ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the jumping off point the relationship between practices of mass expulsion and imprisonment in Ghana, from Prime Minister Busia's declaration of the Aliens Compliance Order in 1969 to his ouster by the National Redemption Council in 1972. The prime minister's insistence on review calls our attention to the experiences of figures whose stories are often obscured in the literature on mass expulsion: migrants who remained in their host countries longer than expected, not despite but due to the mechanisms of the enforcement of expulsion orders. Ghana is a foil for the study of prisons in Africa. In the dominant historical narrative, prisons in Africa were a European colonial imposition of the late 19th century. The prime minister’s and Cabinet’s insistence on a review of every deportation case is clearly incompatible with the contemporary view of the era following the Aliens Compliance Order as one of indiscriminate mass expulsion.
