The Allure of Scapegoating Return Migrants during a Pandemic.

The stigmatization of Senegalese return migrants as COVID-19 vectors by fellow Senegalese during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic troubles the self/other distinction that underpins the scholarly focus on epidemics and xenophobia and encourages the broader task of exploring epidemics and phobia. The casting of return migrants as COVID-19 vectors was influenced by longstanding ambivalence toward these migrants that had encouraged some Senegalese to seek to "confine" them to Europe long before the pandemic. Old preoccupations help us understand how Senegalese interpreted and deployed COVID-19 control and prevention measures like "confinement," lockdowns, and border closures.

Epidemics, Xenophobia and Narratives of Propitiousness.

The heightening of exclusionary practices targeting migrants during epidemics often creates dilemmas for perpetrators whose resolution undermines the foundational structures of xenophobic narratives. For many perpetrators of xenophobic acts, epidemics amplify dilemmas rooted in the chasm between neat dichotomizing exclusionary tropes and messy social realities. Escape efforts involving fabricating categories of special migrants that can be spared maltreatment undermine the homogenization and ossification of communities, and the elision of inter-communal links that are fundament to xenophobic discourses. Exclusionary practices targeting Peul migrants from Guinea in Senegal during the 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic constitutes the arena for this study.