Seydou Kanté is initially from Tambacounda, a city in jap Senegal. A former diplomat, he’s now a global advisor for UNESCO. The author is the founding father of the African Institute of Geopolitics and Geostrategy in Dakar. A specialist in migration and geopolitical points, dedicated to analysing the dynamics of energy, territories and human mobility, he has devoted his work to understanding the relationships between populations, states and areas in a quickly altering world context. In Géopolitique de l’émigration irrégulière, l’exemple du Sénégal (Geopolitics of Irregular Emigration: The Instance of Senegal), he analyses the mechanisms and up to date imbalances of this little-studied phenomenon.
What’s the place to begin for Géopolitique de l’émigration irrégulière?
This guide affords a geopolitical studying of a phenomenon that’s usually approached from a humanitarian or sociological angle, however not often from a strategic one. In it, I analyse irregular emigration as a revealing indicator of world energy relations, whereas putting it within the historic, financial and cultural context of Senegal.
The guide examines the explanations for leaving, the routes taken, the actors concerned, but in addition the collective representations that assist them. It seeks to grasp how a rustic like Senegal, which is each secure and in search of transformation, has grow to be a spot of mass emigration. It’s meant to be an empirical and forward-looking subject examine that gives insights for rethinking migration governance on the nationwide and worldwide ranges.
How would you describe irregular emigration from Senegal?
This phenomenon is a part of a paradox: that of a democratic nation with robust cultural and spiritual dynamism, however marked by persistent structural inequalities. This phenomenon displays each a disaster of hope and a technique of circumvention. It reveals a youth that’s related to the world, totally built-in into the worldwide creativeness of success, however annoyed at not sharing in the advantages.
Emigration thus turns into a person response to a collective failure of growth. It’s now organised based on transnational logic, supported by household, digital and financial networks that perform as veritable infrastructures of world mobility. It’s subsequently a globally rooted phenomenon, each native in its motivations and world in its mechanisms.
How is that this phenomenon evolving?
Emigration is a perform of adjustments in globalisation and expertise. First, we’re seeing a diversification of routes: the Atlantic path to the Canary Islands stays emblematic, however different routes are opening up throughout the Sahara, Latin America and even the Balkans. Secondly, the profile of migrants is altering: whereas younger males stay within the majority, the phenomenon is turning into more and more feminised, and we’re seeing increasingly more graduates and expert craftsmen.
Lastly, new migration patterns linked to globalisation are redefining irregular migration. Social networks, digital platforms and real-time info flows are lowering distances, facilitating the circulation of success tales and reworking migration right into a collective venture managed remotely. Irregular emigration is thus turning into a type of globalised mobility, the place info, capital and hopes flow into quicker than folks.
What are the causes?
They’re a number of and deeply intertwined. Initially, they’re financial, rooted in endemic unemployment, significantly amongst younger folks, and within the fragility of the productive cloth. They’re additionally social and cultural: in lots of households, success is inseparable from leaving, and the emigrant turns into a logo of potential social development. Political causes are additionally important: successive crises have typically undermined confidence sooner or later and bolstered the temptation to hunt exile.
Past these conventional components, the guide highlights the brand new migratory patterns ensuing from globalisation. The compression of house and time, because of the revolution in transport and digital applied sciences, creates a way of belonging to a world with out obvious borders.
Data flows constantly: a teen in Mbour or Tambacounda can observe, in actual time, the success of a good friend dwelling in New York, Paris or Madrid. This everlasting connectivity results in an elevated notion of mobility because the norm. It additionally professionalises smuggling networks, facilitates monetary transfers and makes emigration extra accessible. These world dynamics act as invisible drivers of the phenomenon: they don’t create poverty, however they remodel the will for mobility right into a concrete venture. Briefly, globalisation has globalised the dream of leaving.
What is particular about emigration within the American case?
Emigration to america illustrates this globalisation of trajectories. Not like the big flows to Europe, it’s organised alongside discreet however extremely structured routes, passing by Latin America (Nicaragua, Mexico, Brazil) earlier than reaching North American territory; it’s true that Trump’s anti-migration coverage has significantly slowed down the phenomenon.
It displays a reconfiguration of migratory imaginaries: America symbolises particular person success, meritocracy and freedom. This specificity exhibits that Senegalese migration is now not only a native migration, however a world one, the place borders are blurred by digital connections, diasporic solidarity and transnational routes. Emigration to america is a part of a technique for social development in a globalised world of prospects.
Why was it necessary so that you can examine this subject?
As a result of irregular migration encapsulates all of the challenges of the twenty first century: youth, demographics, governance, inequalities and the contradictory results of globalisation. It highlights the stress between the person proper to mobility and the sovereignty of states, between world goals and native constraints.
As a geographer and geopolitical analyst, I wished to maneuver past emotional approaches to point out that irregular emigration is a significant political subject, revealing the structural imbalances of the worldwide system.
What’s the geography of maritime, land and transatlantic migration routes?
Migration routes observe the shifting contours of globalisation. The maritime routes, departing from Dakar, Saint-Louis, Joal, Mbour or Thiaroye-sur-Mer, stay probably the most publicised, resulting in the Canary Islands in usually tragic situations. The land routes cross Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria or Libya earlier than reaching the Mediterranean.
New transatlantic routes are rising, connecting West Africa to Latin America after which to america. These routes usually are not simply bodily trajectories: they type a community of exchanges, info and solidarity, maintained by diasporas and digital networks. Globalisation, by lowering distances and making the entire world seen, has broadened the migratory horizons of Senegalese folks. The migratory house is now world, fluid and interconnected.
What are the potential options?
I suggest a mirrored image linked to the presentation of three potential eventualities that result in options for regulating the phenomenon and mitigating its results. Inside the framework of the brand new authorities’ ‘Imaginative and prescient Senegal 2050’, a strategic venture that goals to profoundly remodel the nation with a view to sustainable growth, a number of eventualities could be envisaged to grasp the longer term evolution of irregular emigration.
This agenda not directly invitations us to suggest a number of eventualities for the way forward for irregular emigration from Senegal.
The continuity situation, with irregular migration flows persevering with. Right here, irregular migration flows stay sustained, regardless of the ambitions of the 2050 imaginative and prescient. The guide additionally particulars a situation of intensified irregular emigration. In a much less beneficial context, irregular migration flows might speed up, even when the roadmap begins to take form. This situation may very well be fuelled by a number of exterior and inner components.
Lastly, I focus on the situation of a pointy discount or perhaps a halt in irregular migration flows. This might be a direct consequence of the success of ‘Senegal 2050’, which might remodel the nation’s financial, social and territorial situations.
Senegal’s roadmap affords a long-term strategic perspective that mixes growth, sovereignty and sustainability.
It permits migration to be seen not as a failure, however as a variable of growth. On this imaginative and prescient, migration regulation doesn’t contain closure, however reasonably the structural transformation of the nationwide economic system: industrialisation, innovation and the strengthening of human capital.
If Senegal succeeds in mobilising its youth round a collective venture, it could remodel the constraint of migration right into a geopolitical asset. Giving folks causes to imagine within the nation’s future is already a step in direction of lowering the temptation to hunt exile.
The guide incorporates a preface by educational Gérard-François Dumont, whose strategy is that of a geographer, demographer and economist.
Certainly, the preface by Rector Gérard-François Dumont, to whom I’m very grateful, masterfully illuminates the excellence between the suitable to to migrate, which is a basic freedom of people, and the suitable to immigrate, which is determined by the sovereignty of states. He reminds us how emigration is a matter whose scientific evaluation is paradoxical.
The act of leaving one’s place of residence with the intention of settling elsewhere is step one with out which the second, immigration, i.e. transferring to a brand new place of residence, couldn’t happen. Nevertheless, emigration is a a lot much less studied phenomenon than immigration.
Irregular emigration arises exactly from this pressure between common aspiration and political management.
It’s, in essence, geopolitical. The rector exhibits that irregular migration constitutes an area of confrontation between the worldwide and the nationwide, between the will for mobility and the closing of borders.
Extending his considering, I wished to reveal that this pressure is especially acute in Senegal, the place younger folks expertise globalisation on their screens however not by way of alternatives. Irregular emigration thus turns into a spatial translation of the fractures of globalisation.
What are the geopolitical points at stake?
They’re important. With its triple perform as a rustic of emigration, transit and immigration, Senegal performs a key position within the administration of migratory flows. Given its financial weight, as evidenced by the monetary help supplied by the EU to Senegal, the connection is asymmetrical, with Europe usually in search of to dictate the phrases of cooperation on migration.
The geopolitical points are additionally seen internally. In Senegal, irregular emigration has grow to be an important subject of inner geopolitics, particularly since 2007. Regardless of the efforts made by the State to mitigate this phenomenon, significantly in collaboration with worldwide companions such because the EU and the Worldwide Organisation for Migration (IOM), NGOs, associations, and so on., the outcomes stay blended, revealing the underlying complexities of this subject.
How do you interpret the latest tragedies involving departures by pirogue?
These are human tragedies and signs of a structural imbalance. Every shipwreck reveals the stress between hope and despair, between placing down roots and fleeing. The younger individuals who go away usually are not merely fleeing poverty, they’re fleeing immobility, a sense of being caught in a lifeless finish. These tragedies present that closing borders has not lowered departures, however has made them extra harmful. They name for a rethinking of world migration governance, not from the attitude of management, however from that of shared duty and the suitable to growth.
Senegal is a younger nation: greater than half of its inhabitants is underneath 25. This educated, related and impressive youth is confronted with a saturated labour market and an economic system with low absorption capability. It experiences globalisation as a annoyed spectator: it sees, it understands, however it doesn’t take part. Emigration then turns into an act of rupture and hope. It displays a necessity for recognition and a need to belong to an open world. It is usually a quest for autonomy within the face of political fashions which might be thought-about ossified. The departure of younger folks is subsequently not an escape, however an existential affirmation.
What robust measures should the authorities take to forestall this scourge?
Migration have to be positioned again on the coronary heart of growth insurance policies. The authorities should spend money on the areas, assist native entrepreneurship, modernise technical coaching and promote the creation of sustainable jobs. Migration can’t be combated, it have to be ruled. Senegal should additionally rethink its relationship with Europe, now not by the prism of dependence, however in a spirit of equitable partnership. Lastly, it’s pressing to revive confidence: a rustic that gives prospects to its younger folks mechanically reduces the temptation to depart. The answer lies much less in monitoring the seas than in constructing a reputable future on land.
Any message you’d prefer to share?
It’s easy: no border can cease a dream, however a rustic that gives its younger folks the means to dream and succeed now not has to concern exile! The problem is to not stop younger folks from leaving, however to make them wish to keep. It’s by rebuilding belief, dignity and a way of neighborhood that Senegal will have the ability to remodel irregular migration into a selected, reversible and productive type of mobility. In different phrases, the longer term should stop to be elsewhere and grow to be right here once more.
