Mediating Mobility in West Africa: Improvisation, Culture, and Volatility in Migration Infrastructures

How do migrants enact their mobilities in contexts where formalized labor migration is minimal, and where the European fight against irregular African migration is restricting the possibilities for informal border crossings? And which roles do cultural norms, social institutions, and individual agency play in facilitating migration? To answer these questions, this article offers a comparative reflection on the growing interest in the mediation of migration that emphasizes the actors and structures that shape and facilitate a migrant trajectory. Drawing on our own research in various West African contexts, and on a broader reading of research evoking the mediation of mobility, we engage primarily with the emerging scholarship on migration infrastructures. As a contribution to the study of how mobility is mediated by actors and structures external to the migrant, we suggest that it is important to move beyond the tendency to restrict analysis in a migrant-/institution-centric trade-off in which emphasis is either placed on migrant aspirations and capabilities or the institutionalized mediation of migration. We further propose to analytically distinguish between the mediation of migration—denoting the processes of facilitation and restriction of mobility through institutions, external interventions, and socio-cultural practices—and the modular components of connection and organization through which actual migration occurs. To accentuate the shifting and volatile configuration of these elements, we suggest a concept of migration infrastructural assemblages. We thereby emphasize the benefits of incorporating improvisation, culture, and volatility in our understanding of the meditation of migration in West Africa and beyond.