Coloniality–Decoloniality

Slavery, territorial conquest, dispossession, resource extraction, coercive labor. Abolition, anti-colonialism, neocolonialism, postcolonialism, decolonization. Everywhere colonization is imposed, it is accompanied by manipulation, containment, and control of colonized people. Everywhere colonization has been imposed, it has been opposed by colonized people, from ground-level rural peasants to global political “worldmaking” movements (Getachew 2019). This section discusses and defines coloniality and decoloniality and analyzes the colonial impulse to control im/mobilities and its enduring coloniality today.

There is limited space to capture the richness of the struggle against colonialism before and after colonial administration of territories, and we are unable to include settler colonies and neocolonial legacies of material inequalities, debt, global finance and trade, and external power over postcolonial states (Nkrumah 1966). Pushing through this challenge risks collapsing the varied perspectives and histories of these different approaches, despite their overwhelming synergies.¹ We start with a broad definition of coloniality by Nelson Maldonado-Torres building on the pathfinding work of Anibal Quijano and Walter D. Mignolo: “Coloniality . . . refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism” (2007: 243). Maldonado-Torres adds, “‘decoloniality’ means the dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that foment the reproduction of racial, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies that came into being or found new and more powerful forms of expression in the modern/colonial world” (2016: 440). The task at hand is identifying “patterns of power” emerging and “surviving” from colonialism and looking for sources that “dismantle” these relations and patterns of power. In the cases presented from Sierra Leone and Tanzania, we argue that im/mobilities from below are sparks necessary for decolonial futures of mobility justice for all.

Colonial Sierra Leone

Migration was at the heart of Sierra Leone's colonial inception and its history as a postcolonial, post-conflict state. Its colonial history can be traced to the anti-slavery movement and the moment beginning in 1787 when a group of ex-slaves arrived from England to establish a new settlement. Under the auspices of the British Royal Chartered Sierra Leone Company, the early settlers acquired the piece of land that was later named Freetown to celebrate their freedom from slavery (Fyfe 1962). By 1807, the numbers of settlers had increased, with new arrivals from Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and a steady stream of “Liberated Africans”—former slaves recaptured by the British navy and set free in Freetown. However, following discontent and open revolt, growing costs of maintaining the new settlement, withdrawal of imperial grants, and tensions with the local population, the Sierra Leone Company was forced to surrender its corporate status to the British Crown, and Freetown officially became the Crown Colony of Sierra Leone in January 1808 (Renner-Thomas 2010). This territory was small—less than 1 percent of present-day Sierra Leone. The area outside the colony was ruled by local kings and queens, whose rivalry for territories and resources was considered a threat to trade routes and the economic well-being of the new colony (Abraham 1978). Following the partition of Africa after the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, the British Crown exercised control over those adjacent territories, which were renamed as the Protectorate to establish the full territory of present-day Sierra Leone.

Ironically, by unifying the two territories under one colonial administration, the country became more separated, creating internal borders, with two parallel political and legal systems producing dualism as the feature of governance. The Protectorate was administered through Indirect Rule, an administrative system that utilized local kings and queens, renamed Paramount Chiefs, who retained political and judicial powers, subject to the British Crown. Paramount Chieftaincy was institutionalized, their territories re-designated chiefdoms, and citizens legally referred to as “natives” became British “protected persons.” Meanwhile, the Colony was governed directly and its population became “British subjects” (Harrell-Bond et al. 1978). Similarly, in the administration of justice, two parallel systems were created. Customary law (administered by chiefs and elders) operated alongside formal (English) law in the Protectorate, while the Colony was governed exclusively in accordance with the English legal system (Renner-Thomas 2010). The logic for this strict division has never been clear. Its impact, however, was felt in every sector, not just during more than 150 years of colonial rule but also throughout the postcolonial period since independence in 1961.

As Freetown, the center of the Colony, transformed into the capital of Sierra Leone, it became a magnet pulling citizens toward its economic opportunities, security, healthcare, and other benefits. Migrants from the Protectorate (legally known as “natives”) arrived in the Colony to embrace job opportunities and flee from wars. Freetown became an attraction for local and external job seekers and recruiters. Labor was required for (re)construction projects, military service, and domestic work in the Colony, as well as excursions to the Belgian Congo. Traders from the Protectorate brought much economic benefit to the Colony, turning Freetown into a major commercial center (Banton 1957; Harrell-Bond et al.1978).

Yet, natives were not welcome to stay in the Colony, courtesy of aggressive legislative policies such as vagrancy and manual labor laws. Moreover, native customary law was also not recognized in this space. These vagrancy and labor laws shifted the onus on natives to prove employment within 21 days of arrival or risk imprisonment with hard labor, before forcible removal to their chiefdoms of origin. This created tethered mobilities, moving natives in and out of the Colony and the Protectorate. Further, to prevent natives from tethering themselves to the Colony or settling there, an unreceptive environment was created, which allowed only English-type courts, with customary law—the law of the natives—prohibited. To understand the impact of a hostile environment for natives (or migrants from the Protectorate) through exclusion of customary law and courts in the Colony, one must appreciate the place of law and justice in constructing social identities and navigating personal and everyday realities. The English-based courts in the Colony did not recognize customary law or disputes arising from it, which pertained to large areas of the personal lives of natives such as marriage, property, and death (Harrell-Bond 1975). By refusing to recognize disputes as valid causes of action, the Colony courts were signaling that natives were unwelcome. Yet, natives came to the Colony and stayed, in defiance of legislations and policies, so that from a lowly 20 percent in the 1890s after the Protectorate Proclamation, natives made up 80 percent of the Colony population a decade before independence (Banton 1957).

In resistance to this hostile environment, migrant natives established decolonial mobilities by tethering themselves to the growing city of Freetown. The natives formed themselves into associations and reproduced, in varying degrees, a cultural identity, including the appointment among their tribesmen of chiefs or headmen, mirroring those of Paramount Chiefs in the Protectorate. These headmen provided security through job opportunities to sidestep the colonial vagrancy laws. They also provided anchorage associated with chieftaincy, including the settlement of disputes. Chiefs and their courts known as barrays, became an important part of the lives of natives in the Colony. As the influence of associations and headmen grew, the colonial administration was forced to recognize them. It introduced a regulatory framework that utilized the de facto authority of the headmen (renamed Tribal Authority) to carry out the primary goal of the colonial administration—the control of migrant movement from the Protectorate to the Colony (Koroma 2023). The new legal framework required natives to register upon arrival to tribal rulers appointed by the colonial government, while the tribal rulers were conferred with powers to arrest and facilitate “deportation” to the Protectorate (Harrell-Bond et al. 1978). Transforming chiefs to tribal rulers in the Colony was important because of the new powers to control migration, but also because of what it took away: tribal rulers were no longer allowed to adjudicate cases. Despite these colonial attempts, barrays grew, as did the numbers of chiefs (unrecognized by the colonial government). This was the position at independence in 1961.

Postcolonial Sierra Leone

At independence, Sierra Leone's model was conservative—maintaining the colonial status quo with only gradual reforms (Mamdani 1996). The political unification of the Colony (renamed the Western Area) and the Protectorate (renamed the Provinces) was complete, with the creation of national institutions and governance structures representing one nation-state. However, independent Sierra Leone became a battleground for loosely two groups of Sierra Leoneans: the Creoles (non-natives—a legal term in Sierra Leone to describe descendants of freed slaves, separate from the local population), who felt they were the natural successors of the colonial administration, and natives (represented by both educated elites and Paramount Chiefs), who made up more than 90 percent of the population (Cartwright 1970; Wyse 1990). The ensuing polarizing fracas laid the foundation for the subsequent tumultuous period of military interventions and civil war, which saw few changes to colonial institutions and policies.

Unlike Tanzania, independent Sierra Leone did not usher in political stability to embark on sustained social and economic programs. In the first decade of postcolonial rule, Sierra Leone witnessed three military coups, an overturned election, and derailment of civilian democratic rule (Cartwright 1970). Since then, the country has experienced autocratic rule, further military coups, and a devastating civil war. Preserving the status quo in these circumstances has had distinct consequences on different aspects of Sierra Leone society, especially in the administration of justice. Although unified as one country, successive postcolonial governments have preserved legal dualism separating the formal Colony (now Western Area) and the former Protectorate (now Provinces). Although most of the inhabitants at this time were so-called natives, there was no change in the policy of prohibiting customary courts in the Western Area. “Tribal Rulers,” renamed “Tribal Headmen,” continued to have no adjudicating authority, while their role in supporting the government on tax collection and information dissemination was maintained (Koroma 2023). There were prosecutions against unrecognized chiefs for operating illegal courts in the Western Area (Harrell-Bond 1975). Meanwhile, in the Provinces, while chiefs’ courts were abolished and replaced by local courts, legal dualism persisted as during colonialism, with new local courts existing alongside formal courts, which retain their appellate and supervisory jurisdictions (Renner-Thomas 2010).

On migration policies, while independent Sierra Leone did not actively seek the control of movement from the Provinces to Freetown (most of the political leaders at the time of independence were from the Provinces), yet its policies were not substantially different from the colonial period. Legislations such as the Vagrancy and Manual Labour Ordinances of 1908 were not repealed even if not implemented. In fact, the subsequent promulgation of the Public Order Act in 1965, which introduced “loitering” as a criminal offense, can be argued as not only affirming the spirit of the Vagrancy Ordinance but also targeting migrants, who are less likely to have achieved the socioeconomic stability in the city. The legislation proclaims:

Any person loitering in or about any stable house or building, or under any piazza, or in the open air, and not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of himself, shall be deemed an idle and disorderly person, and shall, on conviction thereof, be liable to imprisonment for any period, not exceeding one month. (Section 7)

Things came to a head when, between 1991 and 2002, Sierra Leone experienced a vicious civil war. The war led to palpable changes in the political administration of the country and increased severalfold the numbers of internally displaced persons, who now make the Western Area their home (Renner-Thomas 2010). Despite these changes in the Western Area, legal reforms to remove colonial-era legislation to contain the native population were not prioritized.

The combination of hostile legislation and lack of adjudicatory forums to practice customary law, failed to deter urban migration of the so-called natives from the Provinces to the Western Area in search of improved security, employment, sanitation, health, and housing. In defiance, the number of unrecognized chiefs and their barrays also continued to increase, so that after the end of the war, there were more than six hundred barrays in the Western Area as compared to only twelve official magistrates’ courts (Koroma 2023).

Hybridized Law in Sierra Leone

The emergence of barrays—the dispute settlement forums presided over by community-appointed chiefs—is a direct response to the reluctance of colonial and postcolonial administrations to include customary forums within the legal system of the Western Area of Sierra Leone. It can also be argued that by continuing to attend barrays, citizens of this part of Sierra Leone demonstrate acts of defiance in the face of hostile laws and policies. For their part, barrays have remained adaptable in the face of hostility to provide for the justice needs of migrants to the Western Area. In addition to adjudicating cases that are not admitted in official courts, such as witchcraft, adultery, fornication, and customary marriage disputes, barrays have extended their jurisdiction to include cases justiciable before the official courts, including public order offenses, debts, property, and transactional disputes. This has allowed barrays to become both an alternative to and the mainstay for urban migrants with specific legal complaints inadmissible in official courts in the Western Area.

As part of their flexibility, barrays have adapted “customary law” and official court procedures to create a framework that allows barrays to be relevant and suitable for settling everyday disputes in a multiplex, interconnected urban environment that is the Western Area. From oath-taking procedures that invoke customary beliefs of the supernatural, to detailed case record-keeping, which typifies formal courts, the barrays produce an alternative justice system that attracts migrants alienated by the colonial-era courts. The malleability of barrays is not limited to jurisdiction and procedures. Litigants decide on sitting dates and times, with cases often adjudicated at night or on weekends to accommodate the busy economic lives of urban migrants. Spaces, such as sitting rooms and extended verandas in homes of chiefs, are utilized as courts, with few barrays situated in a dedicated space. Finally, many of the barray chiefs are women, which is the opposite of other customary law institutions in existence elsewhere in Sierra Leone, demonstrating the adaptation of the Western Area's barrays. Further, barrays have been able to adjudicate disputes between members of the same tribe (as originally intended), as well as members of different tribes. This is done by adopting Krio as the language of the courts. Krio is the unofficial lingua franca widely spoken across the entire country. This allows for twofold decolonial defiance: resistance to the colonial English in official courts and the mixing of tribes, which the colonial logic works to separate.

What barrays evidently reveal is the in-country mobility of law and legal systems, a phenomenon that has been observed also in cases of international migration. Studies have shown, for instance, that legal space is not limited to territory (Benda-Beckmann et al. 2009). Anne Griffiths (2011: 178) has noted the practice of “transnationalisation of law across national boundaries . . . [involving] migrants taking their law to the new country of domicile.” While barrays in Freetown are considered illegal under Sierra Leone law, these neighborhood courts persist as an integral part of the socioeconomic and legal configuration of Sierra Leone's capital city. The combination of a determination to exist and the resolve to litigate in barrays demonstrate a counter-hegemonic response by urban migrants to the colonial-era limitations on adjudicatory forums, intended to exclude or make them feel unwelcome. That barrays have survived in one form or another is testament to their resilience as a reaction to colonial hostility, which has largely continued in the postcolonial period.

Colonial Tanganyika

While the histories and politics of Sierra Leone and Tanzania differ significantly, like Sierra Leone, Tanzania's economic viability as a colony and nation-building project as a postcolony were dependent on exploitable borders and mobilities. Unlike Sierra Leone, before the British, Tanganyika was first part of German East Africa. Both colonial powers strived to prevent and manipulate movements of migrants from around the region and within the territory. Neighboring Mozambique and Urundi territories had severe labor conscriptions under Portuguese and Belgian colonial rule, which pushed indigenous subjects to Tanganyika to find refuge and wage labor. German and British colonists feared these forced migrations because they did not want their own subject populations to flee away from the heavy-handed labor tactics in their colony. If Tanganyikans fled, this would lead to a loss of production of crops and a loss of taxable bodies (Chaulia 2003: 148–149). However, the resistance to population inflows eventually gave way to outright recruitment in the 1930s: “colonial immigration policies in Tanganyika were thus predicated upon remote-controlled inflows and outflows. Population influxes, if managed and redistributed like transferable commodities to suit agricultural need, were the panacea to perennial labour shortages” (Chaulia 2003: 151). Western Tanganyika and Urundi became “labor reserves” with those working on large sisal plantations located on Tanganyika's coast relegated to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder (Daley 1993; Iliffe 1979: 305–309). Labor officers created reception camps at the borders to ensure colonially perceived “wandering hordes” could be contained and regulated (Chaulia 2003, 152). Labor desertion became a common tool of resistance by mobile laborers and in response, the kipande labor card and identification system was created for (male) contracted workers to prevent migrants from abandoning their posts (Sabea 2009).

Following World War II, the need for migrant labor rekindled colonial anxiety around controlling mobilities, leading to refugee laws—the foundation of today's encampment laws—expanding powers for the colonial state to evict refugees (Daley 1993). The colonial state was concerned not only with external movements but with containing and minimizing internal migrations within Tanganyika as well. If colonial subjects were allowed to freely move, the state could not impose cash crop production or collect taxes. A fitting example occurred in what is now the lowlands of the Kigoma Region of northwestern Tanzania—the area of today's remaining refugee camps. Amid high rates of sleeping sickness, caused by the presence of tsetse flies, the colonists forced more than 65,000 people into concentrated settlements known as “sleeping sickness concentrations.” These resettlements wrecked the economies of these displaced people due to the loss of crops and the lack of access to lucrative and spiritually significant honey and salt resources. Moreover, the tethering of peasants to concentrated settlements made tax collection and mobilizing labor migrant recruitment much easier for the colonists than the dispersed homesteads they previously lived in (Weiskopf 2011: 5). At the same time, colonists in Tanganyika were suspicious of Africans in Dar es Salaam, blaming them for the prevalence of crime in the city. In response, those found outside of their “tribal homes” were labeled by colonial administrators as “alien natives” (Miller 2011: 18–19). Colonial urban authorities imposed identity documentation, carried out rural repatriations, and spread propaganda about the dangers of rural Africans in the city (Burton 2005). These same anxieties about movements into the city remained following independence and were reflected in Tanzania's strict encampment policy codified in 1998 (Boeyink 2019).

Postcolonial Tanzania

Following Tanzanian independence, President Julius Nyerere was radical in opposing the remnants of colonialism within the country, across the continent, and around the world. Despite these oppositions, postcolonial Tanzania inherited or reapplied the colonial desire to control im/mobilities within and outside the country. This was most clear with President Nyerere's ujamaa and villagization policies in the 1970s and the strict refugee encampment policies of the 1990s. Unlike most other African postcolonial states, including Sierra Leone, Tanzania abolished the political salience of tribes, which dismantled a crucial vestige of indirect rule (Mamdani 1996). One of Nyerere's most enduring legacies was his philosophy of ujamaa, or “African Socialism,” which can only be examined briefly here. Key to ujamaa was villagization. Launched in 1973, this policy forced a widely dispersed rural population to resettle in ujamaa villages, marking clear parallels in practices and consequences to the colonial forced relocations (Lal 2012; Schneider 2006). These displacements caused similarly devastating social and economic consequences as the colonial sleeping sickness concentrations and later encampment policies (Boeyink 2022). Colonial urban anxiety, or the fear of urban unemployed “saboteurs” and other undesirables, was reified by the postcolonial Tanzanian state, believing them to be responsible for crime and joblessness. Accordingly, the state forcibly repatriated urban unemployed and migrant “exploiters” to ujamaa villages or back to neighboring countries (Miller 2011: 231–232).

Revered as a Pan-African statesman, Nyerere was one of the most prominent supporters of anti-colonial struggles through support of the OAU and his “open door” policy toward refugee “freedom fighters” from neighboring settler colonies in Southern Africa. Fondly referred to in Swahili as wageni or “guests,” they were allowed to freely move and work (Miller 2011: 25–27). Simultaneously, neighbors from Rwanda and Burundi, displaced by widespread postcolonial violence through the 1950s and 1970s, did not receive the same welcome, despite the centuries of shared borderland identities and cultures. Tanzania's nation-building project “necessitated the reinforcement of distinctions between ‘resident’ and ‘foreign’ Africans” (Brankamp and Daley 2020: 121). What this meant in practice can be seen in the Tanzanian borderlands of Kagera or Kigoma districts straddling Rwanda and Burundi. For decades, people in borderlands identified more by ethno-linguistic, cultural, and regional ties and affinity, rather than by colonially created national belonging. After independence and Nyerere's push toward consolidating a national identity, for the first time, borderland residents identified as Tanzanians rather than members of the interconnected peoples of the Great Lakes region. Thus, Rwandans and Burundians were seen as foreign outsiders and faced exclusion and hostility rather than solidarity (Boeyink 2022).

Patricia Daley notes the similarity in mobilization of Burundian labor from colonial to the postcolonial eras. Initially, in the 1960s, refugees in western Tanzania were dispersed among local communities and recruited as agricultural laborers, though they were often met with contempt in areas of labor shortage (1993: 22–23). Later, the Tanzanian state provided land and large settlements for these refugees to settle and cultivate, for which President Nyerere has rightly been lauded. However, they were also exploited for the development of the Tanzanian periphery regions through labor-intensive infrastructure, land-clearings, and cash crops for extremely low (or no) wages. Any protests were forcefully handled by the state through withdrawals of rations, shutting down schools, and destroying peoples’ homes. Moreover, structural exclusion and hierarchization of Burundian Hutus in the labor force since colonialism indicated an ethno-racialization marked by Hutus being seen as “dirty” (Brankamp and Daley 2020: 117–118) or holding the pejorative label of “tractors” for their cheap labor (Boeyink 2020).

Encamped Im/mobilities

The 1990s were a volatile period across Africa, which saw systematic dismantling of the state under structural adjustment and massive displacements from Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire³ to Tanzania. The lack of state capacity and refugee movements prompted the Tanzanian state to force refugees to live in camps and abdicate responsibility for managing these spaces to UNHCR and international NGOs (Chaulia 2003). Encampment required all refugees to register and reside in camps. This policy denied the freedom of movement and employment outside of the camps and included constant police crackdowns on refugees living in cities such as Dar es Salaam (Boeyink 2019). This follows a continuation of colonial and ujamaa-era anti-urbanization principles. This period was rife with violent forced repatriations carried out by Tanzanian security forces on Rwandan and Burundian refugees who tethered themselves to camps due to unsafe and unsuitable conditions of return in their countries of origin (Chaulia 2003). By 2015, Nyarugusu, which housed Congolese refugees, was the last remaining camp until more than 200,000 Burundian refugees fled due to government persecution and failed reintegration of previously repatriated refugees in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Nyarugusu doubled in size and two former camps for Burundians and old camps Nduta and Mtendeli were repurposed.

Under former President John Magufuli, and continuing today under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the state implemented a series of actions dismantling the asylum system. This began by closing borders through denials of asylum claims, despite ongoing instability in Burundi and DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). In 2017, the government shut down a popular and effective World Food Programme cash transfer program and later closed vital camp markets (and connective transport to markets such as bicycles and motorcycles), which has had devastating effects on the camp economy. More nefariously, there were credible reports from Human Rights Watch and others of Tanzanian and Burundian security officers involved in kidnapping, torture, ransoming, and illegal repatriations to Burundi (Boeyink and Falisse 2021). All of this was accompanied by constant admonishments from the Tanzanian government for the repatriation of Burundians. The shutdown of markets severed long-standing friendships and economic relations built through the only authorized interface of the camp common market. Most consequential, however, is that amid aid and food ration cuts, market and business closures have severely disrupted daily sustenance in camps and is forcing refugees with no better options to repatriate before they feel safe to do so (Boeyink and Falisse 2022). As described above, the colonial poll and hut taxes were used to create the need for cash economies and mobilize labor migrants tethered to “tribal homelands,” which could be controlled by kipande IDs. Presently, refugees, whose movements are enforced through refugee IDs, must endure the Tanzanian government's “hostile environment,” which is severely depressing existing refugee cash economies to detach refugees’ tethers to the camp, so they return to their “national homelands” in Burundi.

(De)coloniality of Tethered Mobilities

We have argued that the colonial creation of African borders and internal ethnic and rural- urban territorial borders have aided labor and resource extraction and fixed ethno-racialized ideas of “insider” and “outsider,” “native” and “non-native.” This creates tethered mobilities where mobile people are deemed “worthy” to reside (Boeyink 2019). We demonstrate that these “patterns of power” have “survived colonialism” in Sierra Leone and Tanzania, thus fitting Maldonado-Torres's definition of coloniality (Maldonado-Torres 2007). However, we are yet to fully address our key questions: what constitutes decolonization, and who “notices” it? To answer this question, we engage with critical fields within citizenship and migration studies, which steer us to the concept of mobility justice.

Critical citizenship studies, catalyzed by Engin Isin and others, argues that refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants must enact or claim citizenship by “being political.” They argue that “acts of citizenship . . . transform forms (orientations, strategies, technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being political by bringing into being new acts as activist citizens (claimants of rights and responsibilities) through creating new sites and scales of struggle” (Isin 2008: 39). Moreover, these acts “disrupt habitus, create new possibilities, claim rights and impose obligations in emotionally charged tones” (Isin and Nielsen 2008: 10). A key tenet of citizenship is the state facilitating access to justice, yet for urban migrants in Freetown, this was out of reach and undesirable, so they brought mobile, hybrid tribal courts to the city as “acts of citizenship.”

Isin makes clear that even non-citizens such as refugees can take part in these acts. Yet in Nyarugusu, any claim-making, such as protests, are dealt with violently by the state, making such attempts rare. The everyday livelihoods of refugees are acts more akin to habitus, rather than overtly political and under Isin's (2008) theory would not constitute as acts of citizenship. Nevertheless, we contend refugees’ resistant livelihoods should be considered disruptive decolonial acts, even though these everyday economies are not demonstrative or activist in nature. This would suggest these acts would more closely align with a stream within migration studies, known as “autonomy of migration” (AoM).

AoM would disagree with the acts of citizenship stance and argue that migration and mobilities are political acts (Monsutti 2018). This field celebrates the agency and resistance of migrants to restrictive migration regimes and argues for a shift in focus “from the apparatuses of control to the multiple and diverse ways in which migration responds to, operates independently from, and in turn shapes those apparatuses and their corresponding institutions and practices” (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015: 285). While not identifying with the AoM field, E. Tendayi Achiume (2019) characterizes movements of “Third World peoples” toward the metropoles as “migration as decolonization.” Like the critical citizenship section before, it may seem we would share this framing of migration, especially South to North, as decolonial action. While we hold elements of this view, it does not encapsulate our whole argument. Polly Pallister-Wilkins and others convincingly argue, “The mobility-as-resistance celebrated in the autonomy of migration approach is not only gendered, but it also often overlooks how intersections of race and bodily capacity impact people's ability to resist through movement” (Pallister-Wilkins 2022: 187). Moreover, AoM “silences those who find themselves ‘still here’” (2022: 188).

Alternatively, in the spirit of abolition, we join Pallister-Wilkins, Mimi Sheller (2018), and others advocating for mobility justice, seeking the right for all peoples to safely move—or stay—as they wish regardless of race, gender, class, and ability. This is why we developed the term “tethered mobilities” because it recognizes the coloniality of containment and spatial manipulation of migrants and displaced peoples’ and their mirrored opposite responses. They move into or refuse to leave spaces where colonial logic would prohibit them from inhabiting. Yet we must be clear-sighted about the prospects of decolonization for these cases. Maldonado-Torres's definition of decolonization requires the dismantling of relations of power and knowledge relating to racial, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies (2016), which indeed requires global political solidarity that cannot go “unnoticed” (Fanon 1963: 36).

When comparing the “odd-parings” of Sierra Leone and Tanzania with different histories and legacies of colonialism and migrant actors with contradictory legal and citizenship statuses, we naturally see divergent outcomes. Urban migrants in Freetown have had more “success” in “being political” and dismantling the coloniality of law, tribe, and rural-urban migration than encamped refugees in Tanzania. Indeed, most encamped refugees experience economic destitution, with more Burundians being economically coerced to repatriate by the day. Yet we view these comparisons to still be productive in their similarities and patterns. Both cases have identified the de/coloniality of tethered mobilities—spaces where mobile people “ought” to reside (in tribal and national homelands), where they are circulated for extraction and separation, and the spaces where they resistantly tether themselves. Yet in both cases, none of our interlocutors described their lives as in any way decolonial or revolutionary. Alone, these actors from below are clearly not dismantling these relations of power. This begs a return to our original question, who “notices” decolonization?

Borders and mobility controls established under colonialism, which continue today, are being disrupted from below when migrants and refugees are “noticed” or gain recognition from ethnic or national “others” rather than furthering the coloniality of separation and division. These interactions facilitate the integration of migrants and entail transfers of knowledge, relationships, and commerce. In Freetown, this disrupts colonially established laws and norms allowing faster access to justice, customary law transcending segregated ethnicity, and breaks gender-norms by opening barray chief positions to women. In Western Tanzania, mobile livelihoods bring together Burundian migrants and refugees with Tanzanian borderland hosts, communities that once regularly interacted and blurred together, which colonialism and nationalism has sought to divide (Boeyink 2022).

We also contend that researchers have a role in who notices these decolonial acts. We are not saying that we as researchers, based in the Global North, with networks built in the Global South, are the arbiters of decoloniality. On the contrary, we see our role as limited. Where we see ourselves as productive is pointing out where decolonial work is already happening—work that has always happened—by those subject to the coloniality of borders and im/mobility control. Theorizing with tethered mobilities allows us to join other scholars to illuminate and communicate the ever-present colonial past and imagine a decolonial future. Thus we connect with Hanno Brankamp's powerful case for “camp abolition”: “Anti-camp futures are thus not forged in academic discourses and musings, but are enacted through the irrepressible actions of fugitivity and survival among refugees who chart liberation from the current system while foreshadowing a new one” (Brankamp 2022: 124). Urban migrants seeking justice in Freetown and resistant mobile livelihoods in camps—tethered mobilities—are the embodiments of decolonial untethered futures of mobility justice for all. Their struggle resonates with what Ruth Wilson Gilmore says of abolition: “if freedom is a place, then abolition is life in rehearsal of making that place” (Gilmore 2022).