Marriage at the Embassy: Securing the EurAfrican Border in Cameroon

What is it about?

Abstract Through an analysis of how the French consulate in Cameroon deals with marriage-related visa applications, this chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of how border security plays out in state practices on the ground. The chapter seeks to trace the socio-cultural norms of relatedness and ethical expectations that are implicit in interviews and other procedures performed by consular staff. These procedures are of limited importance for actual immigration decisions, but instead serve a symbolic function: they perform, rather than implement, the border. Interviews, in particular, elicit confessions from applicants and reinstate the normativity of kinship and gender roles that the French state wishes to impose. By focusing on consulate officers’ affective politics of security, the chapter takes the French consulate as a paradigmatic case study of the security concerns that emerge in the EurAfrican border zone.

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