Three sub-Saharan migration systems in times of policy restriction

Cris Beauchemin,Marie-Laurence Flahaux,Bruno Schoumaker

doi:10.1186/s40878-020-0174-y

Abstract

This paper reviews new evidence on the trends and patterns of migration between Africa and Europe since the mid-1970s, and discusses their congruency with the changing context of migration policy. Using data from the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) and the Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE) projects, we compare flows and policies of three African and six European destination countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and Senegal, on the one hand; and Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK, on the other). The paper focuses on topics that quantitative studies usually overlook due to the lack of data, namely the propensity to out-migrate, legal status at entry, routes of migration, and propensity to return. We show that times of restrictions in Europe do not correspond to less African out-migration, but rather to more unauthorized migration and fewer returns. We further show that trends in African migration differ greatly between historical and new destination countries in Europe.

Highlights

Tragic events in the Mediterranean Sea since the 1990s, with the drowning of several thousands of African migrants who attempt to reach Europe, have fostered the view that there would be a global Afro-European migration system
Differences between return from Africa and Europe were marked in these previous computations, the results presented here tend to show lower levels of return
Longitudinal and multivariate analyses on the determinants of return migration from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa have shown that undocumented migrants are not more likely to return: legal status makes no difference among Senegalese and Ghanaian migrants, and unauthorized migrants are less likely to return among Congolese migrants (Flahaux et al 2014; González-Ferrer et al 2014)

Summary

Introduction

Tragic events in the Mediterranean Sea since the 1990s, with the drowning of several thousands of African migrants who attempt to reach Europe, have fostered the view that there would be a global Afro-European migration system. The other sub-systems relate to new corridors that link each origin country in Africa to one or two new destinations in Europe (the UK for Congo, the Netherlands for Ghana, Spain and Italy for Senegal).

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