The right to exit as national and transnational governance: The case of Eritrea

In this article, we seek to explain some of the seeming paradoxes of extreme restrictions on the right to exit in the case of Eritrea. While the government has denied passports and exit visas to all but a few categories of Eritrean resident citizens in order to avoid a mass exodus from the country, and imposed harsh punishments on those found crossing the border illegally, the government has also institutionalised policies to “welcome” absconders back. We argue that restrictions on the “right to exit” make this ostensibly more conciliatory position possible because they constitute such a powerful tool of both national and transnational governance. We show the long-term impacts that people's inability to leave Eritrea legally has on their access to other rights, in particular the right to family life, and how this enables the Eritrean government to continue to discipline people's behaviour long after they have crossed the border. Alongside the ways in which the Eritrean government thus benefits financially and politically from large-scale emigration from the country, despite its protestations to the contrary, we show how limits on the right to exit provide yet another way for authoritarian governments to exercise transnational reach.