The evolution of mobility from Africa to Europe is today strongly influenced by new technologies.
Whether at origin, en route or even in destination countries, social networks are playing an increasingly important role, both for the people who undertake these journeys and for those who try to control them.
If migration is the foundation of humanity and an integral part of the human species, migration from Africa to Europe is more than ever threatened by restrictive and discriminatory European policies, which are mainly responsible for the increase in the number of deaths on irregular routes.
Therefore, in an increasingly global environment, certain migratory flows have no place. This is a contradiction on the part of the European Union, which is moving towards an ultra-digitised and hyper-connected world, but forgets that it is these same mechanisms that generate and expand mobility.
On one side of the Atlantic, as the Digital 2024 Global Overview Report points out, the use of social networks in Africa has risen from 25% in 2021 to 35% in 2024. While applications such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or WhatsApp are gaining ground on the continent, both in urban and rural areas, they not only serve the expansion of commercial or cultural activities. They also allow a young population to stay connected to the rest of the world and reinforce their ideals of independence, discovery and freedom, just like the adventure-hungry youth of the West. They allow young women to realise how trampled their rights are and how their freedoms are compromised. But they also encourage criminals to diversify their strategies for attracting travellers' fluices. Digitalisation and globalisation encourage human mobility.
On the other side of the Atlantic, however, migration policies are tightening and the methods used are increasingly critical (externalisation of borders, detention centres, construction and raising of control areas).
This paradox between the blurring of borders through the expansion of the virtual and the reafirmation of physical borders illustrates the extent to which European migration policies run counter to the evolution of the world - of human beings and technologies.