URL: Latest posts
How voluntary is voluntary migration?
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Governments and international organizations often stress how voluntary the return of involuntary migrants is. This begs an important question: what is voluntary? If you are an undocumented migrant from sub-Sahara Africa living in Morocco or in Libya,...
IOM's dubious mission in Morocco
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This week, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) launched an appeal to raise 620,000 euros to "help desperate African migrants, including unaccompanied children, return home from Morocco". The money would be used to fly migrants bac...
Greece: The Syrian migration invasion
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Last Monday, Greek authorities announced that Greece should fortify itself against a massive wave of illegal migrants from Syria. "A migration wave is starting to show, it has not yet reached Greece in large numbers, currently it is heading to Turkey...
Greece is the new Islam
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Leading up to national elections in the Netherlands, which took place on 12 September, I have been closely following the debates between party leaders . The most striking observation I made is the near-total absence of the issues of immigration and I...
Europeans looking for greener pastures in Africa
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Who could have thought this just a few years ago? With the economic crisis hitting many countries hard, and unemployment soaring, Europeans have started emigrating again in large numbers. While the Portuguese move to France and Brazil, Greeks explore...
Migration… it’s the economy, stupid!
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Politicians like to talk about migration in water metaphors. Migrants always seem to come in flows, waves or tides. They also like to give voters the image that they are “in control” of immigration; indeed, that immigration is a flow that can be...
The Arab Spring and Migration
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Last Tuesday, I attended a workshop hosted by the Refugees Studies Centre and the International Migration Institute of the University of Oxford on the consequences of the ‘Arab Spring’ on human mobility and forced migration in North Africa and th...
The only way to reduce immigration is to wreck the economy
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There is increasing evidence that migration from Mexico to the United States is declining fast, and that, in fact, quite some migrants are returning. Politicians are usually quick to claim that such decreases are the result of border controls, the er...
Africa Paradise
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Imagine a world in which young Europeans try to desperately reach Africa. An interesting article in Slate Africa speculated on this scenario. It referred to the film Africa Paradise by the Beninese film maker Sylvestre Amoussou. It is a movie ab...
The African invasion that did not happen. Why and how?
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Do you remember? Back in February and March of this year, European politicians and the media were sowing fear that Europe was about to face a deluge of African migrants in response to the Arab Spring. Particularly the violence in Libya was predicted...
Development leads to more migration
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It is often said that the only way to reduce migration to Europe, North America and other wealthy countries is to stimulate development in poor countries.This sounds very logical. But it is a myth. In reality, social and economic development in poor...
Europe’s tiny refugee burden: Putting the Libyan migration crisis into perspective
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Anybody believing that the Libyan crisis would create a “biblical exodus” towards Europe or the fear-mongering by Frontex and European politicians that up to 1.5 million migrants may soon arrive on European shores, should take a look at the chart...
Lampedusa and the construction of a "human tsunami"
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In my previous blogpost, I argued how Gaddafi, European politicians and agencies like Frontex have "invented" the illusionary threat of an imminent immigrant invasion from Africa to serve their own cynical, xenophobic political agendas. For more insi...
The 1.5 million migrants lie: How Gaddafi, Europe and Frontex invented the migration invasion
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In previous posts I have tried debunk the popular myth that Europe should brace itself for a migration invasion or "Biblical exodus" following the popular uprising and violence in Libya. The idea is that up to 1.5 million African migrants are waiting...
Will Gaddafi be able to unleash a migration invasion?
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In the wake of the unexpected UN Security Council resolution and subsequent attacks by French, British and US forces against Libyan military goals, Gaddafi has today announced that he stops cooperation with the EU in stemming illegal migration from L...
Just kill your own people: The world will turn a blind eye
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Now that the Gaddafi forces seem to push eastward and that the international powers are apparently reluctant to intervene in Libya, he might well regain control of the entire country or at least all major towns and oil wells except perhaps for Ben Gh...
The real refugee crisis: African migrants trapped in Libya
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Where are the hundreds of thousands of refugees that were predicted to arrive on European shores as a result of the Libyan revolt? They have not come. Most migrants simply want to go home. While most attention is given to the situation of the migrant...
Speculations on a ‘biblical exodus’ from Libya are wrong and dangerous
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In the face of continuing violence in Libya, it is striking to see how the attention of some European governments is already shifting from the unprecedented suffering of people in Libya to selfish panic about immigration issues. This panic has partic...
African migrants become easy target for racist violence in Libya
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Who cares about African migrants in Libya? Now that Gaddafi is killing and bombing his own people, Western countries and companies are trying to get their citizens out of Libya. Also Egypt and Turkey are facilitating the return of the thousands...
