by Kajsa Hallberg Adu
In the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis that is seeing thousands of families desperate to enter Europe, the issue of African migrants to Europe has also resurfaced. The United Nations Commission for Africa has been working on the issue and its executive Director, Carlos Lopes, posted an op-ed on the South African online news portal Daily Maverick on September 3rd, 2015, arguing that flows of migrants into Europe from Africa needs to be better understood as they will further increase.
In his opinion piece, “African migrants – payback time for Europe?”, Lopes point to a number of mega-trends like economic and population growth in Africa, as well as inter-regional migration on the rise on the continent, but also the demographic crisis in Europe with an ageing population and high social security demands. Lopes points out the obvious: Europe is in need of migrants for it not to collapse! So why is migration often equal to negative stories? Lopes takes a stab at an explanation, suggesting that “the narrative about the continent seems to be fixated on migration and negative assessments of its performance”. Numerically, few Africans leave for European shores, Lopes notes, and poses many more migrants are to come. However, maybe the narrative around migration needs to change. Some researchers argue that migration in the Global North is higher than in the Global South, that is mobility is higher in countries with higher GDP, in that case development and migration go hand in hand.
As the forefront of migration research looks at aspirations for migration versus the ability, it has been established that it takes money to migrate, or in the words of Ghanaian migration researcher Dr. Mariama Awumbila “the poorest are often unable to afford the costs associated with migration”. My own research on university students, a group that is highly likely to migrate, confirms this and a student I interviewed explained the reactions of peers when a classmate relocated abroad:
“- Eii, was she that rich?”
Maybe the increase in migrants from Africa can be seen to suggest the continent’s development is on the right path as more of its inhabitants can afford mobility. However more research can reveal who migrates and why. Another field is the impact of migration, both for sending and receiving countries.
Kajsa Hallberg Adu is a lecturer at Ashesi University College and has just submitted her PhD dissertation to University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies. Her dissertation is titled “On a course to migrate? Migration aspirations among university students in Ghana” and explores the aspiration to migrate among a group often over-looked both by migration researchers and Africanists: university students. She is the co-founder of BloggingGhana.org, a network for social media enthusiasts in Ghana and a blogger since 2006 at kajsaha.com. She lives in Tema, Ghana with her husband, and two daughters.