Irregular Migration From West Africa To The Maghreb And The European Union

The media and prevailing policy discourses convey an increasingly apocalyptic image of the massive outflows of desperate Africans fleeing poverty and war at home. This study tries to achieve a more empirically and quantitatively founded understanding of the nature, scale and recent evolution of irregular West African migration to Maghreb and Europe. Furthermore, the publication evaluates how policies to manage trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean migration have affected current migration patterns.

The media and prevailing policy discourses convey an increasingly apocalyptic image of the massive outflows of desperate Africans fleeing poverty and war at home. The migrants themselves are commonly depicted as victims recruited by "merciless" and "unscrupulous" traffickers and smugglers. However, and notwithstanding the very real increase in regular and irregular West African migration towards Europe over the past decade, available empirical evidence dispels most of these assumptions. This study tries to achieve a more empirically and quantitatively founded understanding of the nature, scale and recent evolution of irregular West African migration to the Maghreb and Europe. Furthermore, this study evaluates how policies to manage trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean migration have affected current migration patterns. This research would not have been possible without the funding received from the European Union, and this support from the European Union for the Programme for the Enhancement and Support of Dialogue and Management of Western African Irregular and Transit Migration in the Maghreb is being gratefully acknowledged.

Informed by witness testimonies, Eurafrican Migration details how the perilous journeys undertaken by irregular migrants are enabled by complex networks of guides during the Sahara phase, and explores the relationship between migrants and the criminal groups who arrange for them to be transported across the sea to southern Europe.

This study tries to achieve a more empirically and quantitatively founded understanding of the nature, scale and recent evolution of irregular West African migration to the Maghreb and Europe. It also evaluates how policies to manage trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean migration have affected current migration patterns.--Publisher's description.

Trapped inside lorries or huddled aboard unseaworthy boats, irregular African migrants make for troubling headlines in western media, fueling fever pitch fears of an impending "African exodus" to Europe. Despite the increasing, albeit sensational, attention irregular migration attracts on both sides of the Mediterranean, little is known about what shapes and influences the lives of these Africans before, during, and after their “migratory projects.” By privileging migrants' narratives and drawing on evidence-based field research from different disciplinary backgrounds, the volume demystifies and dislodges many common assumptions about the human ecology of irregular African migration to Europe, arguably one of the most widely debated, yet least understood, phenomenon of our time.

This publication presents contributions by international experts on various aspects of West African migration.