By Katerina Glyniadaki, Nora Ratzmann, Julia Stier

International organizations and foreign-funded NGOs run campaigns in Senegal to raise awareness of the perils of irregular migration. To increase their effectiveness, these organizations often enlist local migrant returnees to share their personal migration experiences and transmit an anti-irregular migration message to their compatriots. This article examines whether policymakers' assumptions regarding the representativeness of migrant returnees operating as (anti-)migration messengers in terms of shared identities corresponds to reality at the street level. It draws from theories of street-level bureaucracy and representative bureaucracy and is based on 31 qualitative interviews with migrant returnees and experts. The study shows that migrant returnees engaged in migration information campaigns are not as representative of the local population as envisaged by policymakers, potentially impacting policy outcomes. They stand out from their compatriots in terms of skillsets and social status – partly because of the selection mechanism employed by organizations and partly because of the training and capacity-building efforts directed at migrant returnees.

International Migration. 2025;63:e13382.

By Mouhamadou Kane and Mamadou Abdoul Wane

Taking children from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal and forcing them to beg on the streets has become the most visible form of human trafficking in both countries. Many Quranic teachers and intermediaries prey on vulnerable families in Guinea-Bissau. Offering religious instruction in Senegal, they take advantage of families’ ignorance of the fate awaiting their children once they are handed over. This criminal activity enables the teachers, who collect the money given to children as alms, to dispose of a large amount of illicit capital which they inject with impunity into important sectors of the economy such as real estate, trade and transport. Key findings • Deep poverty, religious fervour and ambition for their children drive many rural parents in Guinea-Bissau to place them in the care of Quranic teachers, or marabouts, based in Senegal. • Once trafficked to Senegal, the children are not taught the Quran, as promised. Instead, they are forced to beg for alms and to hand the takings over to the marabouts. • Although officials in both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau deplore the system, a combination of respect and fear of the marabouts’ power forestalls action. • It is left to non-governmental organisations to rescue the children and return them to POLICY BRIEF their families.

ENACT - Africa, 2021. 12p.