While the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has responded to the plight of unauthorised Black African migrants in Niger as a humanitarian emergency, its mandate to facilitate the repatriation of these unauthorised migrants has raised the issue of coercion regarding its provision of humanitarian aid. IOM considers pregnant women migrants as vulnerable persons, and the maternal care they receive in the third trimester illustrates the ways that coercion and bodily control dictate migrant life in the IOM camp. Relying on over 12 months of ethnographic research, including interviews with migrants and IOM officials inside the IOM migrant camp in Agadez, this article highlights the inconsistencies of humanitarianism within the migration control apparatus. This article will be divided into three parts. Part I outlines how IOM utilises migrant women's vulnerabilities by enrolling these women in voluntary return programmes as a form of rescue. Part II explores the ways that pregnant migrants are susceptible to illness due to unhygienic conditions and how the camp itself produces iatrogenic effects. Part III focuses on how IOM's care of pregnant migrants may result in unwanted caesarean section procedures in the third trimester.
Ampson Hagan (Thu,) studied this question.