavery has legally
23
been abolished, it is still practised in some isolated rural areas that have been largely untouched by
processes of social transformation, while elsewhere its legacy and remnants continue to have serious
negative repercussions for the Haratin community.
Similar systems of social stratification existed amongst the black African populations, which also
consisted of warrior and scholarly classes, artisans and griots, as well as an enslaved subaltern class.
However in the case of many of the African populations, the order of prestige between warriors and
the religious classes was reversed. Taking the example of the Tokulur population as being roughly
representative of the African populations of southern Mauritania, Marchesin (2010) identifies the
Torodbe class at the top of the Tokulur social hierarchy. They are the only group to hold a level of
religious authority and therefore also fulfil particular political and economic functions. The tasks that
the artisanal classes are charged with differ from those of the Moors given the different livelihoods
that these groups have traditionally been engaged in, but the social position of those assigned with
carrying out such tasks is much the same. There appears, however, to be a greater degree of social
mobility within traditional Tokulur society than that which existed in Moorish society, with anyone
theoretically being capable of becoming a slave or a religious leader. Beyond this structural
difference, the principal divergences between Moor and black African systems of social stratification
are based upon differences in traditional means of subsistence.
Traditional economic activities
There is a tight historical link in Mauritania between ethnicity, geographical location and livelihood,
an overlap which has had discernible effects on modern social dynamics in the country (Bennoune
1978). Depending on the region in which one is based, the means of subsistence will consist either of
nomadic pastoralism or sedentary agricultural activities, with the former being associated with the
Moors in the middle and north of the country and the latter with black African populations of the
south. At the extreme south of Mauritania, along the Senegal River, there is an arable belt of land that
has been home to sedentary agricultural communities that have lived off its soil and vegetation since
the Neolithic period. Further north in the Sahara however, conditions are characterised by desert with
sparse patches of grass and scrub trees. Populations of these regions have traditionally survived
through intensive livestock-raising and up until relatively recently were largely nomadic. This
nomadism was based upon the need to adapt to constantly changing environmental and seasonal
conditions which rendered it impossible to spend an entire year in a fixed location. In general terms
then, the Moors of the north and middle of the country are traditionally defined as pastoral nomads,
while the black Africans of the south are sedentary agricultural farmers.
The lines between the two can blur however, with the key determinant obviously being geographical
location rather than ethnicity. Within the black African population for instance, the Peuls are semi-
nomadic cattle breeders, while their linguistic compatriots, the Tokulur, are settled farmers. The
24
tendency of the former in pre-colonial times was toward a degree of political autonomy achieved
through a pastoral nomadic lifestyle lived largely on the peripheries of large empires or in zones
which did not come under the control of any governing authority (Ciavolella 2011). The Tokulur on
the other hand were highly integrated into administrative affairs. A minority of Moors living in the
south of the country along the Senegal River have also been engaged in agricultural activities, further
indicating the role played by geography and environment in means of subsistence. For the most part
however, the overlap between ethnicity and economic activity holds true. In terms of the social
structures previously discussed, within Moorish society the most economically productive class were
the Zawya, whose activities comprised livestock-raising, engagement in the trans-Saharan caravan
trade, and agriculture, where climactic conditions allowed it. The warriors derived their income
principally from raids carried out on other communities and from a custom or tax extracted from those
residing within their territory. In order to comprehensively grasp how these dynamics sustained and
reproduced themselves however, it is necessary to take into consideration the governmental structures
in which they occurred.
Systems of governance
For a large portion of Mauritania’s history, the territory was governed by a system of emirates that
was established in 1674, following a thirty years’ war between Berber tribes and Beni Hassan Arab
tribes (As-Sa’d 1989). The outcome of this war resulted in the establishment of two emirates in the
regions of Trarza and Brakna and later a further two in Adrar and Tagant. The emirate structure is
similar to a kingdom, with an emir at its head. In terms of social structure, the emirate systems
consolidated the social hierarchy of Moor society discussed above, with the dynamic between
warriors and the Zawya class being integrated into the functioning of the emirate. The spiritual and
pedagogic authority of the Zawya was also asserted through a diffuse network of Sufi religious
brotherhoods, called Qadariyya, whose leaders (Shaykh) held positions of respect and influence
within the tribal communities in which they were based. As well as acting as a source of moral
authority, certain Qadariyya facilitated the participation of Zawya tribes in the trans-Saharan caravan
trade by producing an extensive body of religiously-based jurisprudence governing virtually all
aspects of economic trade in the Sahara (Ould Bah & Ould Cheikh 2009). For their part, warriors
collected taxes from those within their jurisdiction and pillaged goods mostly from other Zawya
tribes. As previously noted, this order of prestige was reversed within the African Tokulur
population, at the top of which was the religious Torodbe class. Their position was established
following the Islamic reform movement of the late 18th century and the establishment of the Futa Toro
state along the Senegal River. The Torodbe leaders of this movement drew their inspiration and
expertise from the Moorish Zawya, located further north in Mauritania, and used this knowledge to
form a base of legitimacy and overthrow the warrior-dominated slave state that existed up until that
point (Robinson 1975)
25
Relations between emirates and between tribes in this vast territory varied between the forging of
tactical alliances and allegiances and instances of outright bloody conflict. Much depended on the
state of affairs at a given moment and what strategy would best ensure maximum return in economic
exchanges with European traders. Although the process of direct colonisation by France began in
1902, there is a much longer history of economic interactions between Europeans and the populations
of Mauritania, in particular the trade of slaves and the cherished acacia gum, the latter of which was
virtually monopolised by the Moors in the territory of Mauritania. Over the course of the 19th century,
this trade became dominated by the French; in 1815, France retook control of Senegal from Britain
and established a colonial administration in the city of Saint Louis. A protracted violent conflict
between the forces of the Tokulur religious and military leader ElHadj Omar Tall and those of French
general and colonial administrator Louis Faidherbe eventually culminated in the dismantling of the
Futa Toro state and the direct colonisation of the African populations residing along the Senegal River
over the latter half of the 19th century. This in turn facilitated direct access to the lucrative goods that
warrior Moor tribes pillaged from other tribes in Mauritania. A balance subsequently emerged in the
late 19th century between said warrior tribes, French commercial companies in Senegal that purchased
goods from them, and the colonial administration in Saint Louis that profited from this trade.
4.2 Change and continuity during the colonial period
Colonial intervention
It was primarily due to broader geo-political considerations that the decision was taken to intervene in
this state of affairs by moving to establish a French protectorate over the territory of Mauritania,
starting with the emirates of Trarza and Brakna. In a climate of heightened colonial competition,
there was an impetus to consolidate French control over North and West Africa by linking the
colonies of Senegal and Algeria. So even though there was relatively little of value to the French
empire in the territory of Mauritania, there was a vested interest in establishing control over what
administrators called le grand vide (the great emptiness) that occupied the space north of the Senegal
River and south of the Kingdom of Morocco. The colonisation of Mauritania also served the strategic
goal of facilitating access to Morocco, which was conquered in 1912. It is worth highlighting that it
was at this moment that the territory of Mauritania as it is known today came into existence; the
contemporary borders of Mauritania were delimited in a plan for colonisation drawn up in 1899 and
submitted to Louis Gustave Binger, the Head of African Affairs at the Ministry of Colonies (Désiré-
Vuillemin 1997). The plan was authored by Xavier Coppolani, a French-Corsican who envisioned
and attempted to execute a strategy of peaceful colonisation through negotiation and persuasion with
the different emirs within the territory.
By exploiting existing divisions and weaknesses within Moor society, by 1903 the French had
peacefully established a protectorate over the Trarza and Brakna emirates. However this peaceful
26
nature of the mission was abandoned when it came to the regions of Tagant and Adrar, where warrior
tribes were preparing a campaign of armed resistance to the French (Coppolani 1999). The prospect
of conflict did not dissuade Coppolani from his goals, and subsequent incursions into the territory of
Mauritania were accordingly carried out through a combination of diplomatic and military strategies,
with the latter being used when the former failed to bring about the desired results. This commitment
on the part of Coppolani to what he euphemistically (and somewhat ironically) termed the
‘pacification’ of Mauritania ultimately cost him his life; he was fatally wounded during an ambush in
Tidjika, a village in the eastern Adrar in 1905. The attack was carried out by the Idaouich warrior
tribe after their emir Bakar Ould Souied Ahmed was assassinated by the French. The campaign for
colonisation nonetheless continued under varying leaders in a more or less violent fashion until a
protectorate had been securely established over the remaining regions of Mauritania in 1934.
The creation of the ‘commerçant’ class
The resilience of pre-colonial social structures and ways of life, combined with the fact that there was
no immediate colonial interest in the territory of Mauritania itself, meant that French colonialism did
not radically alter Moorish society to the same extent that it did other colonies in the region. The
black African populations on the other hand, due to their proximity to the colonial administration in
Saint Louis and the French interest in the arable land along the Senegal River, ended up being more
closely integrated into the French administration. This manifested itself in the inclusion of black
Africans in various administrative positions as well as their incorporation into the French schooling
system. This integration of the African populations into the French colonial system complicated and
exacerbated Mauritanian ethnic and linguistic schisms in a manner that would plague the country into
the future and up to the present day. Further north of the Senegal River, the basic elements of
Moorish society remained as before; the population was still largely nomadic and the economic
activities that they were engaged in remained unchanged. However the Zawya now found themselves
in a more privileged position, as it was mainly these tribes that acquiesced during Coppolani’s
campaign of ‘pacification,’ while it was largely warriors that led a jihad against the French. So over
the colonial period many warrior tribes were disempowered while the Zawya carried out their
livestock breeding and commercial activities with less fear of being disrupted by the raids of warrior
tribes, as had previously been the case.
This placed those Zawya tribes that had been highly involved in the trans-Saharan caravan trade in a
position of financial dominance at the moment of independence in 1960; years of engaging in the
trade of various goods across the Sahara left a widely dispersed network of ‘commerçant’ Moors with
activities in West Africa. This network covers a wide range of countries and trades in a variety of
goods and services. The effect of the existence of this network over the course of the nation-state
building process has been the formation of a business elite that often has considerable direct political
influence. Bensaâd (2011) describes the gradual transformation of this class from being one
27
comprised of traditional traders (commerçants) to one of international businessmen (hommes
d’affaires). Yet the tribal character of these business networks has remained firmly intact, fusing
elements of tradition and modernity in a highly effective manner. He takes the example of the Ouled
Bousbaâ tribe, which traditionally specialised in providing people with the means of travelling and
relocating across the desert by camel, and which now have a monopoly over the transport industry
through a contract with the European transport company Lacombe. This example also serves as an
illustration of how the historical social dynamics that have been discussed throughout this chapter
have interacted with modern processes of migration; the Ouled Bousbaâ also dealt in the buying and
selling of engines and other car parts as part of their industry, and as such have recruited large
numbers of Senegalese mechanics in order to maintain this aspect of their business. To this day, the
Ksar district of Nouakchott is home to a large number of shops that sell and repair car parts, which are
largely staffed by Senegalese and other West African migrants.
This phenomenon, whereby West African migrants fill a labour market void created by the economic
tendencies of the native populations of Mauritania, can be observed in numerous sectors of the
Mauritanian economy. In order to satisfactorily elucidate how it manifests itself however, it will first
be necessary to briefly outline certain processes of social transformation that have taken place in the
country over the decades following independence.
4.3 The modern period
Nation-state consolidation and social transformation
As previously noted, the colonial period did not radically alter the composition of Mauritanian
Moorish society. Nor did the birth of the nation-state in 1960, not in the immediate aftermath of
independence at any rate; the population barely numbered two million people, was still around 75
percent nomadic,5 and was scattered across over one million square kilometres of mostly desert. So
while a formal declaration of independence was of significant symbolic importance, it was unlikely to
have any effect on the manner in which everyday life was lived for the majority of the Mauritanian
population. There was however a rather urgent impetus to begin the infrastructural development of
the capital city of Nouakchott, then a small fishing town that only numbered around 200 people when
it was chosen as the budding nation’s capital in 1958. Further north in the port city of Nouadhibou,
the seeds of this location’s future reputation as economic capital of Mauritania were being sewn
following the French 1952 decision to develop the city’s infrastructural capacities with a view to
facilitating the export of mineral resources extracted in the northern mining town of Zouérat by the
mining company MIFERMA (Mines de fer Mauritanie).
5 The estimates given for the percentage of the population that was still nomadic at the moment of independence
varies, according to different sources, between 67 percent and 90 percent. I have chosen a figure between these
two cited by Bensaâd (2008), of 75 percent.
28
Upon independence, a handful of Moors held the reigns of the country, but the vast majority of the
rest of this population remained confined to the practices of nomadic cattle-breeding and trade.
Similarly, some within the black African populations were integrated into administrative positions
thanks to their French education, but the majority were still by and large accustomed to agricultural
activities. While it is true that some within the artisanal classes of each of these populations adapted
their skills and traditional knowledge to the demands of an urban environment, their number was no
match for the rapid pace of social transformation that took place in Mauritania in the decades
following independence. In order to get a sense of the nature and scale of this shift, we might
consider the fact that the percentage of nomads in Mauritania dropped from around 75 percent in 1960
to between 3 and 5 percent forty years later. Furthermore, this was accompanied by massive waves of
internal rural-urban migration, in particular toward the capital city of Nouakchott; upon independence,
Mauritania was the least urbanised country among the nations of the Maghreb and West Africa, with
barely 3 percent of its population living in cities. Over the next forty years however, the population of
Nouakchott alone would skyrocket from around 8,000 inhabitants to 700,000, a development that is
indicative of an overall transformation from an overwhelmingly rural society to an overwhelmingly
urban one (Bensaâd 2008a).
This was in part due to the development trajectory chosen by the nascent Mauritanian government,
which favoured the development of industrial activities over agriculture. Between 1959 and 1966, the
percentage of GDP accounted for by primary production, which consists mainly of agriculture and
livestock breeding, increased by just over one percentage point, from 10.3 percent to 11.8. On the
other hand, that accounted for by secondary production – mainly mining – increased over fifteen-fold
during the same period, from 0.6 percent to 15.7 percent (Bennoune 1978), indicating the
government’s tendency toward an industrially-based development trajectory. However the main
cause of the drastic social transformation outlined above was a period of successive droughts over the
course of the 1970’s and early 1980’s, which effectively destroyed the pastoral nomadic livelihoods of
the remaining rural Moor populations and forced them into the cities to seek alternative livelihoods.
The net result was a multifaceted transformation of social life over a relatively short period of time.
This sustained exodus created a hectic urban sprawl on the outskirts of Nouakchott, while
simultaneously, property development and speculation on the part of Mauritanian commerçants in
other areas in the city has resulted in the creation of what were for a time some of the most expensive
neighbourhoods in the world (Bensaâd 2008b). All of this meant that a sustained high demand in the
construction industry was created. The drought period and subsequent urban influx also pushed the
government of the time to invest heavily in the fisheries industry, particularly in the port city of
Nouadhibou, in a bid to provide sources of employment to the newly-established urban population
(Choplin & Lombard 2008). As illustrated by the above-mentioned GDP statistics, the mining
industry also figured heavily in this emerging industrial sector.
29
Filling the void: economic, ethnic and social dimensions of migration
However it remained the case that the demand created by these new employment areas was largely
left unsatisfied by the education and training of the local Mauritanian population. So as well as the
substantial internal migration flows that took place due to drought, over the course of the 1950’s, 60’s
and 70’s there was a large influx of mechanics, electricians, plumbers, boilermakers, construction
workers and other varieties of manual labourers from other West African countries, and in particular
from Senegal. Workers coming to Mauritania from Senegal were often trained in specialised schools
in Dakar and Saint Louis and thus found their labour in high demand in Mauritania (Choplin &
Lombard 2008). On the other hand, Mauritanian commerçant shopkeepers in Senegal provided a
range of goods and products to residents of Dakar and Saint Louis and came to dominate much of the
commercial consumer market in the country. Relations between the two countries are thus somewhat
symbiotic in nature, with some of the residents of each engaging in economic activities in demand in
the other. While the example of the Mauritania – Senegal migratory relationship is perhaps most
prescient, it is emblematic of that which exists between Mauritania and many other West African
nations.
The Mauritania-Senegal relationship was also a problematic one however; in 1989, what started out as
a dispute over a Senegalese government dam project on the Senegal River quickly escalated into an
ethnically charged border and territorial dispute in which Senegalese, Gambians and black
Mauritanians who had been born and raised in Mauritania were expelled from the country.
Mauritanian Moors were also chased from Senegal. The border war lasted between 1989 and 1991
and resulted in hundreds of deaths and the mutual displacement of tens of thousands of people on both
sides. The manner in which this territorial dispute quickly descended into ethnically based attacks
and reprisals illustrates the ease with which interest-based conflicts can take on an ethnic dimension,
and underscores some effects of the legacy of the colonially imposed border. What came to be called
the ‘events’ of 1989 can also be read as an expression of the difficulties and complexities involved in
managing the co-existence of two separate ethnic and linguistic identities and their loyalties within the
confines of a single governmental territory. The salience of such issues is palpable to this day and
needs to be taken into consideration in the analysis of contemporary migration dynamics in
Mauritania.
Nonetheless, despite a cooling of relations and a heightened awareness of the potential for volatility in
the immediate wake of the ‘events’ of 1989, migrants from West African nations for the most part
continued to play the same role in the Mauritanian economy as before over the course of the 1990’s
and into the 2000’s. Outward migration was also oriented overwhelmingly toward West Africa and
was for the most part circular in nature. For black Africans living in villages along the Senegal River,
much of this migration was seasonally-based, while for Moors it was determined by opportunities and
demand within the network of commerçants dispersed throughout West Africa. This was in part
30
facilitated by the decision in 1993 to abolish visa controls between all members of the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a factor which will be further discussed presently.
4.3 Evolving legal and political contexts
Legal antecedents: on paper and in practice
Having embarked upon the process of nation-state consolidation, Mauritanian governments
accordingly developed a legal and political framework designed to at least nominally regulate
migrants residing within state territory and matters such as entry and exit. This was first done through
decree 64-169, issued on December 15 1964 and subsequently modified on July 8 1965, which set out
the basic conditions of entry and stay of foreign nationals in the country (Di Bartolomeo et al. 2010).
There is a distinction built into this legislation between privileged and ordinary foreign nationals, with
the former being determined by the existence of bilateral agreements between Mauritania and the
country from which the foreign national originates. The 1965 modification stipulated that any
migrant found to be irregularly residing in Mauritania would be punished by a two-month to two-year
prison sentence. On paper then, this law laid emphasis on certain punitive security-oriented aspects of
migration legislation but did not set out the rights of immigrants in any detail.
However there were two factors that mitigated the potentially restrictive character of this legislation.
The first was the signing of bilateral agreements with neighbouring countries with a view to
regulating foreign manpower in the signatory countries. This was particularly facilitated by the
establishment in 1975 of ECOWAS, an initiative that has as its objective the free movement of goods,
services and people between signatory countries (Choplin & Lombard 2014). Visa controls between
all member states were accordingly abolished in 1993 in a move toward implementing this goal. In
spite of withdrawing from ECOWAS in 1999, Mauritania retained bilateral agreements with its
members pertaining to free movement and establishment of residence. The second mitigating factor is
the fact that the national legislation that was intended to regulate migration was rarely enforced in
practice. Bensaâd (2008a) illustrates that the state has played an effective non-role throughout much
of its history when it comes to managing migration. During the early decades of independence, the
endurance of nomadic lifestyles in Mauritania may have been somewhat incongruent with the notion
of restricting and regulating mobility in the fashion associated with modern states. However this
informal regulation of migration can also be explained by the absence of the state in general from the
management of socio-economic matters. This would have particularly been the case from the late
1980’s, following the policy direction that Mauritania took, under the tutelage of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, toward “increasing the role of the private sector in all aspects of
economic activity” (Ould Mey 1996:109). Incidentally, this would also bolster the informal sector in
Mauritania, a sector in which the vast majority of West African migrants end up working. In any
31
case, it is worth noting that although migrant ‘illegality’ existed in national legislation since the mid
60’s, it did not begin to exist as a social reality until much more recently.
Externalising the border: the emergence of new European imperatives
The reasons for this shift lie mainly in developments that occurred between late 2005 and early 2006,
during which time large numbers of Sub-Saharan African migrants began making their way from
Nouadhibou to the Canary Islands, mainly in small fishing canoes. After outbreaks of violence led to
a tightening of restrictions in the Spanish –Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in October 2005,
Sub-Saharan African migrants aiming to enter Europe began departing from Nouadhibou in
Mauritania. Its popularity as a point of departure was also enhanced by the completion in 2004 of an
asphalt road connecting Nouakchott to Nouadhibou (Cross 2011). It is thought that around 20,000
people left Nouadhibou for the Canary Islands over the course of 2006, with the number of those that
lost their lives attempting the voyage estimated at 20 to 30 percent of this figure (Choplin & Lombard
2013). A now somewhat familiar media narrative ensued in Spain and contributed to the pre-existing
popular notion of an ‘invasion’ of Sub-Saharan African migrants (De Haas 2011), all of which
heightened the incentive to intervene in the situation. Carrera (2007) describes the manner in which
the Spanish Government “managed to push forward its national agenda and its constructed political
spectacle to the European level” (p. 12), effectively deflecting criticism to the EU and Frontex for
their ‘lack of response’ to what was ubiquitously depicted as an emergency situation. This shone a
media spotlight on the EU and its border agency, prompting a swift response, although one based
upon a desire to be seen to be acting urgently and efficiently rather than on an objective assessment of
the situation (Carrera 2007). From April 2006, the EU began to take measures to put a stop to the
arrivals. Choplin & Lombard (2013) outline the steps taken under the auspices of Frontex:
One helicopter and several surveillance crafts were sent out, and 150 men from the Spanish
Guardia Civil were dispatched to train Mauritanian police in border control. Four thousand
people were repatriated to Nouadhibou where, in summer 2006, a school was turned into a
detention centre. Migrants who were arrested spent two to three days in this centre,
nicknamed Guantanamito (little Guantanamo), before being taken by coach to the Senegalese
border, with fifty Euros for each person (p. 74).
These measures largely achieved their stated goal; in 2006 the Spanish government registered 32,000
arrivals on the Canary Islands, whereas by 2009 this number had dropped to 2,300. However the
result from a local perspective was a profound transformation of social, ethnic and economic
dynamics. One major element of this transformation was the introduction of ‘illegality’ as a social
status along with its derivative, ‘deportability,’ a development that entailed significant negative
repercussions for those believed to fall within this category. This is illustrated in another set of
figures which detail the rise in deportations over a three-year period; in 2004, 250 irregular migrants
32
were expelled from Mauritania, a figure that increased to 11,637 in 2006, before dropping to 6,634 in
2007 (Di Bartolomeo et al. 2010). While the high point in 2006 corresponded to the emergency
climate and in a sense reflects an off-shoot of the Spanish border spectacle, the number in 2007 was
still sufficiently higher than it had been in 2004 to represent a radical departure from prior strategies
of migration management in the country.
The informal manner in which migration was previously managed was thus gradually replaced with a
new set of norms, policies and administrative procedures. An elaborate border management regime
has been developed, comprising a biometric identification system, the designation of 45 new
exclusive legal entry points into the country, and the training of Mauritanian security personnel by
international experts (Frowd 2014). In terms of bilateral cooperation with Europe, readmission
agreements became a useful tool for preventing unwanted migration to the EU. According to these
agreements, third country nationals apprehended in Europe who are presumed to have transited
through Mauritania can be sent there back there to be processed and sent to their country of origin
(Cross 2011). Some such agreements in fact predate the 2006 arrivals on the Canary Islands, with the
first one between Mauritanian and Spain being signed in 2003, but they came to be of extreme import
within the context of restricting the influx of irregular migrants to Europe. Furthermore, Poutignat &
Streiff-Fénart (2010) describe the process by which ‘migration’ as a policy problem has been
imported into Mauritania by various international agencies and institutions. This consists not only of
the provision of technologies and expertise aimed at controlling mobility, but also in the creation of a
discourse that conceptualises and rationalises the new policy approach. This is done through the
organisation of conferences and workshops that bring together a wide range of civil society actors,
international institutions and government actors, with a view to disseminating a particular conception
of migration. A national migration strategy was also jointly drawn up with the EU in 2010, setting
out a comprehensive framework for a Western-style approach to migration management and control.
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
2004 2005 2006 2007
Expulsions of irregular migrants
33
According to the strategy document, there were very few projects devoted to the domain of migration
prior to the year 2005. Since then, external funds for migration-related projects have reached €20.5
million, 77% of which has been financed by the European Union (République Islamique de la
Mauritanie 2010). Elements of this framework have since been translated into legislation and certain
assumptions regarding immigration incorporated into policy, perhaps the most prominent example
being the Mauritanian government 2012 decision to introduce a new residence permit, which was to
be obligatory for all foreigners residing on Mauritanian territory. This corresponded to the
introduction of a new biometric identity card for Mauritanian nationals, the two measures jointly
forming part of the overall process of formalising and digitising Mauritania’s approach to population
registry and management. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation introduced the
residence permit in a memorandum issued on the 13 May 2012, announcing a fee of 30,000 ougiyas6
and a range of documentation that would need to be presented in order to apply for the permit. The
residence permit was implemented within the framework of the 10th round of European Development
Fund assistance, and specifically the support programme for the implementation of the national
migration strategy. Additionally, two other laws contributed to the formalisation of the management
of migration and the foreign labour force in the country. The first was the introduction in October
2009 of a work permit that was to be officially mandatory for all foreign workers in Mauritania. The
permit is divided into types ‘A’ and ‘B’, and is only available if the area of work that the applicant is
seeking employment in cannot be filled by a Mauritanian. In practical terms however, this permit
remains out of reach for the vast majority of migrant workers and is typically only of relevance for
certain high-end sectors. The second law was introduced in February 2010 and relates to human
smuggling and trafficking of migrants, issues which had previously been beyond the domain of
Mauritanian legislation. Their incorporation at this point represents a reflection of the EU’s concern
with the role played by smugglers and traffickers in facilitating irregular migration to Europe. These
measures collectively form part of an overall process that Bensaâd (2008a) describes as the
‘Europeanisation’ of migration in Mauritania, a process that began to take shape with the emergency
measures taken in order to stem the flow of irregular migration to Europe, but which has since been
further consolidated through the means discussed above. The following chapter will deal with the
effects of this new approach upon West African labour migrants in the capital city of Nouakchott.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have sought to outline the migratory trajectory taken by Mauritania since
independence as well as the pre-colonial roots of the dynamics that facilitated this trajectory.
Hopefully the relevance of certain elements of my theoretical framework will have become somewhat
clearer at this point, but in any case I will conclude this chapter by establishing some links between
this framework and the history just discussed. In employing the global power perspective as my
6 The Mauritanian national currency is the ‘ougiya.’ One euro roughly equals 364 ougiyas.
34
chosen theoretical lens, I added the caveat that I would be analysing the Mauritanian case from the
point of view of its regional migratory role. Beyond the general relevance of the need to take south-
south migration flows into greater theoretical and analytical consideration, the significance of this
observation for this particular topic should be evident in light of the preceding discussion. It is clear
that the reorientation of migration flows from Mauritania toward Europe in 2006 was the exception in
what is otherwise a long history of mobility within the West Africa region. Incidentally, there is also
much evidence to suggest that this break from conventional migration patterns in Mauritania was
itself an outcome of migration policies implemented elsewhere in North Africa at the behest of the EU
(De Haas 2014), indicating the nature of the vicious circle garnered by restrictive policies. Adopting
an approach that places primacy on Mauritania’s status as a country of transit for migrants seeking to
enter Europe over its regional migratory role would be hopelessly lacking in analytical and
explanatory power. How is one to substantively explain for instance, the structural role played by
West African labour migration in Nouakchott without reference to the disparity between the
traditional economic activities of the two dominant ethnic groups in Mauritania and the urban
economic sectors that emerged following the industrial development of the country? Or how to
account for the dynamic between the rich commerçant Moor class and West African labour migrants
(a dynamic that continues to be of great consequence today, as will shortly be illustrated) without
reference to pre-colonial social structures and the economic ascendance of the Zawya?
These two examples serve to illustrate the necessity of integrating south-south migration patterns and
histories into the global power perspective, and of diverging from its implicit assumption that
migration occurs primarily from the ‘Global South’ to the ‘Global North.’ However the preceding
chapter should have equally demonstrated the relevance of this theoretical perspective’s main
precepts, in particular the need to move beyond methodological nationalism and to take global power
disparities and scales of analysis into consideration. With regard to the former, as we have seen, the
contemporary borders of Mauritania were drawn up by French colonialists in 1899, and had no
relevance to the societal structures that were in place at the time, namely the Moorish emirates of
Trarza and Brakna in the east and south and the remnants of the black African Futa Toro state that had
been based on both sides of the Senegal River prior to being dismantled and integrated into the French
empire. Evidently, taking the nation-state as a natural unit of analysis in this instance without regard
to the social formations upon which it was imposed would lead to some methodological dead-ends
and highly flawed conclusions. With regard to the consideration of global disparities and the
interplay between analytical scales, the externalisation of EU border control policies to Mauritania has
acted as a mechanism by which the disparity between the EU and its southern neighbourhood in terms
of mobility prospects is maintained and expanded to areas that previously lay beyond the fold of
externalisation. In the process, pre-existing power disparities are reinforced and re-articulated in new
formats. These uneven power dynamics should be apparent throughout this chapter, beginning with
35
the colonial period, through independence and the subsequent subordination of the economy to the
neoliberal logic of structural adjustment, and up to the present day with the implementation of a
migration policy regime that is largely an outgrowth of the Schengen internal security project. The
effects of this regime and its assumptions regarding migration upon those to whom it applies will now
be examined in detail.
36
5. Findings
Having analysed the historical circumstances that have led to the present context in Mauritania, we
are now in a position to delve into the research findings. Grasping the peculiarity of the social
dynamics in Mauritania – in terms of the ethnic makeup and the role that migration has played in the
country – is essential in understanding the situation of those whom I interviewed for this research. In
keeping with the theoretical concern with analysing the Mauritanian case in its capacity as a regional
migratory space, the vast majority of respondents have been in Mauritania for a prolonged period of
time and thus were able to make comparisons between the contemporary situation and that which
preceded the transformation of Mauritania into a source of irregular migration to Europe. Three
principal themes emerged from discussions with respondents. The first is the new residence permit
law and its effects upon those that are required to obtain it. I am concerned here with the effects at
both an individual and a social level, and as such, devote some time to analysing the manner in which
this development has resulted in the creation of new societal schisms while reinforcing others. I
highlight the manner in which the introduction of the permit has effectively functioned as a means by
which the experience of being ‘illegal’ has been imported into Mauritania, along with its associated
risks, vulnerabilities and experiences of marginalisation. The second theme is a process of what many
describe as ‘nationalising’ employment, whereby an increasing amount of economic sectors are being
reserved for Mauritanian nationals at the expense of migrant labourers. I also look into ways in which
systems of ethnic stratification are being reconfigured by this process and pose the question of
whether nationality is replacing ethnicity as the dominant marker of difference in Mauritania. I
finally turn to look at the role of migrant organisations and how they have adapted to this new policy
context, and in particular the strategic adherence to a discourse of state sovereignty and the
contradictions and implications engendered by such a stance. Collectively, these developments are
indicative of a new paradigm for conceiving of the Mauritanian nation-state and who belongs within
it, a paradigm which at the moment exists uneasily alongside pre-existing ethnic and social
formations. I conclude with a conceptual elaboration of this model and its relationship to the
dynamics discussed in the previous chapter.
5.1 The ‘carte de séjour’
Producing ‘illegality’
There is a universally shared sentiment among those that I interviewed that the situation that they are
living through now is far removed from the context that initially greeted them. For most, things have
changed for the worse. Mohammed, who has lived in Mauritania for 28 years, summed this up in
saying: “when I think about the moment I arrived here, there is no comparison; things are much more
difficult now.” All respondents said that they noticed a change in the manner in which immigrants are
treated in Mauritania somewhere between three and five years ago. This was around the time that
the decision to oblige all foreigners residing on Mauritanian territory to acquire a residence permit
37
began to be implemented. Everyone I interviewed said that this measure has had a significant impact
on their livelihoods and communities, and in particular having to shoulder the annual fee of 30,000
ougiyas (about €81.00). When the residence permit was first introduced in 2012, the administrative
requirements were heavily criticised for making it virtually inaccessible to the vast majority of foreign
migrants in the country. Such requirements included the provision of electricity invoices and tenancy
agreements, documents that the majority of migrant tenants in large shared accommodation are far
removed from. Partially as a result of the lobbying efforts of migrant communities, these
cumbersome conditions were removed. Alex, head of the Cameroonian community in Nouakchott,
said that Mauritanian authorities approached migrant organisations in the months following the
implementation of the residence permit law because the number of people applying was far below
what they were expecting. This led to the opening of a dialogue with a view to bringing a greater
number of migrants into the fold of the new residence permit system. Discussions with Mauritanian
authorities subsequently resulted in the alleviation of some of these initial conditions. However, the
controversial fee of 3,000 ougiyas has remained in place.
For some, the introduction of this system has represented a positive development; François, who runs
his own energy business alongside a Mauritanian, told me that the introduction of the residence permit
has posed no impediment to him carrying out his work. He took issue with the time-consuming
nature of the application process but said he approved of the measure itself. However the fact that he
works with a Mauritanian partner may mean that he has been shielded from some of the disadvantages
of being a migrant worker on the contemporary Mauritanian labour market. Karim also said that the
residence permit law represents an improvement since he now has a piece of paper irrefutably proving
his right to reside in Mauritania. This point illustrates one element of the contrast between the
situation that exists today and that which preceded the formalisation of migration and residency laws,
namely the fact that the informal manner in which migration was previously managed likely meant
that police harassment and abuses of power against migrants were more indiscriminate than they are
today. Whereas in the preceding decades, much depended on the mood of the particular police officer
that one happened to encounter, irrespective of one’s official status, now one’s fate is largely
determined by the ability to present the correct documentation. There has been a significant increase
in arrests and deportations of migrants since the formalisation of residency laws. However they now
constitute the execution of an official state policy rather than arbitrary abuses of power as they are
targeted specifically at those who are not in possession of the required papers, and are thus ‘illegal.’
François highlighted the nature of this contrast by saying: “Before, there were other permits that were
made, but there wasn’t as much excitement about them because lately, if you don’t have the permit
you get sent back (deported), so there is a slight threat there now.” So while there were legal
requirements to fulfil before, the informality of migration management meant that the sanctions for
38
violating these were rarely applied. Now however, being ‘illegal’ and ‘deportable’ has become a
reality which many are faced with and have to adapt to.
The question of means
The divisive potential of the residence permit law was succinctly illustrated by Yousuf when he said:
“it’s easy when you have it, you have no problems. If you don’t have it . . . they bring you to court
and throw you across the border.” So for those who have a residence permit it may afford a degree of
stability and security to everyday life which did not exist previously, as is the case with François and
Karim. However for many of those who do not possess it, or more precisely, for those who do not
have the financial means of obtaining it, life has become significantly more precarious and insecure.
The fee of 30,000 ougiyas may be affordable for some teachers, small-business owners or
pharmacists. However it is largely beyond the earnings of a typical domestic worker, construction site
worker or taxi driver, especially if they have large families whose permits they must pay for as well.
Domestic workers negotiate their salaries with their prospective employers and therefore do not earn a
fixed, flat rate; those that I spoke to can earn anywhere roughly between 15,000 and 40,000 ougiyas
per month. So for many, 30,000 ougiyas simply represents too large a proportion of their earnings
once rent, electricity, water, food and family expenses are factored into the equation. According to
Mohammed of the Malian community, many of his fellow Malians do not have the financial means of
obtaining the permit. Abdullah, Gambian community representative, said the same of many of his
compatriots, as roughly sixty percent of Gambians in Mauritania come there in order to study the
Qur’an in Mauritanian Muhadarat7, and therefore do not earn any money.
However travelling in Nouakchott without a residence permit bears its risks; raids in neighbourhoods
where migrants are known to reside are not uncommon, and people are routinely stopped by police on
the way home from work and subsequently arrested and deported. Speaking of the effects of the
residence permit law on his community, Mohamed said that “plenty of Malians are sent across the
border” for not having a residence permit. Every other community leader I met spoke of similar
occurrences within their community. At times deportation can be avoided by giving a sum of money
to the police in exchange for turning a blind eye. Such bribes can represent a further burdensome
expense that may need to be shouldered by migrants of lower socio-economic status. During our
focus group session, one of the domestic workers informed the group that the amount demanded by
police had risen from 10,000 to 15,000 ougiyas. The tone in which this information was relayed was
matter-of-fact, not unlike how one would discuss rising food prices, indicating the degree to which
having to bribe police is normalised. One Senegalese domestic worker told me that she no longer
ventures out after dark, saying that “you’re always calculating what time is best to go outside,”
demonstrating that lacking a residence permit and the financial means of obtaining it implies a
7 Mauritanian religious schools
39
significant degree of precarity and insecurity in everyday life. The knowledge of being ‘deportable’
has thus reconfigured migrant lived experiences in a manner that is quite consistent with the
experience of ‘illegality’ as described by the literature. This knowledge is constantly reinforced
through arrests, raids, and the quick manner in which word spreads once this fate befalls someone
within the community.
Informality and ‘illegality’
A schism of sorts has thus been created between those who have the residence permit and those who
lack the means of acquiring it – between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigrants in the modern Western
lexicon – with Mauritanian employers often acting as gatekeepers between the two. Depending on
one’s trade and whoever one happens to find work with, the employer may decide to pay the
residence permit for the worker and then deduct it from their salary, or come to some other such
arrangement. This, after all, affords more security to both parties. However given the informal nature
of virtually all low-paid labour that migrants typically are engaged in, such arrangements are not
obligatory, and instead depend on the good-will and strategic calculations of those involved. This
dynamic is both a cause and a symptom of the continued dominance of the Moor ‘commerçant’ class
and the acquiescence of the state in their regard; there is a persistent official reluctance to take any
measures that might work against the financial interests of wealthy employers, property owners and
developers who profit from the continued availability of informal flexible labour. In turn, their wealth
is further consolidated through the exploitation of this labour source, which leads to greater degrees of
political influence, creating a vicious circle of self-reinforcing wealth accumulation. After
acknowledging that “the informal sector is the largest employer in Mauritania,” a technical advisor on
immigration policy at the Department of Justice proceeded to describe to me the ‘soft’ approach taken
by the government in tackling the issue of the informal sector. This typically takes the form of
conferences and workshops aimed at raising awareness among employers about the merits of
formalising their employment arrangements. The state refrains from taking any further concrete
measures, the official reason given to me being that such moves would result in a drastic increase in
unemployment figures.
There also exists a mid-layer of migrant entrepreneurs who typically work for Mauritanian Moors and
hire other migrants and black Mauritanians. Those at this level have a degree of security in one sense,
since they will typically earn enough to pay for their own residence permits and are generally not
personally responsible for the status of their employees. This is the case of Souleiman, a Senegalese
migrant who heads teams of bricklayers that build for (generally Mauritanian) property owners. He
says that he only checks whether or not his workers have residence permits if they are working on a
site outside of Nouakchott, as this necessitates crossing police checkpoints at the city limits. On the
other hand however migrant entrepreneurs are also vulnerable to the unpredictable whims of those
they work for, and have the odds stacked against them in the event of disputes over payment. This is
40
illustrated in the experience of Luís, who owns a small painting business in Nouakchott. A week after
our interview, he arrived at the AMDH office, furious that the owner of the property he had been
working on for three months had decided that the job was not to his satisfaction and that he would be
withholding half of the agreed upon sum, even though they had signed a contract at the outset
indicating the price. Upon my departure the matter still had not been resolved, but generally in such
cases the odds are that the word of the Mauritanian property owner will be listened to by the police
over that of the migrant worker. Having enlisted the help of lawyers working for an established
human rights organisation, Luís may have ended up being successful, but for those who attempt to
resolve such issues through the police and the courts alone, the chances of succeeding are slim.
This example indicates that even though being in possession of a residence permit (being ‘legal’) may
protect one from being arrested and deported, there are still numerous other barriers that are set
against migrants trying to make a living in Mauritania. I now turn to examine some of these in more
detail.
5.2 Ethnic relations and the ‘nationalisation’ of employment
From racially to nationally-based stratification?
There is a racial aspect to residency and employment issues and the manner in which they are dealt
with in Mauritania. On the one hand, there is a certain overlap between the situation and grievances
of black Mauritanians and those of West African migrants. Given that those who are singled out for
interrogation or harassment by police regarding residency status are invariably Sub-Saharan or West
African, there is a potential for black Mauritanians to be targeted as well. During police raids in areas
inhabited predominantly by migrants, black African Mauritanians are sometimes also rounded up and
arrested. Further evidence of this overlap between ethnicity and social status can be seen in the fact
that young jobless Mauritanians can be found looking for work outside the church in Nouakchott, an
area where unemployed migrants looking for different types of domestic work typically congregate to
approach passers-by. It is also not unusual to find black Mauritanians working alongside Malians,
Senegalese and other West African nationalities within teams of bricklayers in the city. Mberi, an
unemployed cook from Gambia who spoke to me outside the church strongly emphasised the racial
character of employment dynamics in Nouakchott, saying that Africans are viewed to be of lesser
worth due to their skin colour. The societal division of labour between commerçant Moors and
African labourers often manifests itself within specific sectors, as previously illustrated with the
example of the Ouled Bousbaâ and the transport industry. To take another example, that of the
fishing industry, one can see a similar dynamic in operation, with Moors typically being involved in
the trade-oriented aspects, such as buying and selling fishing licences, and migrants and black
Mauritanians more prone to the artisanal elements of catching fish and selling it in the local markets.
41
On the other hand however, many believe that a process of nationalising employment is currently
underway in Mauritania; through the introduction of complex administrative barriers, foreigners are
slowly being pushed out of different areas of employment, thereby privileging Mauritanian nationals.
This development signifies a radical departure from the economic role that migration has played, and
continues to play, within the Mauritanian state throughout its history. The official justification for this
process is that rising unemployment among the Mauritanian population means that priority must be
given to Mauritanians in the labour market, a standpoint that has been very much adopted by those
that I spoke to. Mohammed described such developments as “normal” and “common to all
countries,” while Souleiman qualified his descriptions of the difficulties now faced by his community
in recent years by saying that “when you see foreigners coming, taking up employment to the
detriment of the indigenous population, that can be an inconvenience.” There is thus a degree of
rationalisation and normalisation among migrant communities of the labour market discrimination
that many of them are subject to. Such justifications also appear to have been internalised by
elements of the Mauritanian population that view themselves as being in competition with migrant
workers, indicating that the aforementioned racialised overlap between migrants and native black
Mauritanians may soon be replaced by distinctions and divisions based on nationality. According to
Amadou, vice-president of the Senegalese migrant association, migrant workers experience not only a
degree of racism on the part of Mauritanian Moors, but also xenophobia on the part of certain sections
of the black African population based on this sense of competition over jobs. So while black
Mauritanians are susceptible to some of the same discrimination and harassment levelled against the
West and Sub-Saharan immigrant population, there are also increasingly advantages to being a
national on the labour market due to the direction that employment policies have been taking recently.
“Mauritania for the Mauritanians”
An example of this policy shift can be seen in the transport industry, and in particular the 2011
decision of the Ministry of Transport to effectively restrict non-nationals from working in public
transport through the introduction of a mandatory ‘green license.’ This license is inaccessible to
foreign drivers because they are ineligible to sit the exam necessary to obtain it, resulting in a
situation in which, according to Alex, “administratively, today foreigners don’t have the right to work
in transport in Mauritania. It’s official; not at all.” The effects of this decision were highlighted in the
experiences of Mamadou, an unemployed transport operator I spoke to outside the church of
Nouakchott. The company he had worked for in Nouakchott let him go following the introduction of
the ‘green license’ and he has since been unable to find work in this sector, neither as an independent
taxi driver nor as a paid employee. He said that all of the Senegalese transport operators that he
knows have returned to Senegal since this law was introduced, and that he also intends to return as
soon as he has the means to do so.
42
Another example of the same legislative process can be seen in the 2009 law introducing a mandatory
work permit for all foreign workers residing in Mauritania. Manuella described to me how in 2011,
the security company that she worked for as assistant manager refused to renew her work permit. She
has since been unable to find work that she is qualified for due to her lacking a work permit, which
had up until that point been provided by the company she worked for. This is most likely due to the
fact that the stated purpose of the work permit is to ring-fence employment sectors for Mauritanians,
since it is only officially available if the applicant works in a sector that cannot be undertaken by a
Mauritanian. Manuella indicated that she understood as much, saying that since 2009, there has been
a policy of “Mauritania for the Mauritanians.” Alex is therefore understandably sceptical about the
likelihood of an immigrant ever being granted a work permit:
They’re never going to give you a work permit; the work permit is not available. When you
go to the labour inspectorate, what do they tell you? They tell you that employment is
prioritised for Mauritanians. So there is no reason for a foreigner to do a job that can be done
by a Mauritanian.
The irony of the effects of this law is that although it should theoretically represent a step toward
formalising employment, in many cases it ends up reinforcing the informal sector. Manuella has
resorted to working informally as a domestic worker in order to gain a living because she has been
unable to find work in human resources since the introduction of the work permit. Similarly,
Souleiman spoke about how since 2012, running his bricklaying business has become more
complicated because it has become virtually impossible to get any contracts directly from the state:
“it’s officially stated that nationals should be prioritised. So it’s like that. That’s why we now work
directly with people who are going to build their house.” So also in this area, the policies of
‘nationalising’ employment have directly contributed to the creation of informal labour agreements.
He went on to explain that such arrangements come about through networks and chance encounters,
and generally proceed without any intermediaries or a contract. When asked about how things go in
the event of a dispute over payment, he described the typical sequence of events when a complaint is
lodged:
Generally, 80% (of the complainants) don’t succeed. You go to the police for example, he’s
Mauritanian, you, you’re a foreigner. There’s nothing in writing. The police generally ask:
“is there anything in writing? No?” They tell you, “well you say this, the owner says that. . .”
In the end the owner’s in the right because he has the money, and you, you’re a poor worker.
Souleiman told me that he does not bother with the process of filing complaints and instead resorts to
a strategy of letting bygones be bygones when such situations arise. This positioning is based upon a
belief that it is more worthwhile to retain pre-existing relationships with people – even negative ones
– than trying to get money out of them, since, unlike the former, “material possessions can disappear.”
43
Given the odds he described of getting one’s money back however, such a strategy may be based as
much on pragmatic calculation as on a particular ontological outlook.
It is clear then that the exclusion of foreigners from the Mauritanian labour market often serves to
keep them in informal arrangements in which there is less security, more vulnerability, and which are
of no financial benefit to the state. The national migration strategy document itself acknowledges this
problem by noting that the vast majority of migrant workers do not possess work permits and thus
remain consigned to a state of informal precarity. The drive to ‘nationalise employment’ has
therefore given rise to a situation in which migrants are required to pay a fee of 30,000 ougiyas in
order to reside legally on Mauritanian state territory, but at the same time many are largely denied
access to stable contractual employment arrangements which would guarantee the financial means of
paying the residence permit fee.
Transnational social structures and the asymmetry of standards
The principal discernible beneficiary in such a situation may once again be rich Mauritanian property
owners – the commerçant class –as it is by and large they who informally purchase the labour of
migrants. It is worth noting that this power dynamic between Mauritanian traders and West African
labourers exists in many other countries in the region, a point that was consistently made to me in
different interviews; the asymmetry between the manner in which West African migrants are treated
in Mauritania and that in which Mauritanian migrants are treated in other countries in West Africa
was not lost on my respondents. During our focus group session, the domestic workers resentfully
highlighted the fact that Mauritanians in Senegal are not subject to arrests, raids and deportations, as
the Senegalese in Mauritania are. Amadou warned of potential negative repercussions should the
status and privilege of Mauritanians in Senegal continue to go unreciprocated in the treatment of
Senegalese in Mauritania. The reasons for this asymmetry in treatment were elucidated by Abdullah
when speaking of the type of work people engage in upon migrating: “In Gambia, it’s not the same
professions; here, it’s bricklaying, painting, electricity . . . and the Mauritanians over there, they’re
there to do business.” According to Abdullah, the latter are wealthy and are therefore not subject to
the same treatment and standards as West African migrants in Mauritania. He also highlighted the
double standards that migrants in Mauritania are subjected to, speaking of the manner in which he
claims female members of the Gambian community have been harassed by Mauritanian police. He in
particular objected to their being placed in cells with men in prison after being arrested for lacking a
residence permit; “I know how Mauritanians treat their wives, so why should they treat our wives like
that? . . . In Gambia there are some papers that Mauritanians have to have, but we never round up
their wives like that. Never!”
Obviously, the existence of this asymmetry does not preclude the existence of any harmonious
interethnic relations between Mauritanian Moors and West Africans. Given the depth and intensity of
44
historical migration flows and exchanges in this region, there is a sense of mutual embeddedness and
belonging which sometimes succumbs to feelings of injustice and animosity and in other instances
supersedes them. In spite of the labour market exclusion experienced by members of his community,
Mohammed described Malians as “socially integrated,” due to the vast shared border between the two
countries and the cultural and ethnic overlap between them. Yousuf spoke of the positive social
relations that exist between Moors and foreigners of diverse origin in the neighbourhood in which he
lives in Nouakchott, and enthusiastically described the activities of a multi-ethnic community
organisation of which he is an active member. Mauritanians who have spent prolonged periods
abroad in other West African countries may even end up participating in the migrant community
organisation of their former country of residence upon returning to Mauritania. Alex, head of the
Cameroonian community, explained how and why such ties are forged and maintained:
Someone comes up to you and says: “I did my bac (final school year exam) in Cameroon.
My father was a businessman, I went there when I was twelve; I spent my childhood there.”
They even speak the same Cameroonian dialect as you, he’s just like you! So afterward he
continues to feel at ease in Cameroonian circles, so you tell him: “listen, you can meet more
Cameroonians at such a time and such a place because we organise meetings.
He described how Mauritanians with such ties to Cameroon can attend their meetings and make
valued contributions, but however are denied voting rights, which are reserved for Cameroonians.
Nonetheless the very fact that such exchanges occur is testament to a complex degree of mutually
constituted relations, which can neither be characterised simply in terms of harmonious interethnic
relations nor instances of hostility and conflict.
5.3 Migrant community organisations: between rights and responsibilities
National, regional and sectoral organisation
As previously alluded, there exists a dense and active network of migrant community groups in
Nouakchott, which are generally organised along regional and national lines. This section will briefly
outline the nature, structure and relations of these organisations, before analysing their collective
positioning within the contemporary migration policy climate in Mauritania. These organisations all
operate upon principles of solidarity and mutual aid by aiding members in times of difficulty and
contributing whenever occasions such as weddings, funerals or baptisms arise. Yousuf summed up
the ethos of his association, Kagamoor, thusly:
Its goal – as indicated by its name – is understanding. So that’s why we’ve created this
organisation, first of all, to get to know each other better. And when people know each other
they can help one another, and when there’s some misfortune arises the entire population
45
comes to your aid. Also when you have a party or wedding, the whole community is ready to
help you.
These organisations are run on a non-profit basis and are generally apolitical. They refrain from
making political demands and for the most part limit their activities to social and cultural events and
regular meetings in which the concerns and problems of members can be addressed. Abdullah claims
that the reason the Gambian community has had relatively little trouble in Mauritania is because they
do not involve themselves in Mauritanian internal political affairs, indicating a commonly held
predisposition among migrant communities in Mauritania. However the role played by these
organisations in the alleviation of the initial conditions of the residence permit indicates that they are
not all completely removed from the political sphere.
Many of these organisations have been based in Mauritania for decades and are therefore firmly
embedded within Mauritanian society; the Gambian community has been organised in Mauritania
since the 1970’s, the Benin and Burkina communities since the 1980’s. There are also sub-national
groupings, such as an organisation for people from the Casamance region of southern Senegal.
Souleiman, vice-president of the Senegalese community association and member of the Casamance
association, described the relationship between these levels as ‘tiered.’ This means that in general,
members first address their concerns to the organisation specifically for people from the region to
which they belong, before going to their national organisation if their issue proves to be beyond the
scope of the lower level. Migrants may also organise according to the sector they work in, as is the
case with a group of Senegalese domestic workers that I met. In order to support one another during
situations of employer abuses such as unfair dismissal or the withholding of wages, each contributes a
sum every month that belongs to the association. This sum is also available should any of its
members fall ill or have some other difficulty. Alongside these national and sector-based
organisations, there also exists an umbrella organisation regional federation of West African migrant
organisations, grouped under the umbrella of FAMAM (Fédération des Associations des Migrants de
l’Afrique de l’Ouest en Mauritanie), but its activities in recent years have been limited.
Navigating the current policy environment
There is thus a multiplicity of highly active migrant organisations in Mauritania, the majority of
which have existed for decades and are therefore highly integrated into Mauritanian civil society.
This places them in a delicate position with regard to the shifting policy landscape in which they
currently find themselves. In spite of the difficulties that many within migrant communities have
come to face in recent years, not one community representative that I spoke to failed to emphasise the
sovereign right of the state to manage its population and foreigners residing in its territory. Nor did
they fail to emphasise the concomitant obligation of those residing within a country to obey the laws
of the land. So for example, Yousuf, the secretary of the federation of Senegalese organisations in
46
Mauritania, stated plainly in relation to the residence permit that “even though it’s expensive as a
proportion of what foreigners generally earn here – very expensive – it’s the law. We have to respect
the law.” When it comes to helping community members in situations of irregularity, the approach
taken depends on the community; Karim, president of the Burkinabe community in Mauritania, says
that they place the onus on the country of origin when it comes to the legal status of their members
and therefore appeal to the consular authorities of Burkina Faso in Dakar to assist members of their
community in an irregular situation. Similarly, Luís, president of the Guinea Bissau community
organisation, said that they enlist the help of consular authorities in Dakar when dealing with the issue
of irregularity. The Gambian community on the other hand, go so far as to advise those who cannot
afford to pay the residence permit to go back to Gambia rather than stay in Mauritania irregularly. In
spite of a divergence of approach, there was a ubiquitous preamble among respondents affirming the
principle of state sovereignty and the responsibilities and duties of the migrant toward the host
country.
It could be the case that the strict adherence to a discourse of state sovereignty is part of a strategy
aimed at gaining legitimacy in the eyes of the state and therefore access to state finances. After all, it
is stated in the national migration strategy document that:
It is necessary for civil society organisations, and in particular associations of foreign
nationals, to be more involved (in the financing of public projects) than they have been in the
past. One of the objectives of the strategy will therefore be to define the mechanisms that will
allow a better integration of these organisations (République Islamique de la Mauritanie
2010:41).
So within the context of formalising migration management, migrant associations, which have
historically been rather marginalised from state projects over the years due to the informal nature of
migration in Mauritania, now find themselves in a position in which there is a potential for leverage to
be gained at state level. However, gaining this foothold naturally depends on accepting certain
principles relating to the sovereignty of the state and the rule of law that migrants must abide by.
There are two points of irony about the use of such statements and the context in which they are
repeatedly made. The first is that the extent to which new legislation aimed at controlling migration
and managing residency constitutes the exercising of state sovereignty is somewhat disputable
considering the fact that recent policy shifts were in large part spured by EU concerns about
preventing further unwanted migration from Mauritania to Europe. The second point of irony lies in
the notion that controlling and restricting movement across borders is seen as the sovereign right of
states in a region where it is far more common for languages, ethnicities, customs and tribes to
transcend state borders than it is for them to be neatly contained within them. Such considerations are
47
however likely to be of little relevance to migrant community associations whose spheres of
discursive and practical operation are strictly delimited by those of the Mauritanian state.
Nevertheless, there is an acute awareness on the part of many that I spoke to of the vital role that
migration has played in the construction of the Mauritanian economy and the shaping of its society, a
role that is somewhat at odds with the restrictive policies that many migrants are currently confronted
with. The nature of this role is reflected in Souleiman’s positive response when asked whether there
is still demand for his labour in Nouakchott: “It’s a country under construction. So they need
workers; bricklaying, electricity, plumbing, wiring . . . all of that.” Luís, who runs his own painting
business in Nouakchott, gave a similar response when I asked him how he came to find work in
Nouakchott and whether there are still opportunities there. It is often taken as a given that
Mauritanian Moors will not be engaged in such labour, therefore leaving an opportunity for migrant
workers to fill this void. Throughout most of the history of the Mauritanian state, immigrants have
largely occupied employment sectors such as those listed by Souleiman, meaning that they have
played an essential, if obscure, role in the development of the country. This role was often facilitated
by the existence of bilateral agreements between Mauritania and other West African nations which
allowed for the free circulation of individuals between signatory countries. Mohammed, president of
FAMAM, described to me how during the collective efforts to change the initial conditions of the
residence permit, the Malian community appealed to Mauritanian authorities by referring to the
legacy of these bilateral agreements and the need to respect their contemporary implications. This
strategy was at least partially successful it would seem, since the controversial conditions under
dispute were lifted. There is therefore a normative argument against further restrictive residency
laws available to migrant organisations, which is based upon the historical role of migrant labour in
Mauritania and the history of free movement in West Africa. However this is unlikely to be pursued
by the majority of them, considering the strategic advantages of propagating the state sovereignty
principle and the obligation of migrants to adapt to the laws of the country in which they reside. How
exactly these different positions are navigated depends to a large extent on the particular organisation
concerned.
Conclusion
I conclude this section by tentatively tying together the themes discussed above in a manner that not
only highlights the broad social effects of new policy approaches to migration and residency, but also
points toward a more fundamental elaboration of a new relationship between nationals, ‘others’ and
the state in Mauritania. Indications of the nature of this relationship are revealed when one examines
the manner in which the thematic areas treated here may complement and reinforce one another in
practice. By introducing ‘illegality’ as a category of practice, the residence permit law has paved the
way for the potential development of a new societal ‘other’ that did not exist in such a capacity
previously. As exemplified by the ‘events’ of 1989 – 1991, discussed in the fourth chapter, societal
48
stratification in the past in Mauritania was largely shaped by ethnic divisions. The ‘events’
constituted a particular moment during which these divisions manifested themselves in sharp
opposition to one another and with a high degree of intensity. Yet the dividing lines that demarcated
these oppositions remained in place throughout the 1990’s and into the 2000’s, with ethnic schisms
for the most part dovetailing with economic divisions of labour. The introduction of the residence
permit in 2012 and the concomitant experience of being ‘illegal’ are at the forefront of a process that
has resulted in a rearrangement of this system of stratification toward one based on a dichotomy
between ‘legal and ‘illegal’ immigrants. In 1989, people were expelled from Mauritania based on
their racial classification; now they are deported for being ‘illegal,’ and the residence permit (or lack
thereof) is the principal mechanism by which these deportations are executed, rationalised and
justified.
The states of ‘deportability’ and ‘illegality’ engendered by the residence permit are however merely
the most visible elements of a new conception of the Mauritanian nation-state and who belongs within
it. Other aspects indicative of this process are the legislative steps taken toward giving precedence to
Mauritanian nationals in the job market and the effects that they have had on migrant workers in
Mauritania. The work permit law and the ‘green licence’ law for example, both have as their
underlying premise the notion that nationals should be prioritised in the labour market, a premise that
diverges quite radically from the overlap between ethnicity and economic activity that has
characterised much of the country’s history. This shift toward nationally-based difference is one that
is rationalised through a discourse regarding the limited availability of work and the need to prioritise
Mauritanians in the labour market, thereby depicting migrants as being in competition with nationals
for jobs. Incidentally, this discourse is also adopted by migrant community organisations in
Nouakchott and propagated within their respective communities, with the effect that this new
‘national’ paradigm for conceiving of the allocation of employment will likely be normalised at an
accelerated rate. The manner in which all of these developments are cloaked in a discourse of state
sovereignty serves to push them into a sphere akin to that of naturally occurring phenomena, thereby
rendering them not necessarily beyond critique, but certainly beyond the scope of human influence.
There remains a tension however between the aforementioned developments and certain persistent
realities of employment dynamics in Mauritania, a tension that was implicit in the words of many of
my respondents as they acquiesced to labour market discrimination on the one hand while
acknowledging the ethnically segmented nature of urban employment in Nouakchott on the other.
Recent policy changes therefore do not represent a clean break from the past whereby one system of
stratification has been simply replaced by another; in some ways, new national conceptions of
belonging have been mapped onto older racial ones. This is evidenced in the fact that it is uniquely
black Africans from West and Sub-Saharan Africa that are targeted by the police for not having a
residence permit. The racialised European-American conception of what it is to be ‘illegal’(Anderson
49
2003; De Genova 2005) has thus been implanted in Mauritania whereby those of darker skin tone are
deemed suspect, while those of lighter complexion are invariably immune to deportation. Another
illustration of the manner in which recent policy developments have interacted with pre-existing
ethnic dynamics can be seen in the persistent strength and influence of rich commerçant Moors who
continue to employ migrant labour. As demonstrated, the issue of ‘(il)legality’ has been navigated in
employment arrangements through a variety of means, with some employers choosing to pay for the
residence permit of their employees while others opt to hire them and turn a blind eye to their legal
status. This point illustrates a second associated trend that is unlikely to dissipate in the midst of this
paradigm shift, namely the informal labour market. Ironically, within the context of the formalisation
of the management of migration and the foreign workforce, the informal sector is likely to remain as a
structural feature of Mauritanian society, in some instances actually being bolstered by this process, as
illustrated with the effects of the work permit law.
So while a set of new national criteria has been put forth, for the time being at least, it serves to
supplement rather than replace existing social and ethnic schisms, with the end-result often being a
significant narrowing of the scope of belonging within the Mauritanian nation-state. Whether the
tendency toward divisions based primarily upon nationality will replace existing systems of
stratification or continue to exist alongside them in the future is a matter of speculation. What can be
demonstrated empirically however is that a multifaceted shift has taken place in Mauritanian society
over the past ten years, as well as the effects that this shift has had upon West African labour migrants
in Nouakchott.
50
6. Concluding Reflections In this thesis I have illustrated the effects of a European-style immigration policy regime on
Mauritanian migratory and societal structures, and in particular the evolving role played by West
African labour migrants in Mauritania. Due to my desire to address the manner in which pre-existing
social, ethnic and mobility dynamics have been affected by recent policy developments, I chose to
focus on the social relations and positions of West African migrants in Nouakchott because of the fact
that inward and outward migration in Mauritania has historically been overwhelmingly oriented
toward the region of West Africa. A sample of respondents originating from this region who have
been living long-term in Mauritania was therefore a logical methodological choice given my research
focus. In terms of theory, a cogent analysis of the Mauritanian case could not be achieved solely
within the confines of a methodological nationalist approach or of a transnational outlook. Due to
nature of the global power perspective’s critique of both of these perspectives and its congruence with
the Mauritanian case, I opted for this theoretical lens. However it has been necessary to qualify my
use of this perspective by highlighting a divergence between my approach to the Mauritanian case and
its inherent assumption that international migration flows only occur from ‘the Global South’ to ‘the
Global North.’ In this final section, I will integrate the theoretical, historical and analytical elements
of the thesis with a view to drawing some overall conclusions and making a theoretical contribution.
6.1 The invisible hand: examining the role of the EU
While it is difficult to engage in hypothetical historical discussions about what natural trajectory
would have been taken had such and such an event not occurred, it is nonetheless quite clear that the
European impetus in 2006 to put a stop to irregular migration from Mauritania acted as a pivotal
moment from which a new approach to managing migration would be conceived. This moment
represented a re-elaboration of a pre-existing power disparity between Mauritania and Europe, one
that manifested itself through the reinforcement of disparities in mobility. The loosening of internal
mobility restrictions within the European Union over the course of the 1990’s necessitated the
tightening of restrictions on the external border and, in turn, the externalisation of border control
policies to Maghreb nations. As mobility prospects in North Africa steadily diminished as a result of
this process and people smuggling and irregular migration increased, new routes were constantly
created as others were closed off to migrants. It was in this manner that Mauritania became a point of
departure for the Canary Islands in 2006; following the crackdown on migrants in the Spanish-
Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005, the Mauritanian port city of Nouadhibou became
the departure choice for those seeking to enter Europe.
This development represented a significant departure from Mauritania’s traditional migratory profile;
up until that point, the country had largely been characterised by circular migration patterns among
West African countries, with labour migrants playing a structural role in the urban economy. The
roots of this phenomenon are to be found deep in Mauritanian history and in particular in the
51
discrepancy between the traditional economic activities of the two dominant ethnic groups in
Mauritania and the demands of the expanding industrial sector. Traditional social dynamics evolved
and adapted to processes of social change in such a way as to create a regional division of labour; the
involvement of the Zawya tribes in the trans-Saharan caravan laid the foundations for a diffuse trade
network specialised in selling a variety of goods and services to emerge in the West Africa region.
Meanwhile, although there were many business opportunities for this class in the emerging industrial
sectors in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the cities largely lacked the labour force necessary to sustain
them, thus creating a demand for labour immigration and laying the foundations of the transnational
dynamic that continues to exist between commerçant Moors and West African labourers today. The
classification of Mauritania as a ‘transit country’ by the EU in 2006 was based not upon these
migratory features, but on a sudden influx of Sub-Saharan Africans onto the shores of Europe.
Putting a stop to the unwanted migration that this classification insinuates was thus the main goal
behind EU intervention in Mauritanian migration policy. This desire to prevent unwanted migration
to Europe was carried forward beyond the 2006 Frontex operation and was placed at the centre of a
new era of cooperation between the EU and Mauritania, in both the domestic policy framework that
emerged and in the nature of bilateral cooperation with the EU. The migration strategy document
itself acknowledges that the purpose of bilateral agreements between Mauritania and EU member
states is to prevent irregular migration to Europe (République Islamique de la Mauritanie 2010).
At the heart of these developments then, we see a negative correlation between freedom of movement
within the EU and freedom of movement below its southern border. As the global power perspective
postulates, this disparity in mobility is a manifestation of a disparity in power. A comprehensive
understanding of the nature of the regime of ‘cooperation’ in migration control that has been
elaborated between the EU and Mauritania as well as its societal effects needs to take this power
relation into consideration, not least in order to situate it within a much longer history of comparable
power disparities. More concretely however, this is necessary in order to understand the prerogatives
that underlie the contemporary border regime in Mauritania. As a technical advisor on immigration
policy said to me, “the European border now starts in Nouakchott,” illustrating how the migration
regime currently in place in Mauritania acts as a means of reinforcing disparities in mobility between
opposite sides of the European southern border. The 2006 Frontex operation was a first enactment of
this disparity but it has been perpetuated through the production of the category of ‘illegality’ in the
Mauritanian social context via the residence permit law. All of my respondents highlighted the
central role played by the residence permit in shaping one’s sense of overall security, since it
determines whether or not one has the right to remain on state territory as well as the likelihood of
gaining employment. Since the knowledge of being ‘deportable’ strictly regulates and restricts one’s
everyday movements, we can see that this measure serves as a means of diminishing freedom of
movement for those who do not have the financial means of obtaining the permit. Considered within
52
the context of EU border control externalisation, the manner in which the residence permit has
functioned as a means of producing ‘illegality’ in Mauritania has thus effectively reinforced
disparities in mobility between the two regions and contributed to a radical reconfiguration of
historically ingrained regional social and migratory dynamics.
6.2 A new conceptual schema of migration and belonging in Mauritania
This reconfiguration is comprised of three interconnected societal developments, which amount to a
conceptual schema that describes the manner in which policies of migration management are
reshaping the Mauritanian nation-state and its symbolic boundaries. I shall now briefly illustrate this
schema by treating each of these developments in turn, the mechanisms by which they occur and the
collective outcome that they are in the process of producing. It is important to note that this is not a
schema aimed at describing the actual state of affairs in Mauritania; as has been illustrated, in practice
there are several persistent historical tendencies that overlap with the contemporary context. Rather,
this schema depicts what current policies appear to aspire toward, what the ‘ideal-type’ envisioned by
them is.
Firstly, the category of ‘illegal immigrant’ as a lived experience has been created by the introduction
of the residence permit in a fashion that departs from prior experiences of being a migrant in
Mauritania. It is experienced primarily as a sense of being ‘deportable,’ a sense that is constantly
affirmed and reaffirmed by everyday experience. While there is a history of expulsions in Mauritania,
the notion of being deported on the basis of one’s legal status is an unprecedented phenomenon and
therefore constitutes a new line demarcating who does not belong in the Mauritanian nation-state.
Being in possession of a residence permit however does not constitute effective belonging within the
nation-state, an observation that brings us to the second societal development, namely legislation
giving prioritisation to Mauritanian nationals on the job market. These measures represent a further
mechanism of exclusion that serves to reify the Mauritanian nation and the practical implications of
belonging (or not) within it in a manner that is equally without precedent in Mauritanian history. The
‘nation’ is thus imbued with a heightened aura of authority by these measures. This reification of the
Mauritanian nation is given further credence by the third societal development observed, which
relates to the manner in which the sovereign right of the state to implement this national model is
depicted as infallible by migrant community organisations. There is an emphatic and ubiquitous
discourse among those leading these organisations linking state sovereignty to migration and border
management, thereby rendering such policies beyond the scope of lobbying influence, despite their
negative effects upon members of migrant communities. These organisations are faced with a limited
range of options and thus have no other choice than to accept and work within the transforming and
increasingly narrow terms of belonging within the state. The net effect however is a conceptual
bolstering of the state and the legislative apparatus that discriminates against migrants in the job
market. The fusion between ‘nation’ and state is thereby elevated to a status that is of greater
53
practical consequence than it has ever previously been, while new boundaries demarcating who lies
beyond it are created by the introduction of ‘illegality’ as a category of practice in Mauritania.
6.3 Theoretical implications: against the pitfalls of Eurocentric assumptions
In this final section, I will highlight the theoretical implications of this thesis by means of a brief
thought experiment. This entails momentarily adopting the Eurocentric assumption that predominates
within migration scholarship and policy-making regarding the nature of global migration flows, with a
view to discovering what conclusions this might lead to for the subject of this research. Before doing
so however, it is necessary to unpack this assumption somewhat by elucidating its ontological
foundations. These are encapsulated in the words of Edward Said (1993), when he observed in
Culture and Imperialism that “in this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history, or
culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West” (p. xix). Such
a view is implicit but inherent to any theoretical or analytical standpoint that unreflectively assumes
Europe and North America to constitute the heart of global migration processes, since it has been
empirically demonstrated that the majority of migration occurs beyond these geographical areas,
within ‘the Global South.’ Firstly then, since the only form of international migration rendered visible
by such a perspective is that which occurs in the direction of the West, an analysis of developments in
Mauritania since the intervention of the EU in 2006 would conclude that there was nothing for the EU
to disrupt in 2006 by aiding Mauritania in solving its migration ‘problem.’ Such an analysis could
indeed take a critical perspective of the manner in which this goal was achieved, but it would be
necessarily blind to the pre-existing realities of migration in Mauritania. Secondly, the policy
framework that grew out of this intervention and the conceptual schema of the Mauritanian nation-
state that it envisions would likely represent progressive, modernising developments. According to
the Eurocentrist, the West – the ‘Global North’ – constitutes the focal point around which all else
revolves and aspires toward; the plurality of paths of development and social systems that exist in the
world are reduced to mere deviations from, or rudimentary precursors to, a particular Western
prototype. Starting from such a premise, it seems perfectly logical to assume that, given Europe’s
own history of nation-building, border consolidation and migration management, such a trajectory is a
natural, inevitable, and desirable process, akin to biological evolution, which all countries will embark
upon in the same manner at one point or another. The conceptual model of the Mauritanian nation-
state that has been conceived in recent years and all that it comprises – the reification of the nation as
a natural, primary unit of belonging, the unquestioned sovereign right of the state to grant and revoke
membership, and the consignment to states of ‘illegality’ of swathes of people that lie beyond the
scope of belonging – all thus represent progressive, modernising developments simply by virtue of the
fact that they emulate European social and political trajectories.
This thesis will have illustrated that the premises upon which such an argument is based are both
empirically false and ideologically weighted, in relation to migration in general and to migration in
54
Mauritania in particular. Cast in the light of history, the irregular migration toward Europe that
spured the subsequent regime of migration policy cooperation between the EU and Mauritania
emerges as an exception to otherwise regionally oriented mobility patterns, an exception that occurred
as a result of policies implemented elsewhere in North Africa. Nonetheless, a policy framework and a
new conception of the Mauritanian nation-state were born of this exceptional occurrence, resulting in
a process of formalising migration management primarily geared toward satisfying external
imperatives rather than internal societal trends. Incongruence between this model and the realities
upon which it has been imposed should therefore not be surprising. Furthermore, taking into
consideration historically rooted ethnic and employment dynamics in Mauritania and the manner in
which they have integrated with the new policy framework serves to disrupt the potential of
teleological narratives to depict recent developments as part of a modernising nation-consolidation
process. As previously noted, pre-existing ethnic and social dynamics have not simply disappeared in
the face of a new conception of nation and belonging in Mauritania. Through for example, the
continued dominance of the commerçant Moors, the manner in which legislation aimed to formalise
and nationalise employment has in practice bolstered the informal sector, and the persistent overlap
between ethnicity and urban employment areas, we see how historically-rooted elements of local and
regional ethnic dynamics and mobility patterns complicate and distort the ideal-type nation-state
envisioned by the policy framework governing migration in Mauritania.
The case of Mauritania therefore serves to validate the central precepts of the global power
perspective while simultaneously highlighting its limitations. Regarding the former, I have sought to
demonstrate that a disparity in power, manifested in the reinforcement of disparities in mobility,
between Europe and Mauritania is at the heart of the implementation of the policy framework
governing migration that is currently in place. An analysis that disregards or downplays the
importance of this disparity is likely to overlook the reasons and prerogatives underlying recent
developments, which in turn, may result in a misdiagnosis of their effects. Furthermore, the
importance of the interplay between local, national, and supranational levels, highlighted by the
global power perspective as being of analytical primacy, is clear in the Mauritanian case. One could
not satisfactorily grasp, for instance, the reasons underlying the shifting social positions of West
African migrants in Nouakchott in recent years without considering the role played by the EU in
shaping this situation. Regarding the global power perspective’s limitations, this case has highlighted
the need to take into consideration migration flows and systems of mobility that occur beyond the
contours of ‘the Global North.’ Failing to do so results in a perspective that cannot be said to apply to
the majority of migration flows in the world and which is thus highly parochial rather than global in
its scope.
One possible objection to this critique is that a global power perspective is concerned specifically with
the manner in which global power structures shape transnational migration flows, and is thus not
55
under an obligation to take into consideration every facet of global migration in the modern world, but
rather only those that can be said to have been discernibly influenced by processes initiated by global
power actors. For this reason its analytical scope is limited to migration in the direction of the power
centres of ‘the Global North.’ However even taking this qualification on board, the critique still holds,
since the interaction between global power structures and migration processes is not limited to
movements towards and within ‘the Global North.’ The Mauritanian case clearly illustrates this
through the manner in which the global power mechanisms of EU border control externalisation and
frameworks of cooperation have interacted (or interfered) with regional south-south migration flows
and mobility systems. These observations mean that a much greater degree of research would be
required in order to integrate the diversity of south-south migration flows and dynamics into the
global power perspective, but these are necessary steps if its explanatory potential is to be truly global
in its scope.
56
Bibliography
Abel, G.J. & Sander, N., 2014. Quantifying Global International Migration Flows. Science,
343(6178), pp.1520–1522.
Anderson, B., 2003. Just another job? : the commodification of domestic labor. In B. Ehrenreich & A.
R. Hochschild, eds. Global woman : nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy. New
York: Metropolitan Books.
Anderson, B. & Ruhs, M., 2010. Researching Illegality and Labour Migration. Population, Space and
Place, 16(3), pp.175–179.
As-Sa’d, M.A.M.W., 1989. Émirats et espace émiral maure . Le cas du Trârza aux XVIIIe- XIXe
siècles. Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 54, pp.53–82.
Di Bartolomeo, A., Fakhoury, T. & Perrin, D., 2010. CARIM – Migration Profile: Mauritania,
Basch, L., Glick Schiller, N. & Blanc, C.S., 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects,
Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States, New York: Routledge.
Bennoune, M., 1978. The Political Economy of Mauritania : Imperialism and Class Struggle. Review
of African Political Economy, (12), pp.31–52.
Bensaâd, A., 2011. Aux marges du Maghreb, des tribus mondialisées. Méditerranée, 116, pp.25–34.
Bensaâd, A., 2008a. L’“irrégularité” de l’immigration en Mauritanie : une appréhension nouvelle,
conséquence d'enjeux migratoires externes. Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied
Research on International Migration. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/10509.
Bensaâd, A., 2008b. Mauritanie : L’inhibition des “ effets retour ” de circulations migratoires diverses
et intenses. Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration.
Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/8336.
Boswell, C., 2003. The “External Dimension” of EU Immigration and Asylum Policy. International
Affairs, 79(June), pp.619–638. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3569366.
Brouwer, E., 2002. Immigration, Asylum and Terrorism: A Changing Dynamic Legal and Practical
Developments in the EU in Response to the Terrorist Attacks of 11.09. European Journal of
Migration and Law, 4(4).
Calavita, K., 1998. Immigration, Law and Marginalization in a Global Economy: Notes from Spain.
Law & Society Review, 32(3), pp.529–566.
Carapico, S., 2001. Euro-Med European Ambitions in the Mediterranean. Middle East Report,
220(220), pp.24–28. Available at:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&btnG=Search&q=intitle:Euro-
Med+European+Ambitions+in+the+Mediterranean#0.
Cardwell, P.J., 2011. EuroMed, European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the
Mediterranean: Overlapping Policy Frames in the EU’s Governance of the Mediterranean.
Journal of Common Market Studies, 49(2), pp.219–241.
57
Carrera, S., 2007. The EU Border Management Strategy: FRONTEX and the Challenges of Irregular
Immigration in the Canary Islands,
Chauvin, S. & Garcés-Mascareñas, B., 2012. Beyond informal citizenship: The new moral economy
of migrant illegality. International Political Sociology, 6(3), pp.241–259.
Choplin, A. & Lombard, J., 2008. Migrations et recompositions spatiales en Mauritanie. Afrique
Contemporaine, 4(228), pp.151–170.
Choplin, A. & Lombard, J., 2013. Stranded in Mauritania: sub-Saharan migrants in a post-transit
context. In S. Triulzi & R. McKenzie, eds. Long Journeys : African migrants on the road.
Leiden: Brill, pp. 69–94.
Choplin, A. & Lombard, J., 2014. “Suivre la route”: mobilités et échanges entre Mali, Mauritanie et
Sénégal. EchoGéo, 14.
Ciavolella, R., 2011. Culture nomade a l’épreuve du capital mobilité, les Peuls Fulaabe (Mauritanie).
M@ppemonde, 103(3), pp.1–13.
Collyer, M., Düvell, F. & De Haas, H., 2012. Critical approaches to transit migration. Population,
Space and Place, 18, pp.407–414.
Commission, E., 2003. Wider Europe — Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our
Eastern and Southern Neighbours, Available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/com03_104_en.pdf.
Coppolani, X., 1999. Mauritanie Saharienne : Novembre 1903 à Mai 1904 : Mission d’organisation
des territoires du Tagant, Paris: l’Harmattan.
Council, E., 1999. Presidency Conclusions of the Tampere European Council, Brussels.
Creswell, J., 2009. Qualitative procedures. In Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed
methods approaches. Thousand Oakes: Sage Publications, pp. 173–202.
Cross, H.M., 2011. Rents, rights, rejections and resistance: West African migrants, the EU’s migration
regime and militarisation in Mauritania. The International Journal of Human Rights, 15(6),
pp.827–846.
Désiré-Vuillemin, G., 1997. Histoire de la Mauritanie, dés origines à l’indépendance, Paris: Karthala.
Ekelund, H., 2014. The Establishment of FRONTEX: A New Institutionalist Approach. Journal of
European Integration, 36(2), pp.99–116. Available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07036337.2013.809345.
Frowd, P.M., 2014. The field of border control in Mauritania. Security Dialogue, 45, pp.226–241.
Available at: http://sdi.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0967010614525001.
De Genova, N., 2004. The Legal Production of Mexican / Migrant “‘ Illegality .’” Latino Studies, 2,
pp.160–185.
De Genova, N., 2005. Working the Boundaries: Race, Space and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago,
Durham: Duke University Press.
58
De Genova, N.P., 2002. Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 31(2002), pp.419–447. Available at:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085432.
Glick Schiller, N., 2010. A global perspective on transnational migration: Theorising migration
without methodological nationalism. In R. Bauböck & T. Faist, eds. Diaspora and
Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
pp. 109–130.
Goldschmidt, E., 2006. Storming the Fences: Morocoo and Europe’s Anti-Migration Policy. Middle
East Research and Information Project, 239.
De Haas, H., 2011. Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union:
An Overview of Recent Trends. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(32), pp.522–523.
De Haas, H., 2014. Morocco: Setting the Stage for Becoming a Transit Country? Migration Policy
Institute. Available at: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/morocco-setting-stage-becoming-
migration-transition-country.
De Haas, H., 2008. The Myth of Invasion: the inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe.
Third World Quarterly, 29(7), pp.1305–1322. Available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436590802386435\nhttp://www.tandfonline.co
m/doi/pdf/10.1080/01436590802386435.
Harvey, D., 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, New York: Oxford Univesity Press.
Huysmans, J., 2000. The European Union and the securitization of migration. , 38(5), pp.751–777.
Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/17243/.
Huysmans, J., 2006. The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU, London:
Routledge.
Hyndman, J. & Mountz, A., 2008. Another brick in the wall? Neo-refoulement and the externalization
of asylum by Australia and Europe. Government and Opposition, 43(2), pp.249–269.
Leonard, S., 2010. EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and
securitisation through practices. , (January 2015), pp.37–41. Available at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2010.526937.
Leonard, S., 2009. The creation of FRONTEX and the politics of institutionalisation in the EU
external borders policy. , 5(3), pp.371–388. Available at:
http://www.jcer.net/index.php/jcer/article/view/239/164.
Levitt, P. & Jaworsky, B.N., 2007. Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future
Trends. Annual Review of Sociology, 33(1), pp.129–156.
Lutterbeck, D., 2006. Policing Migration in the Mediterranean. Mediterranean Politics, 11(1), pp.59–
82.
Marchesin, P., 2010. Tribus, Ethnies et Pouvoir en Mauritanie, Paris: Karthala.
Neal, A.W., 2009. Securitization and risk at the EU border: The origins of FRONTEX. Journal of
Common Market Studies, 47(2), pp.333–356.
59
Ould Bah, M.F. & Ould Cheikh, A., 2009. Entrepreneurs moraux et réseaux financiers islamiques en
Mauritanie. Afrique Contemporaine, 3(231). Available at: http://www.cairn.info/revue-afrique-
contemporaine-2009-3-page-99.htm.
Ould Cheikh, A., 1995. Terroir, Nomadisme et Sédentarité en Mauritanie. , pp.1–8.
Ould Mey, M., 1996. Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: the Carrot and the Stick in
Mauritania, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Popkin, E., 2003. Transnational Migration and Development in Postwar Peripheral States: An
Examination of Guatemalan and Salvadoran State Linkages with Their Migrant Populations in
Los Angeles. Current Sociology, 51(3), pp.347–374.
Portes, A., 2001. Introduction: the debates and significance of immigrant transnationalism. Global
Networks, 1(3), pp.181–194. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1471-0374.00012.
Poutignat, P. & Streiff-Fénart, J., 2010. The development of a policy of migration in Mauritania:
process, issues and actors. In M. Geiger & A. Pécoud, eds. The Politics of International
Migration Management. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–16.
Rees, W., 2008. Inside Out: the External Face of EU Internal Security Policy. Journal of European
Integration, 30(1), pp.97–111.
Reeves, M., 2013. Clean fake: Authenticating documents and persons in migrant Moscow. American
Ethnologist, 40(3), pp.508–524.
Reid-Henry, S.M., 2013. An Incorporating Geopolitics: Frontex and the Geopolitical Rationalities of
the European Border. Geopolitics, 18(1), pp.198–224. Available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14650045.2012.691139.
République Islamique de la Mauritanie, 2010. Stratégie nationale de gestion de la migration,
Rijpma, J.J., 2010. Frontex : Successful Blame Shifting of the Member States ? ( ARI ). Real Instituto
Elcano, 69.
Robinson, D., 1975. The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro. The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, 8(2), pp.185–221.
Said, E., 1993. Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage Books.
Schiller, N.G., 2009. A Global Perspective on Migration and Development. Social Analysis, 53(3),
pp.14–37.
Testas, A., 2001. Maghreb-EU Migration: Interdependence, Remittances, the Labour Market and
Implications for Economic Development. Mediterranean Politics, 6(3), pp.64–80.
Union, C. of the E., 2004. COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 2007/2004. Official Journal of the
European Union, 349, pp.1–11.
Wimmer, A. & Glick Schiller, N., 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state
building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), pp.301–334. Available at:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1471-0374.00043.
60
Zaiotti, R., 2007. Of Friends and Fences: Europe’s Neighbourhood Policy and the “Gated Community
Syndrome.” Journal of European Integration, 29(2), pp.143–162.
61
Annex: Tables of respondents Table 1: List of migrants interviewed
Name Nationality Occupation Duration of
residence
Involvement in community
association
Karim Burkina Faso Computer
science
teacher
20 years President of Burkina
community organisation
Yousuf Senegal School
administrator
11 years Secretary of federation of
Senegalese organisations
Amadou Senegal Pharmacist 30 years Former-vice president of
FAMAM
François Benin Energy
company
proprietor
21 years President of Benin
community organisation
Mohamed Mali Teacher 28 years President of FAMAM
Abdullah Gambia Construction
worker
40 years President of Gambian
community organisation
Souleiman Senegal Independent
bricklayer
13 years Vice-president of federation
of Senegalese organisations
Alex Cameroon Restaurant
owner
14 years President of Cameroon
community organisation
Luís Guinea Bissau Painter 15 years President of Guinea Bissau
community organisation
Manuella Central African
Republic
Unemployed 21 years Not involved in community
organisation
Mberi Gambia Unemployed 2 years Not involved in community
organisation
Mamadou Senegal Unemployed Non-disclosed Not involved in community
organisation
Ahmed Côte d’Ivoire Unemployed 13 years President of Ivoro-Maghreb
Solidarity Association
Senegalese
Domestic
Worker’s
Association
Senegal Domestic
work
Founded six
years ago
Sector-based migrant worker
organisation
62
Table 2: Mauritanian migration specialists interviewed
Name Position
Dr Haymoud Ramdane Technical advisor on immigration policy at the
Mauritanian Department of Justice
Mohameden Bareck Ould Eleid Lawyer and volunteer with l’Association
Mauritanienne des Droits de l’Homme