Out of Africa

Why People Migrate

Giovanni Carbone

• Publisher: Ledizioni
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9788867056675
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The EU is struggling to cope with the so-called "migration crisis" that has emerged over the past few years. Designing the right policies to address immigration requires a deep understanding of its root causes. Why do Africans decide to leave their home countries? While the dream of a better life in Europe is likely part of the explanation, one also needs to examine the prevailing living conditions in the large and heterogeneous sub-Saharan region. This Report investigates the actual role of political, economic, demographic and environmental drivers in current migration flows. It offers a comprehensive picture of major migration motives as well as of key trends. Attention is also devoted to the role of climate change in promoting migration and to intra-continental mobility (two-thirds of sub-Saharan migrant flows start and end within the region). Two country studies on Eritrea and Nigeria are also included to get a closer sense of local developments behind large-scale migration to Europe.

1. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Why Africans Migrate

Giovanni Carbone

Beyond the Mediterranean, south of the Sahara

A kind of short-sightedness seems to dominate European perceptions of international migration. National governments and publics peer over the horizon to monitor the infringement of the land and maritime frontiers of the European Union by migrants nearing the continent by boat, by walking on foot or by some other means. The migrants’ often-dramatic journeys are observed with a primary focus on how and whether they will actually enter the EU, requiring some direct responses and interventions. This, in turn, is followed by concerns about how to manage asylum-seekers and economic immigrants who want to cross further national borders within the EU, how to deal with their presence in European host societies, and how to possibly favour their return home. In the process, our gaze only rarely goes much beyond the southern edges of the Mediterranean Sea1.

Yet, since a substantial share of migrants to the EU hails from sub-Saharan Africa, the story of what lies behind contemporary migration is – to a large extent – to be found in the region. A more complete understanding of the root causes and immediate triggers of migration thus requires us to look further than we are used to, and to inquire into both the particular contexts and the shared processes that characterise the migrants’ places of origin. What type of economic, political or social situations are these people trying to leave behind – maybe even flee – in their home countries, if any? In seeking to answer these questions, the volume illustrates and disentangles the impact of certain conditions that are specific to national or even sub-national realities (see, for example, Nicole Hirt’s chapter on Eritrea and the role that an open-ended military and national service plays in encouraging clandestine emigration) from that of broader and common phenomena shaping reality across state borders (as, for example, with regard to climate change and migration in the Sahel sub-region, discussed in Sara Vigil’s chapter).

Understanding migration

Migration is widely recognised as a complex phenomenon that cannot be easily reduced to any single factor, but rather results from multiple, overlapping and shifting motives. The common understanding that international migrants essentially respond to global inequalities and geographical differences in wealth, freedom and wellbeing is a helpful but limited starting point, as it cannot explain, for example, “why do so few people migrate”2– 244 million in 2015, or just about 3.3% of the world population – nor the reasons why this percentage stayed relatively unchanged for at least the past half-century (the figure was 2.4% in 1960 and 2.1% in 1980)3. Besides economic and political conditions in origin and destination countries, and existing national and international policies, any sound inquiry into this subject must account for the crucial role that a migrant’s personal circumstances, and the family and social networks he or she relates to, play in a decision to move that cannot be reduced to a semi-automatic response to external conditions.

One classic if simplistic way of framing the various explanatory factors that are presumed to lead to migration is to distinguish between a macro, a meso and a micro level4. Macro-level causes are structural drivers that, in principle, indistinctly affect each and every potential migrant. A country’s demographics, its geographic location and climatic events, economic wealth and performance, established political arrangements and security issues, and migration policies – both with regard to origin as well as to transit and destination countries – all fall into this category. On the opposite side, micro-level conditions include both the long list of an individual’s personal features (age, gender, health, language, ethnicity, etc.) as well as the resources available to him or her (notably, finances and skills, including education). In between the two, a less obvious meso-level category accounts for those elements connecting the individual with the broader society, such as an extended family group, ethnic, religious or regional communities, and wider social networks, comprising those powered by internet and the new social media. It is well-documented, for example, that migrant networks connecting “migrants, former migrants, and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through bonds of kinship, friendship, and shared community origin … decrease the economic, social and psychological costs of migration”5, thus favouring the probability that a specific person will embark on the journey as well as affecting how the latter unfolds.

Yet how exactly one or more of the abovementioned factors actually lead to migration requires a specific causal story, that is, a theoretical explanation. And there is no lack of such accounts6. In a rather deterministic way, “push-pull” or “gravity” approaches look at international migration as a response to the wide differences in the demographic structure and economic opportunities of individual countries, towards a functional equilibrium. Asymmetric relations between economically advanced and poor countries are also at the basis of a second set of explanations – at times referred to as historical-structural – but in this case the emphasis lies on the uneven and exploitative nature of (mostly labour) migration under global capitalism. Human migration, however, is hardly the kind of rational, passive and smooth response to external conditions that both push-pull and historical-structural accounts would posit. Ultimately, an individual chooses to migrate, and this may have to do more – or at least also – with his or her perceptions, aspirations and resources, with risk-sharing and diversification strategies within the family, or with the established mobility patterns of the cultural or regional community he or she belongs to. Recent versions of migration transition theories7 try to incorporate the role of an individual’s decisions within a macro-level approach. The central tenet is that migration is essentially “an intrinsic part of broader processes of social change, usually embodied in the concept of ‘development’”8, and unfolds in a non-linear way. As societies develop and transform, increased awareness, aspirations and assets make individuals more likely to decide to migrate. But the process also leads to a point where, once a country achieves a certain level of development, the balance between emigration and immigration shifts, with the former declining while the latter increases.

In their efforts to explain mobility, migration studies made several common or common-sense assumptions much more problematic than they at first appear. Far from being a modern phenomenon, migration is found across ages and societies (with a peak of intensity during the XIX century). As a matter of fact, asking why, today, so many people move may not even be the right question: in a global world that is otherwise characterised by freedom of movement – can we imagine a situation in which only 3% of supermarket products, television programmes, websites or books come from abroad? – the share of migrants over the world population actually looks abnormally low9. Also, there is now widespread consensus that the same individual may have different motivations for leaving his or her country, that these motives may change over time and often blur the distinction between economic migrants and refugees. Contrary to popular perceptions, it is not the poorest and the destitute that depart their home places to try and reach more advanced nations, since some basic financial resources and skills are necessary to afford long-distance mobility10. Most migrants typically remain within the world region they were born in11. For the same reason, climate and environmental changes per se are likely not enough to ignite very large extra-continental migration flows, as feared by some. Global inequalities may be less relevant than migration networks and a “culture of migration” in shaping patterns of international migration and making them self-perpetuating processes. The very notion that promoting aid, investment, trade and other forms of exchange between countries of destination and countries of origin can help contain people’s movements may be misplaced, as closer links may turn out to actually foster the volume of migration. Finally, in spite of mounting anti-immigration fears across a number of Western countries, there is increasing evidence of a positive economic impact of migration in receiving economies12.

Does “Africa on the move” mean “Africans on the move”?

Ever since sub-Saharan countries gained independence back in the 1960s, the region has consistently remained the poorest in the world bar Southern Asia. With a US$3,922 per capita income at purchasing-power parity in 201613, the area has long been synonymous with development failure: a stagnating region with few signs of change and little prospects of advancement. The peak of disappointment was the “lost decade” of the 1980s and early 1990s, when “devastatingly bad economic performance” led to a visible decline in living standards14. By the end of the century, per capita income was at the same level it was in the early 1960s15.

Since around the mid-1990s and then the early 2000s, however, sub-Saharan Africa began to witness quite substantial progress. More optimistic – and at times over-optimistic – assessments made their appearance and rapidly multiplied as if by contagion. By then, many observers deemed Africa “on the move”, “fast-changing”, “in transformation”, or “rising”. While the occasionally hyperbolic accounts risked hiding the extent to which many things remained just as they were – including the lifestyles, resources and vulnerabilities of many remote rural areas, as the current hunger crisis in East Africa reminds us all too clearly – sub-Saharan societies did see the emergence of new dynamics and important progress. Besides the latter, long-term ongoing processes also continued to unfold, implying additional, if more gradual, changes. Some of the key transformations underway in recent years include massive demographic expansion, remarkable economic performances, technological innovations, social improvements, political renewals, and environmental change. What have been the main implications – if any – for African mobility?

With extraordinarily high population growth rates, the number of Africans south of the Sahara doubled from 493 million in 1990 to almost 1 billion in 2015, or a 96% increase (by way of comparison, Asians grew by “only” 37% over the same period). The region is expected to double yet again by 2050 (reaching 2.2 billion people) and then by 2100 (4 billion), driving the world’s population dynamics and approaching the size of Asia16. The trend towards strong demographic expansion is the result of the “striking contrast” between rapid health improvements – leading to sharp declines in mortality rates, particularly for children – and a slow reduction in fertility rates17. With an astounding average of 7.6 children per woman – the world’s highest fertility rate – the population of Niger will more than triple from today’s 20 million to almost 70 million in 2050. A medium-sized country such as Uganda, which was inhabited by just 5 million people in 1950, will have 214 million at the end of this century. Since sub-Saharan Africa has historically displayed comparatively low levels of population density, however, it only overtook Europe in recent years and remains far behind Asia (i.e. 44 versus 142 inhabitants per square kilometre in 2015).

The massive expansion of youth cohorts and the clash between their economic expectations and lack of employment opportunities in their home countries is one of the most-frequently cited motives behind migration flows towards Europe. In principle, however, the possibility exists of turning Africa’s expanding working-age population into an asset for economic and social development, as opposed to a Malthusian burden and a source of competi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Colophon
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Conclusions
• Annex
• Notes
• The Authors