Trust in Transit: External Migration Control and Migrants’ Perceptions of Humanitarian Borderwork in the Sahel

Abstract

The Sahel region has become a focal point for externalisation policies seeking to prevent the onward travel of migrants bound for North Africa and Europe. In this context, humanitarian actors are increasingly called upon to implement migration control policies or to address migrants’ vulnerabilities during journeys characterised by ‘extended temporariness’. This paper builds upon the concepts of the humanitarian border and institutional trust to develop a typology of organisations and to explore how migrants in transit perceive these forms of humanitarian borderwork. By employing the concept of trust as an analytical prism to examine social navigation, risk-assessments and the felt externalisation of migration control, we argue that transit migrants’ mistrust in humanitarian organisations is a ripple effect of the externalisation process. This leads to cumulative ripples, such as protection gaps for individuals travelling from West to North Africa. The article compares two key locations for West African transit migration in Niger and Mali, exhibiting similar characteristics but differing in the extent and visibility of external migration-related programming. Through qualitative content analysis of interviews conducted with 90 transit migrants between 2020 and 2021, we identify the perceived involvement of organisations in migration control and the phase in the migration trajectory as key factors influencing (mis)trust in organisations. We further trace the effects of (mis)trust on migrant strategies, including exit, risk-acceptance, and self-protection. The results highlight the far-reaching impacts of different externalisation environments on migrant safety and strategies, as well as on the ability of humanitarian organisations to provide protection in vulnerable migration situations.