"It wasn't always like this": the Spanish coastguard intercepts a fishing boat carrying African migrants off the island of Tenerife. UNHCR/A. Rodriguez/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Stories of African migrants in desperate conditions, usually on the Mediterranean sea heading towards Europe, have become common place. It wasn’t always like that. As recently as 2013, when the UN held a High-Level Dialogue (HLD) on migration, a boat capsizing off the coast of Italy claiming the lives of over 400 migrants, many of them young children, sent shockwaves across the world. The Pope issued a moral call for response to the migration crisis. World leaders, including the UN General Secretary vowed this would ‘never again’ happen, taking it as a turning point for new policy measures to save lives.
A week ago, an Okayafrica story told of African migrants sold in ‘slave markets’. It described Senegalese migrants in Libya auctioned off or held for ransom. If the article’s intention was to shock, it was successful. For Africans in the diaspora, these words conjured painful images of ancestors, enslaved Africans who suffered inhumane and unspeakable brutality as they cross the Middle Passage.
To gain a basic understanding of what is behind this story and the reality of African migration globally, one needs to take a step back from the shocking stories to review the patterns over the past decade. In 2006, when the UN held its first HLD on Migration, few countries considered it a priority agenda of concern. Migration policy at global platforms was framed primarily through the lens of ‘development’, lauding the growing power of remittances migrants send to their home countries.
