On February 21, 2023, Tunisian President Kais Saied described Tunisia as facing a threat of “hordes of irregular immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa” who are changing “the demographic composition of Tunisia.” His statement unleashed a campaign of state and civilian-supported violence against Black individuals, including sub-Saharan migrants and Black Tunisians. The president’s statement, in line with the anti-Black and anti-migrant ideologies that have increasingly gained popularity in and outside of Tunisia, is based on the assumption that all sub-Saharan migrants are “irregular,” without legal documentation in the form of valid visa or residence permit.
In practice, Tunisia’s outdated migration law, in addition to opaque procedures to entering the country or getting visa and residence permits have led to the country producing migrants’ “illegality.” The differences in treatment by both the Tunisian state and its civilians of sub-Saharan migrants compared to Global North migrants, irrespective of whether they are documented or not, points to the fact that the category of an ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’ migrant is a social and political construct built largely along racial lines. This is further highlighted by the fact that Black Tunisians have been harassed by both the police and civilians because they were mistaken to be ‘irregular’ migrants. Anyone who is Black, unable to speak Tunisian Arabic, dressed ‘African,’ is young, and moves in public spaces with others who look like them is assumed to be an irregular migrant in the Tunisian social and political imagination. The interviews, discussions, and observations that I have been conducting in Tunisia over 2020-2022 with sub-Saharan migrants, border and municipal police, and members of local and national governing bodies like mayors and parliamentarians, along with my experience of navigating visa and residence permit procedures as an Indian migrant in Tunisia, help demonstrate this reality.
Migration framework in Tunisia
The law that currently structures migration in Tunisia—in other words, entry, stay, and exit of non-Tunisians—dates from 1968. Yet, in practice, a series of norms have come to govern migration and have little overlap with the law. They reflect the politics of migration in the Mediterranean region that is dictated by the European Union’s externalization and securitization policies.
This opaqueness facilitates corruption and is used to control the so-called ‘irregular migration’ through state securitization apparatuses, such as ad hoc police control, arrest, and deportation.
Today, the Tunisian state maintains an opaqueness in the procedures defining visa and residence permit procurement, as well as entry and exit of Tunisian borders by foreigners. This opaqueness facilitates corruption and is used to control the so-called ‘irregular migration’ through state securitization apparatuses, such as ad hoc police control, arrest, and deportation. Migrants from the Global South are disproportionately targeted by these procedures, and are exposed to political, social, and economic humiliation and violence.
The opaqueness of visa and border-entry procedures
Three types of visa regimes are in place to govern the entry of non-diplomat foreigners into the Tunisian territory: visa-free, visa on arrival, and pre-obtained visa.
Citizens from the Global North, particularly from countries in Western Europe or North America like France, Germany, and the United States, benefit from a 90-day (or longer) visa-free entry policy. Citizens from many sub-Saharan countries also benefit from a 90-day visa-free policy, including francophone Central and West African countries like Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Most citizens from these countries enter the Tunisian state legally, including in cases when they are arriving into Tunisia through its land borders, via Algeria or Libya, through human smuggling networks, as some of my Ivorian migrant interlocutors have indicated.
At the border, Global South migrants, especially sub-Saharan migrants, face unequal treatment compared to migrants from the Global North. By law, a French citizen and an Ivorian citizen entering Tunisia through the airport are subject to the same procedures. Yet, based on interviews with several sub-Saharan nationals, many sub-Saharan nationals benefiting from visa-free entry are rejected entry and deported upon arrival. The implicit reason for such deportations is an assumption that sub-Saharan migrants, as opposed to Global North migrants, aim to ‘illegally’ travel to Italy through Tunisia. Many have also reported being stopped and questioned by Tunisian border police prior to entry.
For citizens of countries who benefit from visa-on-arrival, a 60 dinar or $20 visa stamp can be obtained at the airport’s visa counter. Based on my observation at the airport, the list includes citizens from India and Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. However, I have not been able to find an official list of all the countries: no information is available on the websites of Tunisian embassies or consulates about the visa-on-arrival process, which remains ad hoc as well. For example, I have known cases where some Indian tourists were denied a visa at Tunis-Carthage airport, while others were issued the visa at the same airport between 2021 and 2022. In addition, many Tunisian consulates claim that the visa-on-arrival policy for Indian citizens has been suspended since 2020, while I myself have been issued a visa-on-arrival in October 2021.
Citizens from countries that do not have visa-free or visa-on-arrival privileges require applying for visas at Tunisian consulates or embassies. Citizens of countries like Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo are included here, as well as citizens from most Arab-region countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.
For a tourist or student visa, the list of documents that I personally have been asked to submit include bank statements for three months, proof of housing in Tunisia, and return flights to my home country or country of residence. In addition, to obtain a student visa, a letter of registration in a Tunisian higher education institution also needs to be submitted.
The payment of visa fees still does not guarantee that the visa will be granted. The official visa costs also vary significantly, having more than doubled during the pandemic. Even after being granted a visa, students entering Tunisia may still get stopped by the border police and asked for a representative from a higher education institution in the country to “validate” their entry as a student.
The impossibility of procuring a residence permit
After entering Tunisia, one has to apply for the residence permit before the expiration of the student or tourist visa. The official portal of administrative information and communication (SICAD) in Tunisia lists the required documents and procedures to apply for the permit for workers, students, those married to a Tunisian national, those who have retired from the workforce, or those seeking to invest in Tunisia. Most sub-Saharan migrants fall into the first two categories.
In practice, none of the procedures or the timeline outlined by SICAD are followed. The list of documents that need to be submitted changes based on the local administrative body, which is usually the local branch of the Directorate General of Borders and Foreigners, located in select local police stations. Even within the same bureau, the list of needed documents may change based on the staff-member handling the case. For example, when I submitted my application for the residence permit in December 2020, my file was initially declared complete by one member and, a few months later, declared incomplete by another.
Many documents that are listed by SICAD or demanded by the local bureau are difficult to obtain in Tunisia, as the late Jamila Ksiksi, Black Tunisian and former member of the parliament, pointed out to me during an interview. For example, individuals seeking a residence permit need to submit a lease agreement while, in practice, Tunisian landlords rarely issue such agreements. The same is true of work contracts that are needed to procure a work permit in Tunisia as contracts are rarely signed between employers and employees in both formal and informal employment sectors. In the case of students, the proof of enrollment needed for a residence permit application is often provided by Tunisian higher education institutions only after the three-month legal-stay period, making sub-Saharan students ‘illegal.’ The needs for those documents have created an underground market for fabricated documents that sell for 150 to 200 dinars, or $50 to $65 each.
Once the submitted application is declared complete, the bureau usually provides a temporary residence permit card—a flimsy piece of paper scribbled in sometimes illegible handwriting that easily fades with water and light. Different administrative bodies involved in migrant governance such as municipal and border police and staff at the Directorate General of Borders and Foreigners, have contrasting ideas about the validity of this temporary permit. For example, while the police of the municipality of Bab Souika in Tunis recurrently told me that I could exit and enter the country without problem using the temporary permit, both the Tunisian consulate in Paris and the border police at Tunis airport informed me that I would not be allowed to re-enter the country with this piece of paper. According to the migration lawyer in charge of my file, this temporary residence permit is also only valid for one month, and it is the duty of the Tunisian state to provide a response within this period by either giving me a residence permit or a justification for rejecting the application.
The residence permit that rarely materializes
Residence permits are needed in order to access public services like healthcare and private services like bank services. Sub-Saharan migrants hope that they will receive their permit to avoid legal precarity, which is used by law enforcement and other migration control bodies to pressure sub-Saharan migrants into paying them bribes. For example, even before the current waves of arrests of sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia, many of these racially marginalized migrants had experienced police harassment and arrests on the pretext of their undocumented status.
By not providing residence permits on time, the Tunisian state forces sub-Saharan migrants to become undocumented, as many sub-Saharan interlocutors have mentioned during our conversations.
Once the temporary residence permit expires, migrants, irrespective of their nationality, become undocumented or “irregular.” By not providing residence permits on time, the Tunisian state forces sub-Saharan migrants to become undocumented, as many sub-Saharan interlocutors have mentioned during our conversations. In addition, once undocumented, migrants are forced to pay a visa-overstay penalty of 20 Tunisian dinars per week, about $26 per month. Many sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia who have been undocumented for four or more years (hence with a minimum of $1,250 in overstay penalty) pointed out to me that it is cheaper for them to pay smugglers to take them to Italy rather than to pay the penalty charges and purchase expensive flights to their home country; back in 2022, smugglers charged around $1,300-1,600 per person.
Post-2023 anti-migrant statement by President Saied
Global North migrants—like French and Italian migrants—are also affected by Tunisian migration administration’s non-transparent residence permit procedures and delays. But these migrants do not have to face the assumption, by the state and the society,of being criminal and irregular in Tunisia. Rather, many of these privileged migrants talk of visa overstay penalties as a simple administrative step, far from the fear of arrests or deportation sub-Saharan migrants face.
Following President Saied’s statement on Sub-Saharan migrants, state and civilian groups began claiming that around a million or more sub-Saharan migrants were living illegally in Tunisia—basically around 8 percent of the country’s population. But this number is significantly larger than any estimate provided by international organizations or NGOs which believe that there are about 30,000-50,000 sub-Saharan migrants. The faulty discourse that there are “hordes” of sub-Saharan migrants is instrumentalized by political groups like the Tunisian Nationalist Party to gain popular support. The worsening economic crisis, which led to shortages of basic goods such as milk, sugar, and bread, makes it easier to blame sub-Saharan migrants for over-consuming those goods or even stealing Tunisian jobs.
As a result, sub-Saharan migrants face multiple forms of harassment and violence. Many lost their jobs, were kicked out of their houses and made homeless, and were harassed on the street. I have documented cases where sub-Saharan migrants were arbitrarily arrested and sent to prison, with their families, employers, and legal support groups unable to track their whereabouts. Many have camped in front of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) headquarters in Tunis, hoping the organizations would provide material and political support, but they were faced with silence. Additionally, the rising number of sub-Saharan migrants’ deaths on the shores of Tunisia point to the fact that many are fleeing using clandestine and fatal routes through the sea, only to be met with a fate of drowning and death.
An increase in transparency around procedures for obtaining visas and residence permits in Tunisia would decrease the legal, social, and economic precarity faced by sub-Saharan migrants. Yet, a simple reform in these procedures will not challenge the racializing structures in Tunisia that construct Blackness as an inferior ‘other’ and which (re)produce the socio-political construction of ‘irregular migrant.’
Shreya Parikh is a Dual Ph.D. candidate in political sociology at CERI-Sciences Po Paris and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Beyond Borders Ph.D. Fellow (2022-24) at Zeit-Stiftung. She is interested in the study of race, borders, migration, and citizenship in North Africa and the diaspora.