INTRODUCTION
For several years sub-Saharan migrations have mainly been handled by the European States from an Africa-Europe viewpoint. So-called clandestine immigration, particularly from the African continent, has become a priority for the European Union (EU) and its Member States. It is often described as an “evil” responsible for numerous border deaths and the “brain drain” in North African and Western countries.
This “illegal” immigration to Europe is nevertheless largely a consequence of toughened measures on entry to Europe which gradually reduces to zero the possibility of legally entering Europe for most young Africans.
The highlights of these last five years and the media coverage to which they have been subjected have contributed to legitimising the European desire to close its borders. Thus, the events at Ceuta and Melilla in the Autumn of 2005 where at least 11 people were slaughtered during a desperate attempt to storm the fencing separating Morocco from the Spanish enclaves, as well as the boat phenomenon of the Senegalese and Mauritanian coasts toward the Canary Islands in 2006, informants nevertheless contributed to a representation of mass migration from the African continent toward Europe.
Now, this misguided speech emanating from Europe does not correspond with reality. The statistics and the various studies undertaken demonstrate that, indeed, sub-Saharan migrations toward Europe remain very much in the minority compared with other immigration within Europe and intra-African migrations.
Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa a minority among the immigrant population in Europe
According to the works of David Lessault and Cris Beauchemin, the number of sub-Saharan migrants in Europe remains very marginal. In 2004 they represented “only a little more than one tenth of all immigrants in France (12%). (...) The sub-Saharans are minorities not only in France but also in the large countries that receive immigrants. In 2000 they made up only 4% of immigrants settled in OECD countries. And even in the new European destinations of Spain and Italy they represent less than 10% of the immigrant population, including illegals (4% in Spain and 8% in Italy in 2006).”
This is a report that also corroborates the spectacular arrival of boats at the Canary Islands in 2006. Widely reported in the European and African media these thirty thousand arrivals nevertheless represent only 5% of migrant entrants into Spain in the same year.
“In reality Africans rarely migrate out of Africa”
Playing on the invasion myth, governments have embarked on a fight against migration while neglecting the fact that the majority of sub-Saharan African migrants mostly migrate to neighbouring countries: 60% of sub-Saharan migrations are South-South4 migrations, and “in Western Africa 86% of migrations are intra-regional (7.5 million people). Migrations that are significant in number but also in cultural and economic terms.
Despite this report and its consequences on populations and lifestyles, the North African and West African countries have had to agree to work for the EU in its fight against so- called clandestine immigration to Europe. Also, with disregard for article 13 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights sanctioning the right to leave any country including one’s own, the African states contribute to the European desire to shut away men and confine them within their own borders, including via the adoption of national legislation where emigration becomes “illegal”.
Sophisticated, costly systems are in place at the EU’s Southern borders; the countries of origin and transit are asked to adopt national migration policies and participate in the removal of “undesirables” or those suspected as such. In this war against migrants people are not granted the most basic rights; the reception and mobility traditions of the residents of these regions are ignored even though they are sanctioned by regional laws such as those governing the area of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which has sanctioned the freedom of movement and establishment of the nationals of its Member States.
Thousands of people who have sometimes left their countries many years ago thus find themselves trapped in these regions within which they are displaced at the whim of multiplying refoulements: from Morocco to Algeria and Mauritania, from Algeria to Mali and Niger, from Mauritania to Senegal and Mali or even Libya to Niger and Mali.
All of these systems based on deterrence and repression do not discourage people from moving, however, but contribute to placing them in danger: migrants adapt their migration strategies and use other more difficult routes. They also contribute to the deterioration of the historic mobility and solidarity networks and a tradition of hospitality fundamentally opposed to the coercive vision imposed by the EU.
The position at the border between Mali and Mauritania, described in this report, is one example of the consequences of imposing the European “migration management” model.
- Prisoners of the Desert: Investigation into the consequences of European migration policies at the Mali-Mauritania border