Contemporary African Exodus To Europe And The Negative Impacts Of Colonial Economies
For a long time, the African Union (AU) has recognised patterns of so-called irregular migration to Europe, severe labour exploitation, human trafficking and contemporary slavery of its younger generation as a key obstacle for continental socio-economic development. Through its own initiatives, the AU has done significantly very little to stop the human smuggling, trafficking, killings, and the buying and selling of its citizens across the Sahara desert into Libya and towards the Mediterranean cemetery in order to reach Europe. The European Union on the other side, is increasingly indifferent to the Mediterranean tragedy of the African continent and speedily move towards a policy of “zero irregular migration through the Mediterranean”.
Although, the preamble of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of The European Union starts off by stating that “Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity”.
That the EU “is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law”. However, that does not change the reality that the European Integrated Border Management (IBM) is rapidly moving towards a policy of “zero migration” which results in humanitarian disasters both in the desert and in the Mediterranean. Even when they make it to the European shores in the case of Italy, many of the so-called asylum and detention camps are criticised of been turned to modern prisons where asylum seekers and refugees (African youths) can be detain for years without work or documentation.
As a result, many African youths are caught up between so-called regularisation and work exploitation due to their needy and vulnerable conditions —without a proper document to work or to be able to rent. While the hosting capacity as well as the reception and integration practices of destination territories and societies are diverse and indeed some are remarkable, however, African youths found themselves many times without the necessary documents to go-ahead with their lives.
The criminalisation of African migration into the EU
The purpose of this commentary is far from bringing to attention all the problems these highly vulnerable migrants face from their countries of origin to their countries of destination in Europe, rather, it fundamentally looks at the status quo of those political relationships which reproduce human rights violations that this type of migration breeds and why it should be regulated in the most possible humanitarian way putting the interest of the movers first.
By now, what is happening in the Sahara desert, Mediterranean sea under the European integrated border management and single asylum policy and the subsequent gatekeeper positions of African workers in different work contexts in Europe cannot be considered as an acceptable political behaviour because it is potentially detrimental to Africa in both short and long run.
For Africa, a practical political decision that will stop the Mediterranean genocide and grave human rights violations that come with this exodus is immediately necessary. This is essential if Africa intends to develop its continental economies, politics and social fabrics to benefit its majority economically poor and disadvantaged rural population who cannot make it on their own.
African vampire leadership vs European xenophobic and fascists institutions
For decades, the political gap between Europe and Europe remained very stiff. European Union dictates resolutions and incentives mainstream media propaganda in calling the Mediterranean humanitarian crisis as a “migration crisis”. The media’s attention has shifted from bringing about solutions to problematising existing humanitarian measures. For instance, humanitarian rescue ships have often been threaten from saving the lives of those who otherwise cannot protect themselves in the sea.
Sea Watch, Sea Eye and Mediterranean all operating in the Mediterranean Sea found it extremely difficult to operate under present facist and anti-migratory policies of Europe in Italy, Spain and Malta most especially. Stories are nearly the same prevalently to appease the status quo of the European political agenda. Consequently, the EU leaves people fleeing from wars, persecution, hunger, diseases, poverty, global warming and dictatorial governments to literally die in the Sahara desert and in the Mediterranean Sea, and if they make it at all, most still cannot meet their average expectations.
These migrants are left to fight for their fates in the hands of criminal organisations in their transit countries within Africa, and before the dangerous-no-transit-zone of the Mediterranean cemetery. And from some concentrated and below standard asylum and detention camps (European modern prisons for Africans) to the so-called never ending regularization processes which take minimum two years. This paradigm is called the criminalisation of African mediterranean migration into the EU.
Like transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, the systematic ‘killings’ of vulnerable migrants (women and children) in the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea by European powers at the watch of the international community is the most cruel way of controlling and exploiting the already impoverished, needy and vulnerable Africans who cannot find refuge in their own homes. These hopeless movers are being destroyed by both home and European powers to be left in a continuous state of limbo; running from the known devil (African vampire leadership) to the unknown so-called “angel” (European xenophobic and fascists institutions).
Colonial definition: who is a refugee and for that matter, who isn’t?
Majority African migrants who entered into Europe through the Mediterranean are not recognised as refugees. Meanwhile, the United Nations have not yet considered the humanitarian tragedy and deplorable conditions of African migrants in Europe as a serious threat to the human dignity, socio-economic emancipation, cultural and political development of the African continent.
At the same time, this African exodus due to forced displacement caused by corrupt, dictatorial and vampire governments, global warming, continuous political instability, famine, extreme structural poverty and lack of basic life opportunities are a strong phenomenon of African migration patterns. Are these enough reasons for an African youth to abandoned his home and search for life security elsewhere?
At the same time, in 2020, whether an individual is entitled to receive protection is still decided based on the 1951 Geneva Convention (Article 1) which defines a refugee as someone “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion…”.
However, in the last almost 70 years there has been more than enough economic, social, ecological and cultural changes in our world that would call for the re-definition of who can be considered as a refugee and why a protective net must be lied spread for all those vulnerable and needy movers —constrain Africans who live behind their homes and families.
According to the United Nations 2019 report, there are 70.8 million people who have been forcibly displaced worldwide, of these, 41.3 million are internally displaced, 25.9 million are refugees and 3.5 million are asylum seekers. Meanwhile, the largest part of African migration lies within the continent itself.
Exodus outta Mama Africa: pilgrims voting with their feet
Since 2015 Member states (MS) of the European Union (EU) have experienced an increase in migration flows that has made significant impacts on the socio-political dynamics. According to IOM (2020), a total of 117,904 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe by land and sea between January and November 2019, while these numbers were 68%, 34% and 12% higher in the same periods of 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. Hundreds of thousands were and are forced to flee their countries and seek asylum in Europe due to extreme poverty, famine, climate change, war and conflicts.
The recent rise in the number of vulnerable African migrants, displaced and stateless people, asylum seekers and refugees caught up in situations of industrial (agriculture, construction, hospitality, tourism) and domestic exploitation in Italy and Spain most especially as countries of entrance, is also exacerbated by the 2014 ongoing war in Libya. Additionally, the Libyan war incentivises a surge of human smuggling, trafficking, prostitution and severe exploitation of African movers through the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean cemetery kept alive by the EU.
…. caught up in the Mediterranean cemetery….
While most European institutions remain indifferent to the Mediterranean tragedy of largely African people, for more than a decade many parts of the world are kept ignorant about it. The United Nations have not clearly pronounced it as a serious threat to the human dignity, socio-economic emancipation, cultural and political development of the African continent.
Meanwhile, a pattern of rapid population growth, extreme structural economic and educational poverty coupled with unnecessary urbanisation mixed with patterns of westernisation in especially sub-Saharan Africa called for stronger infrastructure that could not be met by the available political and economic resources.
Consequently, this largely unplanned development has continuously shaped poverty, institutional corruption, rural marginalisation embedding inequality patterns which result in unplanned and forceful migration out of Mama Africa. While these discontents are busting at the seams, the EU builds its fortress stronger everyday. Eventually, African migration towards the European Union also diversifies not least the restrictive immigration policies. Therefore, young Senegambians are willing to reduce risks hopefully by migrating.
It is by now evident that constrained intellectual migration —moving out of young Africans— will have more implication on future Africa, more sure if these intellectuals become westernised rather than modernised. While Chinese labourers are incentivised to work in Africa, paradoxically, the African himself/herself is being chased away.
S/he chases fortune and security by foot, many times constrained. Eventually, European remittances are seen as a fundamental life insurance for hundreds of thousands of households without monthly income. So far, the exodus of African youths is been treated as convenient for the Gross Domestic Products of failing African economies and political institutions.
…discriminatory laws and immigration policies….
Today, hundreds of thousands of African nationals (TCNs) who have entered into Europe through the Mediterranean either through Italy or Spain work as pieceworkers in marginalised sectors such as agriculture and construction due to the absolute lack of judicial protection and other real opportunities. For instance, Italy’s Consolidated Immigration Act (Law 199/1998) for non-EU workers are at a crossroad of politically sensitive issues concerning concentrated detention camps, low standard asylum centres, xenophobia and discrimination.
Almost imperceptibly, restrictive national and European immigration policies —to be protected or not to be— on both short and long run expose many African migrants into irregularity, severe work exploitation and situations of contemporary slavery that in many ways is convenient for the European political institutions and productive sectors such as agriculture and construction.
These discriminative immigration policies of the EU cut across (personal, cultural, and religious) identities, national borders and state sovereignty, economic status and citizenship and as a consequence, many African youths are yet to find a dignified living space in Europe while being severely exploited to the advantage of the single European and global market.
For instance, annually, Italy exports up to 14 per cent of world tomatoes. As a matter of fact, Italian tomatoes can be found in African cities, towns and villages and led to the failure of Ghana’s tomato market.
….between severe exploitation and so-called “regularisation”…
The 2019 Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery including its causes and consequences (UN Geneva, 2019) mentioned migration as a risk factor to vulnerability and therefore, an exposure to contemporary forms of slavery. As a matter of fact, Since September 2017, the European Commission on the Mid-Term Review of the European Union (EU) Agenda for Migration mentioned undeclared work as a “pull factor” for irregular migration into the EU usually through Italy.
According to Amnesty International (2020), the number of irregular migrants in Italy will surpass 670,000 in 2020. This number is more than twice as many as only five years ago. Meanwhile, the 2018 Global Slavery Index estimated that the prevalence of modern slavery in Italy was at 145,000 absolute number of victims with an estimated vulnerability rate of 28.3 percent.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated half a million of the 2.45 million people trafficked worldwide live within the geographical region of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The Europol Situation Report (2016) observed an increase in the number of registered victims of trafficking for labour exploitation by 21 percent.
.…Kunta Kinteh is alive but not safe and sound….
Personally, I wrote my Ph.D dissertation on the agricultural exploitation of migrants in Italian agriculture and lasted for more than three years. I have carried out field trips and conducted two case studies in Italy and in Senegambia. In Italy I did my case study at the so-called agricultural ghetto of Campobello di Mazara (Sicily countryside) in 2018 (Oct-Jan) with a follow-up in 2019.
In this particular agricultural ghetto, Senegambians live and work under inhumane conditions without the basic services such as running water, houses, toilets, electricity or Kitchens. They work for 8-10 hours a day with pays far lower than that set by national and provincial laws while doing the dirty, dangerous and dull jobs. Even during the countrywide Covid-19, migrant workers fed a country in lockdown.
The result of my research are that severe and contemporary slavery conditions of African workers such as Senegambinas is on the rise in the agricultural, construction, domestic and tourism sector in Italy but also in Spain (especially in the region of Murcia and Valencia) where I spent nine months studying agricultural exploitation of migrants. Similarly, this African exploitation is also manifested in the prostitution of Nigerian girls in Italian streets, abandoned places and now in many agricultural ghettos.
According to the December 2018 Contemporary forms of slavery report by the European Parliament, the SDG 8 (Target 7) is the most important, and is devoted to “promot[ing] sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”.
But this “requires states to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”. Meanwhile, there are more than 40 million slaves worldwide according to the 2018 report by the Global Slavery Index.
The African tragedy vs the EU migration management dilemma
The so-called integrated border management of the EU protects borders and leaves Africans to die in the Mediterranean and push them to Libya. In addition, the so-called Dublin regulation obligate asylum seekers and refugees to seek and wait for asylum or documentation in their first country of entrance. In the case of Italy and Spain, this results to exposing migrants to exploitation.
Even though Italy and Spain have faced a lot of pressure in recent years to manage the numbers and have often asked for help from member states, the Dublin regulation anyway prohibits these movers to pick and choose their destination countries. They just have to stay in their first country of entrance (Italy, Spain, Malta) even if they would prefer going to some Northern European countries.
Admittedly, following the increased migrant influx to Europe from 2015, in Italy as in many European societies, there has been resistance, tensions and conflicts arising in various fields concerning the growing multi-ethnic reality and interculturalism that is taking place due to global migration trends. Generally, EU has long considered the Mediterranean migration as a “crisis” and has consistently approach it with shortsighted policies and unrealistic emergency measures.
The push and pull factors of these movements from Africa are often unknown in the host society or simply “whitewashed”. Therefore, anti-immigrant rhetoric, far-right views and discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia are easily spreading in European countries. These flows have led to a migration management dilemma that produce strong negative impacts on African migrants and diaspora and their culture.
…. single European asylum and protection system….
Non-appropriate policies and structural problems are plenty in the European asylum and protection system. Crucial gaps exist in the provision of immediate newcomer reception, orientation and subsequent longer-term integration services due to serious deficits of support, communication, empathy and solidarity in the host countries such as Italy.
Newly arrived TCNs are highly vulnerable and suffer from traumas, racism, stigmatisation and usually face social, economic, educational, legal and language barriers. Consequently, many of them end up in isolation and exploitative working contexts due to the inabilities and the deficiencies of the host country’s protection and integration system.
In Italy for example, it takes on average two years for a Senegambian Mediterranean migrant, asylum seeker and refugee to get regularised. S/he will then need even much more years to be able to work in a formal sector with a decent contract.
….deskilled and unskilled, brain and labour drainage….
African migrants without professional skills and whose skills or diplomas are not institutionally recognised face even more obstacles. At the same time, European and international development plans directed at Africa usually misunderstand the practical needs of African economies when imposing conditional funds, debt bondages and post-colonial recommendations and neoliberal policies to enhance sustainable communities in structurally impoverished and undemocratic ex-colonies.
Paradoxically, as pioneers of transatlantic slavery, the EU directly failed to understand the historical heritage of chattel slavery and therefore, could not support anti-slavery measures in African institutions. The European Union and member states such as Italy and Spain, governments often do not find the right approach that would result in a substantially successful socio-economic, educational and cultural inclusion of Africans.
Meanwhile, non-governmental organisations easily fall into the trap of realising separate and short-term actions, based on the so-called Project Cycle Management (or Logical Framework Approach), with the idea that complex social processes and changes could take place through a concept that is more adequate to plan and execute production, engineering or military actions. Similarly, many such projects and approaches have seriously failed in Africa destroying local livelihoods patterns, traditions and democracies.
….detention camps and post-modern prisons….
While these so-called integration programmes are running all around the European Union in the area of migration, the life quality of TCNs are decreasing and their conditions are worsening. The different actors of the reception and integration system are still discoordinated after many years of experience: they lack coordinated actions, sensible and long term strategic planning.
There is no joint long term cooperation and proper communication among actors, neither on local, nor national or European level. The situation is mumbo jumbo! On the top of these mistakes at the highest level of management, the whole system hardly gives any chance to the final beneficiaries themselves (TCNs) to give feedback about the success or failures of the integration programs. These mistakes continue to be hidden since there is no effective bottom-up communication or advocacy mechanism that could result in a meaningful change that managed to address the real needs, problems and requests of the TCNs.
…biopsychosocial health of Africa(ans)….
For many Afro-Europeans, it is an institutional limbo between exploitation and institutional discrimination —so-called criminalisation and regularisation of Mediterranean migrants. Not unsurprisingly, in the last two decades, many migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, including minors, have taken journeys characterised by various difficulties leading to post-traumatic disorders.
These disorders lead to drug abuse, prostitution, social and mental disabilities, lack of confidence, personal insecurity and other psychological issues such as chronic stress disorder continue after the asylum camps and into the so-called open society.
The lack of documentation (permit of stay) and job has devastating impacts both personally and in general for the development of Africa. At European level, African youths are being speedily pushed into destitution. Indeed many Africans are in a real situation of asylum, disconnected from home but couldn’t find a new home.
….post-modern genocide of Africans in the Mediterranean sea….
Clearly, we do not know how many lives have been lost through this journey. Unfortunately, we can only hope for a political convergence to bring about a solution. According to Statista, “in fact, the Mediterranean Sea recorded worldwide the largest number of deaths and missing cases of people who migrated.
However, recording the deaths in the Mediterranean Sea represents a challenge. It was estimated that between 2014 and 2018, about 12 thousand people who drowned while on this migration route were never found.”
Clearly, these are conservative estimates excluding the deaths of the Sahara desert. In another statement, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) confirmed that there are more than 800,000 to a million people trapped in difficult and inhumane conditions in the war-torn country of Libya. Many are being imprisoned and ransomed and others sold in the “slave market” by the militias and criminal gangs.
The rising death toll of Mediterranean victims is preventable if the international community puts interest in the welfare of these movers.
Mediterranean migrants are collectively victims of some abusive socio-political systems of Africa and Europe. But Mediterranean migration arose different tastes in the media; many times it is underreported and largely politicised. But what actually lies ahead of those Mediterranean migrants who will make it to Europe, goes beyond the media misinformation and disinformation.
There are simply concrete fences awaiting them; from some concentrated camps to nonsensical European officialdom designed as an imperial project for African underdevelopment. What lies ahead of many African migrants is far from those gallantry illusionary paradise most had thought of: that sense of security, those beautiful houses and the life styles imagined to accompany it, the possibilities for luxurious investments to build a new life full of hope, in short, a fulfilling life, are all very illusionary in contemporary Europe. Such thoughts are at best misinformed and at worst a romantic fantasy of an indoctrinated or better, westernised African.
These movers caught up in the periphery of international politics and economic discourse happened to be the survivors and victims of the sold-out and sell-out African leadership for centuries.
Are the authorities simply unwilling or technically unprepared to take concrete measures that are open, sustainable and human?
Giving answers to this generational destruction of the African continent will have to bring relevant political actors to discuss in fairer and clearer terms in the interest of the continent. And for the first time, any such political measures must make these youths the protagonists of their own destinies.
Stretching from transatlantic slavery, colonialism and contemporary imperialism, ongoing wars, religious conflicts and structural improvement of the African continent through neo-colonial and neoliberal transmission belts have significantly interrupted the free development of African civilisation. This is more evident in the area of migrations outside of the African continent.
Increasing unliveable conditions (socio-political inequities) in many parts of Africa coupled with international negligence created the Mediterranean cemetery —between Libya and EU. Or do we simply assume that present-day globalization with its rhetoric in market triumphalism is actually working for Africa’s interest? Like the continuous misbehaviours of the World Bank and the IMF have helped to engineer the interests of big corporations and so-called western governments, the deliberate negligence of political actors help to perpetuate the human rights violations of African migrants.
Most of these African migrants who live less than 1 or 2 dollars a day while producing to feed the world market, have become the vicious victims of a financial and political system. When they move away from their borders, they are most likely to risk their lives.
This exodus of the African diaspora also leads to the lost of history and maintain contemporary socio-political and economic hegemony in Europe’s favour. This makes African underdevelopment unavoidable as a result of generations of transcendental misconducts. Today, without stronger governments millions of African people on their own cannot salvage themselves from potential famine and financial crises.
As the Libyan civil war clocks close to a decade, and after the UK, France, Italy, and the US supported the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, smugglers and traffickers set up a ruthless trade of vulnerable migrants routinely kidnapped, ransomed, forced into labour, raped, tortured and sold in “slave markets” or pushed to fight for their chances in the Mediterranean.
Many souls are yet to carry their own stories by simply disappearing into thin air in the Sahara desert, prison houses or in the ‘deep European parliament’ situated in the Mediterranean sea where migrants are literally left to fight for their fates.
Italy, Malta and Spain are all highly technological countries training their coastguards to be protective of their sovereignties to the magnitude of allowing vulnerable migrants to die in avoidable physiological and psychological sufferings. Systematically, while boats, equipment and millions of euros have been handed over in efforts to slow the crossings of African people across the Mediterranean, the business of deadly fibre or inflated boats and petrol-powered engines are imported by criminal organisations into Libya.
The market of this illegal trade is yet to be sanctioned. And yes the businesses of smugglers and traffickers flourish; this African tragedy continue unabated causing everyday political fiascos. For now, it seems the authorities responsible criminalise Mediterranean migration into the EU as much as they can in order to exclude desperate movers and socio-political victims coming from Africa while ignoring the causes of this exodus. The right-wing smear political campaigns, discriminative and racist EU immigration policies was also exacerbated and politically overshadowed by so-called terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Unlike the African Union, since the European Union was established, it guides European interests even if that would mean inflicting social conflicts, civil wars, regional tensions, in other to maintain dictatorial governments and hegemony while simultaneously sponsoring militarism of the Mediterranean cemetery. Similarly, the Mediterranean humanitarian tragedy is a failure of political and economic institutions and is directly intertwined to same neo-colonial and imperial model that engulfed Africa today.
Therefore it is unfair that this stampeding globalising political and economic hegemony of Europe, the US and China impoverishes Africa and rob its life time opportunities while pushing African youths to die in the Sahara desert or in the Mediterranean Sea. Rather than questioning our institutions for the busting injustices demonstrated through African migration to Europe, we indifferently watch this generational destruction of African civilisation.
African youths as a result will not only be buried by the desert or eaten by the sea, there are also most likely to be born into extreme structural poverty and contemporary situations of slavery. In Europe today, they face mass unemployment, detention and imprisonment and in the nearest future, they will be separated not only from their families but also from their cultures.