The COMPASS Congress on circular migration organised by the ULPGC and Casa África has given us a better understanding of intra-African migration, of which we still know very little.
In recent days, in a collaboration between the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and Casa África, within the framework of the European COMPASS project that we lead to reflect from the institutions on how to improve the management of the migratory phenomenon to promote circular labour migration (surely the most effective and realistic way to promote legal and safe channels), an International Conference has been held, attended by academics, experts and the Canarian and African partners of the project (Senegalese, Cape Verdeans, Mauritanians and Gambians).
The event was a perfect launch for the concept with which we decided to champion an Interreg-MAC project from Casa África, which was to generate from the Canary Islands and African institutions a space for joint reflection to generate proposals and actions to raise awareness of the constant tragedy that the constant deaths we witness due to the hardship and difficulty of irregular migration by sea bound for the Canary Islands continue to represent. Led within our institution by the manager, Ana María Hernández, with the support of Yurena Ojeda and María Cárdenes, COMPASS is a kind of observatory of human mobility designed to allow us, as we get to know each other better and better, to understand what measures we can help promote in order to more effectively promote circular migration with our African neighbours.
One of the best lessons we have learned from this two-day experience of exchanging ideas with our African partners is that we still have a long way to go to understand that the migration phenomenon on the African continent is much more complex than small boats and canoes. Because the vast majority of migration in Africa, approximately 80%, occurs within the continent itself, and this is a phenomenon that we know little, if anything, about. It is an internal migration that seeks the focal points of the most economically dynamic countries, such as those of North Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and the Ivory Coast.
Only two out of ten Africans who initiate a migration project within the continent have Europe in mind. And despite this vast difference in magnitude, intra-African migration is for us a silent, ignored and underfunded phenomenon, because debates, media coverage and donor priorities focus disproportionately on the smaller fraction trying to reach Europe, mainly via the Mediterranean route, but also those trying to reach the Canary coasts.
This is not to downplay the importance of the thousands of shipwrecks or the tragedy that befalls our coasts every time a person dies trying to reach them dreaming of a better life. What we demand is that we make efforts to learn more and better about the internal dynamics of intra-African migration.
At Casa África we took a step in this direction last year when we dedicated our Essay Prize to intra-African migration and awarded the exceptional research work of a Senegalese academic, Mbaye Baye Masse, whom we had the privilege of receiving and listening to during the Compass conference in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
And this scholar had the courage to become a would-be migrant to analyse how one of the most storied intra-African migration routes works: a 2,500 kilometre corridor linking Rosso (on the Mauritanian-Senegalese border) with Nouakchott (Mauritania) and Casablanca (Morocco), a route that he comes to regard for migrants in transit as an “Afro-Maghrebi Eldorado”. The author shows us that this migratory corridor constitutes a whole economic ecosystem in itself, he talks about migration as a driver of territorial development and about very curious dynamics, such as the figure of ‘substitute’ migrants, for example: people who migrate from one country to another in order to temporarily cover the sick leave (due to an accident at work) of a migrant worker in North Africa.
It is fresh and novel to understand migration dynamics beyond the terms illegal, clandestine, or mafia. To discover, for example, that around these channels of intra-African migration there is a rich economic ecosystem of trades based on profiteering and recycling, or that there are transport pilots (of people and goods) with astonishing codes of beliefs, who travel by superstition only on the odd days of the month, and how all this affects and conditions the economy of the corridor.
In short, there is a whole world in trans-African migration that we do not know about. And if we want to find the right point to generate training and professional integration agreements for African people in our labour market through the circular economy, we must also make an effort to understand how the other shore works, which obviously has cultural codes that are very different from ours.
Professor Mbaye Basse's lecture, at the suggestion of ULPGC professor Lucas Pérez, gave rise to an exciting debate during the question and answer session: how do we make such a different concept as the border coexist on both shores? How do we put ourselves in the other's shoes to try to understand what the other sees as a border? said Professor Pérez. And Professor Mbaye replied that, according to what he had experienced in this migratory corridor, the very term journey goes far beyond the Senegalese concept that we have so often mentioned, that which they call ‘Barça or Barsaj’ (Barcelona or death).
It is necessary to understand history and what Africa was before the imposition of borders in order to understand that nothing is black and white, that there are many nuances and details to understand why someone leaves their home. “The word that has done the most damage to Africa is border”, insisted the professor, who also admitted that now, with the dimension of security and arms trafficking, it is also unthinkable to raise any concept of free movement.
Professor Mbaye also spoke about why young people migrate, and explained that many of the young people he met with the idea of reaching Europe (the fewest) and those who wanted to find a job on the way (the most) confessed that they had emigrated because in their context, even if they worked hard, they were unable to generate the minimum money to be able to help their families. “They can't look their relatives in the face because they can't generate anything, there are no possibilities”.
There are many new concepts, but what we have learned for sure is that with projects like Compass or SeimLab (another Interreg MAC project focused on migration), and in collaboration with the ULPGC and other institutions, we are on the right path, which is learning to understand. Learning to improve.
Only by learning will we succeed in stemming the flow of deaths at sea, the horror for all of us of continuing to watch people drown in the attempt to aspire to a better life. Ignoring the scale and complexities of these migratory corridors on the other shore will only perpetuate this bloodletting.
The core work of these initiatives underpinned by European support is essential to move from reactive and simplistic management to scientific approaches that argue what measures should be taken to promote, once and for all, legal and secure pathways, pathways that address the shortcomings of our labour market and help the economy on both sides of the border.