Hein de Haas on migration in northern Africa

A tweet from migration researcher Heaven Crawley pointed me to Hein de Haas, a research based at Oxford whose expertise in migration in northern Africa makes him a perfect go-to person for insight on migration as it affects Libya. His blog post "The real refugee crisis: African migrants trapped in Libya ". Libya is a transit country, true, but perhaps most importantly it's a destination country, and its sub-Saharan immigrant population is particularly vulnerable.

Let’s remind ourselves that just a week ago the media were abuzz with predictions of a “biblical exodus” towards Europe. Italian and other European politicians stated that Europe should brace itself for the mass arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees on European shores.

As usual, developments on the ground have proven the doomsayers wrong. The large majority of migrants fleeing the violence in Libya are returning to Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, the Philippines, China, Bangladesh and various European and African countries.

There have been some boats carrying some 6,000 migrants arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa, but what few realise is that this is part of the ‘normal’ springtime boat migration of prospective migrant workers from the Tunisian coast. This should not be confused with the much more large-scale overland cross-border movement of migrants out of Libya who wish to return home.

The whole idea of an “immigrant invasion” was flawed from the start. It was based on the misunderstanding that most migrants in Libya are in transit to Europe, while it was already widely known that most migrants had come to Libya to work, and now want to return home.

[. . .]

Of the approximately 2 to 2.5 million migrants allegedly living in Libya (reliable figures are lacking), only 200,000 or so have left. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, mainly African migrants remain trapped in Libya.

Although there is still a lack of verifiable information, an increasing number of reports suggest that African migrants inside Libya have fallen victim to violence, robbery, imprisonment and, allegedly, murder. Although migrants of many origins have fallen victim to violence and abuse, sub-Saharan migrants run much higher risks.

First of all, sub-Saharan Africans are among the poorest migrants in Libya. The long journey back home involves significant costs and risks of crossing the Sahara desert. What makes them particularly vulnerable is that they run the risk of violent attacks by angry mobs because they are erroneously perceived as “African mercenaries” hired by Gaddafi. There is also evidence of violence and theft by Gaddafi loyalists and border guards.

So, sub-Saharan migrants have now become a potential target of violence from either side of the conflict. This is part of an established pattern of racist violence and discrimination against sub-Saharan migrants in Libya since they started arriving in increasingly large numbers since the 1990s. However, in the current situation of total lawlessness and violent conflict, these risks are higher than ever.

de Haas' 2007 International Migration Institute study "The myth of invasion: Irregular migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union" (PDF format) is well worth study. He makes the point that so far West Africa is actually not a major source of migrants for western Europe, partly because of the poverty that isolates most of the region from the world economy--countries like Senegal with their long migrant-sending traditions, and partly because traditions of migration within West Africa have been supplemented by migration to a much wealthier Libya unattractive for Arab migrants relative to the Persian Gulf and run by a nominal pan-Africanist. The importance of immigration from sub-Saharan West Africa to North Africa, particularly but not only Saharan areas, is something de Haas brings out nicely. (And boat people, it seems, form only a small proportion of sub-Saharan Africans entering western Europe illegally; most overstay their passports.)

Go, read.

On changing demographics and the role of women

I wanted to highlight the latest post at Behind the Numbers "What’s Changed (or Not) for Women Since the First International Women’s Day 100 Years Ago?". The demographics of different communities around the world were very different from the way they were no, not least because of the substantially inferior status of women. How different were they?

In 1911, the U.S. population was 92 million, less than one-third of its current size of about 310 million. Life expectancy was 54 years for women and 51 for men. The leading cause of death, after heart disease, was tuberculosis. And 1 in 10 children died before his or her first birthday. Our U.S. statistics of 100 years ago are much like those of sub-Saharan Africa today.

In 1911, the global population was 1.8 billion, and today it has nearly quadrupled to 7 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the fastest growing region of the world and 42 percent of women in the region are under the age of 15 (compared with 19 percent in the United States). [. . .] Women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth to an average of 5.2 children each, in comparison to U.S. women who today have an average of 2 children each.

In 1911, men in the United States were five times as likely as women to be gainfully employed. And child labor was common: 26 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls ages 10 to 15 were employed as “breadwinners.” Based on the higher levels of employment among boys, perhaps it is not surprising that three times as many girls as boys were enrolled in school. In 1911, U.S. women were more likely to have graduated from high school than men, but less than one-third of college graduates were women. Today, women outnumber men on college campuses in the United States. In developing countries, great strides have been made in girls’ education at the primary level, but less so at the secondary level. Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world, with only 34 percent of women enrolled in secondary school, and a far smaller percentage enrolled in college or professional schooling beyond high school.

Nearly half of all wage earners in the United States are women, but among full time workers, they earn only 80 percent of what men earn. Women in the United States hold only 17 percent of public office seats at the federal level, far lower than in most regions of the world, and even slightly lower than in sub-Saharan Africa, where women hold 18 percent of parliamentary seats.

By 1911, women in the United States had, on average, only 3.4 births each. How this was accomplished in the absence of widespread availability of birth control is not entirely clear, but condoms were available, as were “traditional” methods – withdrawal and periodic abstinence. The diaphragm, the first manufactured contraceptive method for women, was not widely known or available at that time because the federal Comstock Laws of 1873 made it illegal to send any “obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious” materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. The Comstock Laws as they affected the sale and distribution of contraception were not overturned until 1936. By 1940, a third of all U.S. women used a diaphragm for contraception. Today, 79 percent of American women use a method of contraception, compared with only 23 percent of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Few women on either continent rely on a diaphragm, despite its demonstrated safety and efficacy, even in low resource settings.

It's worth noting that the position of women and the state of the demographic transition in the United States--and other relatively advanced societies--had come substantially from the dire demographics of the pre-modern era I'd written about earlier. In Michael Haines' essay EH.net "Fertility and Mortality in the United States", the extent of change from the 18th century was substantial.

The high fertility of American women attracted comment from late eighteenth-century observers, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Malthus. Mortality rates were probably moderate, with crude death rates ranging from about twenty per one thousand people per annum to over forty. We know a good deal about mortality rates in New England, somewhat less about the Middle Colonies, and least about the South. But apparently mortality was lower from Pennsylvania and New Jersey northward, and higher in the South. Life expectancy at birth ranged from the late twenties to almost forty.

[. . . There was a] sustained decline in white birthrates from at least 1800 and of black fertility from at least 1850. Family sizes were large early in the nineteenth century, being approximately seven children per woman at the beginning of the century and between seven and eight for the largely rural slave population at mid-century. The table also reveals that mortality did not begin to decline until about the 1870s or so. Prior to that, death rates fluctuated, being affected by periodic epidemics and changes in the disease environment. There is some evidence of rising death rates during the 1830s and 1840s. The table also shows that American blacks had both higher fertility and higher mortality relative to the white population, although both groups experienced fertility and mortality transitions. For example, both participated in the rise in birthrates after World War II known as the baby boom, as well as the subsequent resumption of birthrate declines in the 1960s.

Conventional explanations for the fertility transition have involved the rising cost of children because of urbanization, the growth of incomes and nonagricultural employment, the increased value of education, rising female employment, child labor laws and compulsory education, and declining infant and child mortality. Changing attitudes toward large families and contraception, as well as better contraceptive techniques, have also been cited. Recent literature suggests that women were largely responsible for much of the birthrate decline in the nineteenth century -- part of a movement for greater control over their lives. The structural explanations fit the American experience since the late nineteenth century, but they are less appropriate for the fertility decline in rural areas prior to about 1870. The increased scarcity and higher cost of good agricultural land has been proposed as a prime factor, although this is controversial. The standard explanations do not adequately explain the post-World War II baby boom and subsequent baby bust. More complex theories, including the interaction of the size of generations with their income prospects, preferences for children versus material goods, and expectations about family size, have been proposed.

What will be next insofar as women and changing demographics are concerned? An emphasis on expanding the choices available to women is going to be key. Going back to the past isn't an option.

On Libya as an immigration country

The large numbers of refugees crossing from Libya into Tunisia or Egypt has been prominently featured in international news media. Over at BAG News photographer Alan Chin has a couple of photoessays from the border-region up (1, 2), the below evocative picture being located at the second post.



A very high proportion of these refugees aren't Libyan citizens, but rather, immigrants of greater or lesser permanency, illustrating the extent to which Libya's oil-driven economy made it a society of mass immigration.

The refugee agency says some 55,000 people have arrived in Egypt in the last 10 days, one-third of them Asian workers. Fifty thousand others, including 2,000 Chinese, have entered Tunisia. And it said a group of people from Bangladesh, Thailand and Pakistan were marooned without papers in a no-man’s land between Libya and Egypt.

Meanwhile, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said those who remain in the Libyan capital Tripoli may not get badly needed aid because it’s too dangerous there. Aid groups fear that food stocks will run out as the violence continues between President Moammar Gadhafi and rebels who are fighting to oust him.

“Libya’s economy was strong compared with countries further south,” said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, an IOM spokesman in Geneva. “A guesstimate would be about 1.5 million migrants in Libya before the current trouble. They were working overwhelmingly in the informal sector.”

Migrants from countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines, he added, were usually registered and came with documents and contracts. But now they, too, are scrambling for the borders and begging for help to get back home.

Those who have fallen through the cracks the most, Chauzy said, are West and Sub-Saharan Africans lured by Libya’s relative prosperity.

The millennia-old migrants' routes connected the west African interior with the Libyan coast were supercharged via Gadaffi's pan-Africanist flirtations, as described in a 2004 Washington Post article.

During the 1990s, in the name of African unity, Gaddafi opened the borders to tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans to live and work in Libya. For the past four years, resentment over the policy has led to occasional riots and frequent bitter confrontations between the immigrants and Libyans.

In effect, the problems mark the end of an officially ordained dream.

Last month participants at an African Union meeting in Libya's coastal city of Sirte, Gaddafi's home town, rejected his proposal for a continent-wide army. A few days later, the General People's Congress, a consultative assembly that meets annually, ratified laws to restrict immigration and to expatriate Africans and other immigrants who live in Libya but have no steady jobs.

"You have work, you stay. You don't, you go home," said Giuma Abulkher, a government spokesman. "There will be strict controls."

The closed door is part of a shift in Libyan priorities. After decades of presenting himself first as a leader of the Arab world and then the African continent, Gaddafi has turned to the West. He is giving up chemical and nuclear weapons programs and declared that Libya would no longer support rebel movements across the globe. The United States is moving to restore diplomatic and trade relations cut off during decades of hostilities. Libya plans to privatize its state-dominated economy.

Shutting out other Africans will probably prove popular. In a closed, politically fearful society, opposition to Gaddafi's immigration policy is one of the few outward signs of discontent with his government. While Libyans are usually reluctant to openly discuss such issues as democracy, succession and economic policy, the immigration question provides a vent for complaints that quickly spill over into expressions of general unhappiness.

"It's about time. How can we have all these poor people here when we are poor ourselves?" said Osama Tayeb, a tout at a chaotic taxi stand in the old city. "First we help revolutionaries everywhere, then we give Libya to the Africans. Enough of this. Libya for the Libyans."

Mohammed Mabrouk, a waiter, blamed immigrants for a wide variety of societal problems -- crime, prostitution, dirty streets. "Look, they get away with everything. We could not touch our African brothers. They bring drugs, they smuggle people. We don't need this," he said.

[. . .]

About 600,000 sub-Saharan Africans are estimated to live among Libya's population of 5.5 million. They were lured by a relatively stable currency and jobs that many Libyans, in their highly socialist economy, decline to do. They sweep streets, work in restaurants and peddle a dizzying collection of merchandise -- cosmetics, pirated recorded music, clothes and secondhand auto parts. Raggedy men selling single articles of clothing and knit caps stand in line inside an arched stone gateway to the old city.

Their headdresses and wool or cotton robes indicate origins across a wide swath of Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Chad, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Congo. Some of the migrants come to make the perilous journey to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. Last summer, 200 Africans traveling to Italy by fishing boat drowned when their rickety craft capsized. During peak summer season last year, as many as 2,600 Africans arrived each month by boat on the Italian island of Lampedusa, an isolated stop between Libya and Sicily.

Later on, as part of his turn to3wards the West Gadaffi later signed accords with Italy which triggered the regime's very harsh controls over illegal migrants. The marginalization faced by this community was dramatically worsened when Gadaffi, not trusting his regular army, instead recruited thousands of sub-Saharan Africans as mercenaries to use against his subjects. These seem to have been pawns.

"A man at the bus station in Sabha offered me a job and said I would get a free flight to Tripoli," said Mohammed, a boy of about 16 who said he had arrived looking for work in the southern Libyan town only two weeks ago from Chad, where he had earned a living as a shepherd.

Instead of Tripoli, he was flown to an airport near the scruffy seaside town of Al-Bayda and had a gun thrust into his hands on the plane.

[. . .]

In halting Arabic, Mohammed, the young Chadian, tried to explain how he had ended up on the wrong side in somebody else's revolution.

Mohammed drifted into Libya looking for casual work, like many sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps with the hope of eventually finding people smugglers who would take him across the Mediterranean to Europe.

"I wanted a better life, not war and destruction," he said. He insisted that he had been treated well since his surrender, with regular meals, and said he hoped he would be allowed to return home soon.

"I didn't really know what was going on. They told me to do these things and I was really scared when the shooting started."

Al Jazeera and All Africa both carry reports of sub-Saharan African immigrants, whether legal or otherwise, being subject to attack by angry Libyans.

The Egyptians seem less vulnerable, likely becaquse of their perceived similarities to the Libyans, their lack of involvement in the revolution, and perhaps because of the concentration of this Egyptian migration beginning in the 1960s professional categories of employment. These Egyptians are still returning to their homes, however, hitting the economy of their homeland further.

"Losing these remittances will of course make the situation worse here," Rashad Abdu, a professor at the University of Cairo, said. "Libya is an important and close destination for hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers who could not find jobs in their country."

About 1.5 million Egyptians work and live in Libya, and send an estimated 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds (US$254 million) in remittances back home every year, according to the Egyptian labour ministry. Many sought work in Libya because the local economy could not absorb them.

"The sorry thing is that it will take most of these people a long time to find jobs in their home country," said Saleh Naser, chairman of the Labour Section at the independent Egyptian Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is composed of company owners and businessmen who try to coordinate the government and the business community.

"The only way out now is for the government to try to open new markets in the Gulf for these people," he said. According to the Chamber of Commerce, an estimated 10 percent of Egypt's 26 million working population are unemployed.

Egyptians working abroad remit about US$12 billion annually to their country. The state-run National Planning Institute, however, expects a decrease during the third quarter of the current financial year because of political turbulence in the Middle East.

Protests against the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt forced the Central Bank to shut banks for more than three weeks; they only resumed normal operations on 20 February.

The sorry thing is that it will take most of these people a long time to find jobs in their home country

"Egypt has a budget deficit and a government debt load that are teetering on the edge of sustainability," says think-tank Stratfor and the fall-off in remittances will only make matters worse.

Some of those who have returned are the family's sole breadwinner. According to 59-year-old Youssef Fawzi, his son Marwan, used to work in Libya, and household would now struggle without that financial support.

The Egyptians working in the east of Libya, adjoining their homeland, seem to have been able to escape. The Egyptians working in the west, along with other migrants, seem less fortunate.

More than 100,000 people have fled Libya in the past seven days. As the final battle for Libya looms, the crowds of escapees become bigger and more desperate.

Almost half of them have come through this narrow stretch of road leading across the northern Sahara into Tunisia. There are teams of Chinese oil workers in identical uniforms, large packs of Bangladeshis, scatterings of Japanese, and mostly thousands and thousands of Egyptians, who have provided the bulk of Libya’s labour force for years.

“We’re getting out because we’re scared, but also because there won’t be any paycheques for a long time. We know there won’t be work until there’s a new government, which could be months from now,” said Haji Abasi, who took his wife and two small children on the frightening road journey from Libya.

At this point, there is no violence along the three-hour drive from Tripoli to the border. Only at the border crossing is the solid green Gadhafi flag visible, a last stand for the regime, held by some of Col. Gadhafi’s most loyal security staff.

But the border guards – who systematically seize cellphones from refugees, strip them of their memory cards, and sometimes harass and humiliate the escapees – are not the final threat to the exhausted people carrying their possessions in oversized bags.

That came after the Libyan border, when on Sunday the Egyptians were blocked by aggressive crowds of Tunisian protesters who tried – usually successfully – to stop or sharply slow the flow of Egyptians, allowing only families and injured people through.

The protesters include residents of the nearby border town of Ben Gardane, who feel that they are being overrun with tens of thousands of homeless Egyptians, and members of the local revolutionary committee who believe they are helping the Egyptians by drawing attention to their plight and encouraging the Cairo government to send rescue airlifts.

“We don’t have any more space to accept the Egyptians – we are blocking the border until the Egyptian authorities find a solution for their transportation,” said Lutfi Tabeth, a member of the Ben Gardane revolutionary committee.

It became a frightening and dangerous scene on Sunday afternoon as several thousand Egyptians charged the border, pushing through the Tunisian protesters and attempting to charge into the camps, only to be stopped by Tunisian soldiers who raised their rifles and forced them to sit on the street, closing the border again.

At this point, assuming the stabilization of the Libyan situation I feel safe only in predicting the gradual return of the Egyptians and the further marginalization of sub-Saharan Africans in Libya. With these communities' association with a hated leader's brutality, however unearned and unfair, it seems safe to assume that sub-Saharan Africans will not do well at all.