Multidirectional mistrust: German female volunteers’ emotion work in the context of male deportation and return from Europe to Senegal

This article investigates how German volunteers navigate the often conflicting and emotionally loaded European practices and discourses of removal when interacting with Senegalese returnees in Senegal. Following male Senegalese returnees and female German volunteers, it analyses the affective long-term entanglements the volunteers engage in to support Senegalese men after they have left Europe. It illustrates the importance of emotion work as volunteers deal with the multidirectional circulation of mistrust and frustration between returnees, institutions and donors in the return migration industry. In the circulation of affects in these engagements, mistrust is at times transformed into trust but may also fall back into suspicion.