The Political Energy of the Backway: Government, Migration, and Youth in The Gambia (2010s–21)

Abstract: During the 2010s, The Gambia came under the spotlight of the European migration regime because of the numbers of its citizens requesting asylum in Europe. Historically sensitive ethnography highlights the specificity of this phase of Gambian migrations and situates it in the country’s political history. The political energy that the “backway”—as undocumented migrations to Europe have been popularly known in The Gambia since the 2000s—manifested at different levels, often simultaneously, over the span of few years is considered in light of the reproduction of authoritarian rule until 2016, the following postdictatorship transition, and the evolving ambiguous relationship among the national government, young people’s desires of mobility, and European requests to reduce their outflow.