By Charlotte Tybjerg Sørensen, Communications Officer
Photo: Private. Photo layout by Cirkeline Kappel, AAU

Ahlam Chemlali, who is a member of the research group Global Refugee Studies and an estimated researcher at Danish Institute for International Studies, says:

- Anecdotal evidence suggests growing numbers of migrants intercepted at sea – referred to by the Tunisian coastguard as les rescapés (the rescued) – return to Libya via smuggling. In this article I empirically document the experiences of “rescued” migrant mothers who consider and/or purposely re-engage in irregular, high-risk returns involving crossing the Tunisian border back into Libya.

In the article, Ahlam Chemlali employes a feminist ethnographic approach to explore how undocumented motherhood is experienced and shaped in the context of EU-sponsored counter-smuggling and border enforcement.

- Building on fieldwork in Medenine, in southern Tunisia, I also examine the considerations of migrant mothers “stuck on the move” concerning clandestine navigation and redirection in the complicated temporal and spatial context created by international organizations and EU-sponsored forms of “protection”, Ahlam Chemlali says.

She argues that border enforcement and counter-smuggling policies not only impact everyday life and mobility for undocumented mothers and their children but, as gendered practices, also trap and confine migrant mothers and their children in a cycle of protracted vulnerability, indefinite waiting, and uncertainty in which opting to travel with smugglers becomes the best bet and last resort.

The article has recently been published in the high-ranking journal Trends in Organized Crime.

- With my contribution, the journal which is a ‘hard-core’ criminology journal, will have its first paper ever, that centers migrant mothers. I am proud to contribute with unique scholarship on new perspectives on motherhood, (im)mobility and smuggling. I am furthermore excited to be part of this special issue and included in a collective of stellar scholars exploring the gendered impacts of border enforcement organized by Gabriella Sanchez. Says Ahlam Chemlali.