Reworking irregular migration imaginaries: how Senegalese activists use migration information campaigns to contest border violence and make EU externalisation visible.

Migration information campaigns present a paradox. They are one of the European Union's favored migration governance tools, while increasingly studies question their effectiveness. Yet campaigns persist. Campaigns involve a variety of actors from European funding states and international organizations to local NGOs that implement them, and from African youth who are the intended beneficiaries of the campaigns, to return migrants and Diaspora groups who perform in them. Campaigns take on a diversity of forms from theatre plays, film screenings, pod casts and various social media channels. They also contain a variety of messages, depending on who sponsors and who performs in them.

Campaigns are events where the divergent imaginings of migratory futures meet. This panel presents papers from a variety of disciplines that bring to light the divergent imaginings of migratory futures held by the different actors involved, the diverse messages that campaigns propagate, and the ambiguities and contradictions that are engendered in the complex field of campaigns. As such the panel will shed light on the paradox that campaigns represent.