A Sudanese woman sits quietly during a creative workshop on migration trajectories held at a local refugee-led organization in Cairo. The convener has asked the participants if they can see themselves in a story she just told of Harriet Jacobs (1813 – 1897), a former slave and abolitionist in the United States who encountered many barriers during her long journey to freedom. The woman raises her hand and quietly expresses that, yes, she sees herself reflected in the story. She begins to tell the convener and her fellow participants that she was on a truck speeding through the expansive desert somewhere between the Sudanese-Egyptian border in the summer of 2023. As the truck hit something on the route her young son flew up into the air and she was unable to grab him to pull him back. He fell out of the truck and laid amongst the vast and inhospitable landscape. Her voice starts to crack and tears well in her eyes. For those of us who know these stories intimately, we know that was the last time the woman laid eyes on her son. Smugglers do not stop for anything or anyone in the desert; their only goal is making      sure their transport arrives at the agreed upon destination. Only a little over three years ago, this woman and her son could have entered Egypt without the need for any visas. This is no longer the case, and as Egypt continually tightens its border controls many individuals are intimately experiencing the impact of such policy decisions. While many associate migration deterrence policies with global North states; particularly Australia, the European Union, and the United States, many countries in the global South are also practicing such deterrence for their own reasons.

Time and time again, people have argued that migration deterrence does not work, and I argue that countries in the global South are no different by exploring the case study of Egypt. Closing borders and attempting to filter people, especially those fleeing conflict, only forces those same individuals to either take more expensive and dangerous routes or be stuck in the enveloping violence. If someone is able to cross the border, deterrence does not end as the threats of residency checks, detention, and deportation loom. By looking at the stories of displaced Sudanese in Egypt, one can see how such policies have a true human impact.

Migration deterrence uses the theoretical idea of push-pull factors when it comes to the reasons why someone may migrate. For example, some pull factors may be the promise of employment, social welfare, political rights, safety, and education. Push factors may include economic issues, war, conflict, and oppression of varying forms. As many migration scholars have argued over the years, push-pull factors are outdated and focus more on economic factors for movement with little focus on the importance of social norms and networks. However, from a government’s perspective, in order to stop this so-imagined push-pull cycle, at least from one side, a government needs to take away or decrease the factors that may entice a migrant to leave their country and enter one that is not their own. One such way is implementing restrictive border controls and constricting internal measures.

According to political scientists Marlene H. Jacobsen and Rhys Machold, what makes migration deterrence policies notable is the “ways longstanding logics of deterrence are........

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