The (in)formality of mobility in the ECOWAS region: The paradoxes of free movement

The free movement protocols of the Economic Community West African States (ECOWAS) have never been fully implemented, yet within region people continued to move relatively freely. At same time, original aim improve mobility appears be changing one control over mobility. Drawing on fieldwork data as well a collaborative, deliberative process uncovering what means in conversations with group scholars and activists, this article seeks better understand region, despite all its paradoxes. It shows how formal is undermined by several regional national impediments, including weak ECOWAS institutions, divergent interests among individual member states infrastructural challenges like accessing ID cards, external influence from EU. These however work convergence practice everyday socio-political spaces that cross borders.