Category: Policy notes
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Africa Is Our Country
In this post, Yacine Ait-Larbi makes a case for the need to consider free movement within the African continent as a key asset for Algeria’s ambitions to reform its economy. The author argues that Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), offer Algeria a unique opportunity to revitalise migration…
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The EU Africa migration agenda
In this post, Claire Kumar from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reflects on a high-level policy seminar which aimed to explore challenges and concerns around migration governance and gather recommendations for charting a new path for future.
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Transnational Skills Partnerships between Ghana and Germany: A “triple-win” solution?
Global skills partnerships are often mentioned as a viable solution for creating legal South-North migration pathways, which may offer educational and livelihood options for aspiring migrants while also providing much needed inflows to labour markets in the global north. The Global Compact for Migration spelled out this rationale but so far, very few concrete programmes…
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Involuntary returns from Libya and reintegration in Ghana
Involuntary returns of sub-Saharan African nationals are likely to become an increasingly central feature of international migration governance. Relying on findings from their empirical study on the experiences of Ghanaian migrants forcibly returned during the political crisis in Libya in 2011, Leander Kandilige and Geraldine Asiwome Adiku consider the challenges facing multi-stakeholder coordination of safe…
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The IOM and ‘voluntary return’ programmes in Africa
In June 2020, Euronews published a three-part series on African migration to Europe, with a particular focus on the EU-funded projects run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to return migrants to their home country. In a right-to-reply article, the IOM responded to the criticism, calling the Euronews analysis ‘one-sided’. In this post, Antoine…
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Shifting the narrative on African migration
Negative public opinion in Europe is a major obstacle to holistic and sustainable policies relating to African migration. Based on his observations of migration debates in Sweden and Denmark, Jesper Bjarnesen argues for a shift in wording and perspective away from politicised opinions about immigration, or misplaced ideas of humanitarian responsibilities, towards a more constructive…
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Africa at the gates: Europe’s lose-lose migration management plan
Since the summer of 2015, the question of how to stem the flows from Africa and the Middle East is at the centre of increasingly existential debates about the very future of Europe. Loren B Landau and Iriann Freemantle contemplate the underlying logics and effects of EU migration management.
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African migration: Who’s thinking of going where?
It is well established that young people constitute the majority of those who risk their lives on migratory routes from Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe. But there are important differences by country that may inform more targeted policy responses. Afrobarometer’s Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye and Edem Selormey present the preliminary findings of the current round of nationality representative…
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Can international frameworks or compacts reduce onward migration?
If the aim of policy-makers is to reduce migration flows to Europe, the logical solution is to provide those services in the region where most migrants come from. This is where Partnership Frameworks and Job Compacts come in, but do they work? – by Jessica Hagen-Zanker