This chapter discusses hope, despair and uncertainty in precarious (or irregular) migration projects. I situate this theme in an overall mobility paradox where images and ideas of mobility are celebrated and circulated, globally and locally, while access to safe and legal migration is highly unequally distributed. The chapter outlines different conceptualizations and analyses of hope, uncertainty and (im)mobility, such as the repositories and trajectories of hope in migration, temporalities, future-making, and existential hope. Finally, I present a case study on Ghanaian precarious migration projects and forced relocation from North Africa and Western countries in a longitudinal perspective. Here I highlight that mobility is imbued with social and collective hope for transforming the future of the migrant and his/her family; that returning empty-handed often leads to social and economic marginalization and hence shattered hope; and finally that social and life trajectories change over time, hence changing the horizons of hope.
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Front Matter
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Part I: Approaches and perspectives on irregular migration
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Part II: Aspirations and facilitation of irregular migration
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Part III: Everyday life and (im)mobility
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Part IV: Informal and irregular labour and exploitability
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Part V: Geopolitics and micropolitics of control
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Part VI: Solidarity, advocacy and contestation
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Back Matter
