‘Migratising’ mobility: Coloniality of knowledge and externally funded migration capacity building projects in Niger

Abstract

This article explores coloniality of knowledge reproduced through EU funded Migration Capacity Building Programmes (MCBPs) in Niger, considering the period between 2015 and 2021. MCBPs are donor funded programmes aim to introduce EU-driven migration concerns and understandings into domestic policymaking, primarily in non-EU states. The article identifies two ways that MCBPs reproduce specific understandings of mobility as migration: firstly, by reproducing an understanding of mobility along the state/population/territory nexus and secondly, by categorising different types of migration and corresponding policy responses. It argues that the knowledge reproduced through MCBPs is historically embedded in colonial attempts at mobility governance and fails to take account of the pluriversal understandings of mobility in Niger. The article argues that historically and contemporarily, mobility governance in Niger is shaped by ‘negotiated misalignment’, which refers to the mismatch between MCBPs and pre- and co-existing knowledge systems on mobility in a context of strategic actor interaction. Finally, the article analyses the ‘gaze’ of MCBPs in its mutually constitutive material and discursive formation. Drawing on Fanon, it shows that MCBPs reproduce logics of colonial subject formation.