ABI staff member and Deputy Director Franzisca Zanker has written an article with Amanda Bisong on African Migration and Mobility in the Migration Policy Centre Blog. The authors outline what European migration policy can learn from African expertise.
Bisong and Zanker criticize how European debates on migration and migration governance are primarily based on statistics that cannot provide a broad perspective on migration. Instead, the reduction of migration to mere numbers of border crossings, visa rejections, or asylum applications fails to recognize the deeper dynamics of migration, such as why and how people move and under what conditions they do so. Governance aiming to simply reduce arrivals may lead to the rerouting of migration, increase reliance on smugglers or might even push people into taking more dangerous routes.
In their opinion, European politics can learn a lot from African migration research, that is research that explicitly focuses on mobility and migration in and from Africa. This body of research not only shows that a large part of African migration takes place within the continent, but also that migration is not simply a response to poverty or instability – in contrast to what is usually assumed. Instead, many states and people in Africa see mobility as a normal and positive part of social and economic life. A better understanding of migration dynamics while taking into account insights from African migration research and other Global South perspectives may yield new approaches to migration governance.
The article is available on the Migration Policy Centre website (in English). A German translation is available at Netzwerk Fluchtforschung.