Description
Over the last decade, Algeria has become a country of transit or final destination of many nationals from West and Central Africa. Although, the evolution of this pattern of migration, which altered the political and security responses by the European and North African countries, Algeria remains a resilient country to the current politics founded on closing borders, readmissions, and probable social and economic development as opposed to its neighbouring countries. However until recently, under the European pressure, Algeria succumbed to this pressure by legally adopting a repressive security and control-oriented approach to curb immigration at any cost with a certain degree of autonomy especially on how they choose to use and implement the European migration policies. Yet, the sub-Saharan migrants have become the new official target of these new policies, portrayed as illegal migrants that represent a threat to the national security and a source of diseases and criminology. Thus, Algeria adopted a new absurd racist law relating to foreigners, which gives the right and allows the government to expel anyone deemed a threat to public security regardless of their status as voluntary migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. In this paper, I aim to explain the Algerian state-level framework to govern immigration, particularly of sub-Saharan migration. I argue that, in combination with the EU pressure, Algeria has created an institutionalisation of a repressive treatment of these migrants under the cover of government sovereignty, anti-terrorist and security operations. Through the lens of (de)-colonizing migration, the growing securitisation approach of migration and repression performed against the migrants seem to be based on ‘racial’ social categorisation of the world population and part of the rhetoric of modernity and logic of coloniality of power. Moreover, I aim to highlight the impact of the absence of formal human rights reforms and national asylum system that could be contributing to repressive and abusive experiences of detention, deportation, exploitation in human trafficking and smuggling that sub-Saharan migrants endure in the country. Furthermore, I aim to examine the domestic and social variables to explain the mistreatment of the sub-Saharan migrants and the growing sentiment of xenophobia and nativist attitudes towards them
