Migrants' African Routes

Migrants' African Routes

The expression migrants' routes suggests the main geographical routes taken by migrants.

From Africa, the routes mainly head towards Europe, however they are slightly changing in the last years, moving towards South Africa and Asia.

The majority of the African migrants haven't got European travel visas, therefore their only accessible ways northward is that of travelling through the trans-Saharan routes. These routes are often shaped on the old ones used by caravans and during transumanza through the desert and on renewed and informal local networks, bent on the new survival needs and to pitiless rules of competition and exploitation.

About the 10% of the whole migratory stream uses sea routes.

The major part of African migrants usually doesn't go beyond the coastal regions of the North Africa, putting their journay to an end in one of the Mediterranean coastal countries (especially in Libya and in Maghreb, where nowadays almost 2 millions of irregular migrants live).

Just a few migrants (between 10 and 15%) tries to head towards Europe facing control and repression policies adopted by any countries against irregular migration. The unexpected migrants' stream towards North African countries, together with the European effort and help to restrain this stream coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, prompted local governments to adopt repression and forced homecoming measures. According to the lack of repatriation agreements, migrants are mainly brought to the southern areas bordering the neighbouring countries (Rosso, near the Mauritania–Senegal border; Oujda, near the Morocco–Algeria border; Tinzouatine and In Guezzam, respectively near Algeria–Mali and Algeria-Niger borders).

While the European policies,which have submitted the migration check to the coastal local authorities, seem to be effective in restraining the maritime migratory stream coming from Maghreb (though indirectly increasing human rights abuses), in 2007 trans-saharan and maritime routes from Africa have spread all over both modifying primal origins and increasing distances, human and material loss of the Great Migration. New routes have developed directly from Sub-Saharan countries (Senegal, Gambia, Guinea coast) creating new entry paths (i.e. between Algeria and Sardinia) and new migratory strategies (i.e. the increasing number of underages because less exposed to the risk of forced homecoming), which have partially varied the migrants' origins (fewer migrants from Sub-Sahara and more from Egypt and Morocco) but still not reducing the migratory pressure from Libya, which is still the major source of people migrating towards Italy and the main spot of departure for the European dream.

For many migrants, who try to cross the various African borders and their complex security, crime or corruption systems, this is a real human odyssey, about which in many cases we lack traces and witnesses. The journey is not only very expensive (people earning less than 1 Euro per day may spend thousands of Euros for this journey), but also very hazardous as far as life is concerned. The number of human losses during journeys across the desert, the sea or during other stops is really huge. The reasons that prompt people to undertake the journey are mainly economic, for people in search of better life conditions, but also cultural and symbolic (e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa the journey is mainly meant as a different way of undergoing the traditional rites of passage).

Through the modification of control and repression measures, the Sub-Saharan African migratory process is changing and therefore gradually tracing new maritime and overland routes, soon led by criminal organisations and networks of local go-betweens, which create new collusion between the police and the so-called passeurs within the exploitation of human beings.