By: Patrick Condon
The European Union has tasked itself with reducing the number of migrants, especially Africans, it sees at its borders. Rather than focusing on providing security and stability for migrants, many of which make a deadly journey across the Mediterranean Sea, the EU has chosen to implement its own foreign policy in the region. The EU, through its Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), funnels development aid into various ‘root causes’ of migration in North and West Africa. This EUTF system promised lofty goals at reducing irregular migration from Nigeria, goals which were unable to live up to their even loftier demands.
The EU is not new to the game of soft-power influence. One could argue that colonial systems, still in place between some of its member states and their previous colonies, utilize economic, social, and political influence to develop various domestic institutions. In addition, these colonial systems have shaped the migrant networks seen in Europe and Africa today. For example, France retains strong economic relations with its former colonies yet still impacts the movement of people between itself and Africa. Through its colonial position, France was able to assume a position of social dominance, one which emphasized ‘whiteness’ and enchanted many wealthy North and West Africans. This same structure has been repeated across other relationships between European states and former colonies and still drives its vision of West Africa economically, socially, and politically.
What is more relevant and noticeable now is the apparent struggle for influence in Africa between the US, Europe, Russia, and China. While the EUTF never directly addressed these other influences, Europe now sits at a crossroads between them. The African Union (AU) has held numerous summits over the past two years, with each influential power vying for who to grow closer to and who to back away from. With its former colonial status, the EU does not seem like a promising candidate. Yet, even with a less efficient development system, the EU does not need to provide widespread developmental support. With a plethora of military, infrastructural, and oil investments brought to them, the AU is now focused on the long term. The EU is in a position to synthesize its relations with the AU to strengthen its relationships with North and West Africa, particularly to develop a system of labor migration.
As the United States looks outward to cheaper production and labor, so too does the EU. Rather than developing systems to keep African migrants out of Europe, the EU could find prospects in developing a sustainable system of labor interregional migration. This is overly complicated, though, with many difficulties presented to West Africans who seek to work in the EU. Perhaps, in order to develop a system of labor migration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the EU must first better its own partnership with North African states. There are high prospects for labor migration between the EU and North Africa, as well as recommendations by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to make labor migration between West and North Africa more transparent. If the EU seeks to put less emphasis on its development aid to West Africa, it could very well benefit from reexamining its economic relationship with North Africa.
The EUTF system, while not explained in-depth here, has focused on the direct, root causes of irregular migration. Its focus in Nigeria has been on social and economic programs to reduce the impacts of various insecurities. Yet, in trying to address extremely specific issues in Nigeria, the EU blinded itself from seeing the bigger picture. While migration is, at its core, about the experience of people and their motivation to migrate, the European Union works ineffectively, trying to target only a few communities. Rather, a system of migration in West Africa, influenced by ECOWAS, benefits little from hyper-targeted projects, some of which attempted to reduce migrant movement altogether. Instead, it would be beneficial for the EU to enact trans-regional cooperation with ECOWAS, operating then through formal and informal networks in the region.
Overall, the European Union has a muddied lens when it comes to influencing migration outside of its borders. It chooses to provide its own foreign policy, developed without interregional cooperation, to target hyper-specific issues on the ground. In Nigeria specifically, it has focused too much on border control than on looking at the bigger picture: the network of migration engrained in the region. While ECOWAS does not have a codified understanding of this network, it does express a more precise position on the matter. Thus, partnering with ECOWAS on its development aid may solve more than one problem for the EU.
About the Author
Patrick Condon is a recent graduate of the School of Diplomacy, receiving a BS in Diplomacy and International Relations and a BA in Economics. He is enrolled in a joint BS/MA program with the Geneva Graduate Institute, where he studies Mobilities, Migration, and Borders. Patrick currently interns on the Foundation Partnerships team at UNICEF USA, where he conducts prospect research on new foundation partnerships. He plans to write his master’s thesis on the ethnographic impacts of EU funding on migration in West Africa.