On recent post-colonial immigration to Africa

The ever-interesting blog 3 Quarks Daily linked earlier today to another article by Jenni Marsh in the South China Morning Post Magazine, "The town that China built: tourism boom at Zambia's Victoria Falls thanks to Chinese makeover".

"My husband is the best Chinese chef in Zambia," says Liu Xiuyi, a former takeaway employee from Chongqing. "Whenever the president has Chinese guests in Lusaka, my husband is hired to cook for them."

Twenty years ago, with no savings or formal education, the couple emigrated to Zambia when Liu's husband was hired as a chef by a Chinese state-owned construction company contracted to build roads in dusty Lusaka.

Now in their 50s, the Lius have just built a 15 million kwacha (HK$18.3 million) three-star hotel and restaurant, called the Golden Chopsticks, in the former British colonial outpost of Livingstone. They also own property in the Zambian capital; employ about 100 staff, local and Chinese; and rub shoulders with presidents and diplomats.

The Lius are among the estimated 20,000 to 100,000 Chinese living in the copper-rich southern African nation - weak census practices mean precise figures are elusive - and were among the first wave of daring migrants who sought their fortune here.

This Chinese immigrant presence in Zambia is part of a much larger wave of Chinese migration towards Africa. Yoon Jung Park and Anna Ying Chen's recent article "Recent Chinese Migrants in small Towns of Post-apartheid South Africa" takes a look at this migration in connection to South Africa. Much more broadly, Chinese migration to Africa is explored at length in American journalist Howard French's excellent recent book China's Second Continent, excerpted at Quartz and reviewed in The Economist. Substantial Chinese investment has been accompanied by substantial Chinese migration.

For more than a decade, the Chinese government has invested hugely in Africa. The foundation for this partnership was laid in 1996, when President Jiang Zemin proposed the creation of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in a speech at the Organization of African Unity headquarters in Addis Ababa. Four years later, FOCAC convened triumphantly for the first time, gathering leaders from forty-four African countries in Beijing. China pledged, among other things, to double assistant to the continent, create a $5 billion African development fund, cancel outstanding debt, build new facilities to house the OAU (later replaced by the AfricanUnion), create “trade and economic zones” around the continent, build 30 hospitals and 100 rural schools, and train 15,000 African professionals. Fitch Ratings estimated that China’s Export-Import Bank extended $67.2 billion in loans to sub-Saharan African countries between 2001 and 2010—$12.5 billion more than the World Bank.

Although there are no official figures, evidence suggests that at least a million private Chinese citizens have arrived on African soil since 2001, many entirely of their own initiative, not by way of any state plan. This “human factor” has done as much as any government action to shape China’s image in Africa and condition its tics to the continent. By the timeI met Hao, in early 2011, merchants in Malawi, Namibia, Senegal, and Tanzania were protesting the influx of Chinese traders. In the gold-producing regions of southern Ghana, government officials were expelling Chinese wildcat miners. And in Zambia, where recent Chinese arrivals had established themselves in almost every lucrative sector of the economy, their presence had become a contentious issue in national elections.

As we left the capital, we passed the new national stadium, nearing completion by Chinese work crews at the edge of town. Built to support the country’s bid to host the 2013 continent-wide Africa Cup of Nations, it was a showcase gift from the Chinese government,intended as a statement of generosity and solidarity. China has become an avid practitioner of this kind of prestige-project diplomacy. I asked Hao whether a $65 million stadium was the best sort of gift for Mozambique, one of the ten poorest countries in the world.

“Chinese government projects in Mozambique have all failed,” he said. “That’s because the Chinese ganbu [bureaucrats] don’t know how to communicate on the same level with the blacks.” He shook his head and wagged a stubby index finger excitedly.

I asked him about his early days in the country. A prior attempt to do business overseas,in Dubai, had gone bad. Chinese agricultural experts there who had been on African aid missions planted a very powerful idea in his mind: Go to Africa, where you can acquire good land cheaply. He had flown to Maputo alone, and no one had greeted him at the airport. “I didn’t understand a fucking word thatwas being said to me.” On his own, he made his way into town and found a flophouse. Making little headway—he spoke neither Portuguese nor English—he soon gave in to the temptation to call up some fellow Chinese he had found online while still in China.

Post-colonial migration to Africa is not a new phenomenon. Even immediately after decolonization, large French communities grew in the politically stable and closely France-linked Côte d'Ivoire and Gabon, as did British immigration to South Africa. Elsewhere in Africa, Ghana came to host a relatively large community of African-Americans, attracted to Ghana by that country's early self-positioning as a home for the African diaspora.

More recently, European immigration to Africa has grown sharply, propelled by hard times in southern Europe as much as by African prosperity. Portuguese migration to oil-rich Angola and even Mozambique exploded after the beginning of the Great Recession. Most recently, there has even been migration south across the Strait of Gibraltar, from a recession-prone Spain to a Morocco that is at least experiencing some growth.

Morocco may seem like a strange preference for a Spaniard. With its GDP one-sixth of Spain’s and an unemployment rate estimated at 30 percent, “Morocco is in a deeper crisis than Spain,” says Mehdi Lahlou, an economics professor at Morocco’s National Institute for Statistics and Applied Economics. Still, Mr. Lahlou says it makes sense that Spaniards would consider moving to Morocco for work.

Spaniards do not need a visa to enter Morocco for a stay of up to three months, and only need to step on Spanish soil – which includes Spanish enclaves in Morocco, such as Ceuta and Melilla – to renew their stay. (Moroccans, on the other hand, must receive a visa to legally enter Spain.)

Plus, with the euro to Moroccan dirham exchange rate currently at 10 to 1, Lahlou says Spaniards who work for European companies in Morocco or come with savings from home can “live like kings” in the country. These advantages, he says, allow Spaniards to easily move back and forth between continents looking for work wherever it may arise.

Moving to Morocco was his best opportunity for employment, according to Martinez. But it has come at a price.

Martinez’s family has lived in Galicia, a region of northwest Spain, for generations. Rubbing his thumb on the heel of his hand, Martinez says Galicia is like a stain on the skin. “Moriña,” he said, a Galician word that means an intense longing for one's homeland. No matter where you go in the world you will always be Galician, says Martinez.

Though Tangier is only eight miles away from Spain, Morocco is “a world away,” says Martinez. From the call to prayer projected over loudspeakers five times per day to the disapproval of alcohol consumption, Martinez says Morocco feels very different from Spain.

Migration isn't simply a matter of people moving from poor countries to rich countries. It bears noting that migration in fact involves individuals who move from one area of the world to another in pursuit of opportunities. There's absolutely no reason why a stable Africa might not offer people with useful skills or experience more lucrative opportunities than in their homelands. Does Africa has a skills deficit? There may be plenty of people living around the world who would have these skills. Back in 2012, Hein de Haas wrote about what this migration, a reversal of the direction of migration we're used to, means.

This portrayal of "Africa = misery" is misleading in the first place, and goes back straight to colonial times, when Europeans fabricated stereotypes about African "backwardness", tribalism, chaos and poverty as a justification for their "civilizing" colonial mission.

Although violence and poverty have frequently occurred in several places and regions, other parts of Africa have been relatively prosperous and peaceful, and have in fact attracted migrants.

What many people ignore on top of that, is that some African economies are growing fast, and can nowadays offer better opportunities to skilled, entrepreneurial Europeans than the stagnating economies of Southern and European Europe. In addition, many African economies have been sheltered from the worst effects of the Global Economic Crisis because their banking sectors are less liberalized and therefore better protected.

It is impossible to predict what the future holds. Of course, if European economies pick up again, it is likely that emigration will fall and immigration increases again - Although it remains a question to what extent and when economic recovery occurs, as the current crisis seems to be a protracted one, and may last for many more years. It would also be dangerous to exaggerate African growth and to deny that many Africans continue to live in conditions of extreme poverty insecurity. And it would also be naive to think that Africans will stop migrating themselves.

However, it is important to go beyond colonial stereotypes of Africa as a continent of misery and to stop thinking that the whole world wants to come to Europe. In fact, this hardly concealing the idea the Europeans are superior.

On Morocco's expulsion of sub-Saharan African migrants and its import

An article recently popped up, Yabiladi.com's "Expulsion de centaines de Subsahariens vers la frontière algérienne" ("Expulsion of hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans towards the Algerian border"), commenting on a recent e3xpulsion of illegal migrants from Morocco.

In a statement, [Médicins Sans Frontières] said that between 600 and 700 people were arrested during police operations in several cities Royaumme between August 19 and September 10. Living in Al-Hoceima, Casablanca, Fes, Nador, Oujda, Rabat and Tangiers, these people were then deported to the border with Algeria. MSF also said that during several raids, police destroyed shelters of illegal immigrants with bulldozers. Left in this no man's land, some immigrants have managed to return to Oujda on foot, completely helpless.

MSF said it had taken care of 186 migrants including 103 who had injuries related to violent arrests. According to its chief of mission in Morocco, Jorge Martín, his team has seen "the direct consequences of the expulsions on the state of physical and mental health of migrants." In addition, MSF said it had seen a "dramatic increase" in cases of health problems related to violence.

The NGO called again for Morocco to meet its obligations under international law, Morocco is a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of migrant workers and their families. Similarly, it called on Morocco to "respect the dignity and integrity of migrants and avoid exposing them to a situation of greater vulnerability and insecurity" in its implementation of measures to control illegal migration.

The comments at this article are interesting, some commenters criticizing their country's treatment of these migrants, others (like this one, who wrote in English) blaming the migrants and their countries in terms not altogether different from those used to describe other groups of migrants from other poor countries.

If Medecins sans Frontieres wish to help, they should distribute CONTRCEPTIVES to those in Africa. The problem: Fertile Women and Men with nothing to do but make babies they can not take care of. Compounded by poverty, Illeteracy and Governments presided over by Dictators whose objectif is to get rich at the cost of the poverty of the populace.
I am very proud of Morocco and its achievements of the last 10 years. However it still has a lot to do to take care of its own people to provide decent housing, jobs, health systems and provide jobs for those who are still looking to be employed. Why then should Morocco has to add to its already HEAVY burden and spend Monies on these African migrants? This would be a waste of cash that can be used to eradicate shantytowns, open up decent schools, hospitals, old folks homes, and assist the Street Cildren as well as handicapped, divorcees, etc.

This raises an interesting question. Continued and intensifying European surveillance of its Mediterranean frontiers makes it increasingly difficult for migrants to make it in substantial number to their preferred destinations. Despite this, basic subsistence needs continue to push migrants north from Sub-Saharan Africa, towards North Africa. North African countries, incidentally, including Morocco, are substantially richer than their southern counterparts, at least as measured by measures such as HDI and GDP per capita. More, many of these countries have close ties with at least some Sub-Saharan African countries--the Maghreb and most of the Sahel and all of Senegal were part of the French Empire, and share a common language and religion. If migrants move north to Morocco (and its neighbours) and find themselves stuck there, doesn't that imply that Morocco (and its neighbours) will soon find themselves with large immigrant communities of their own?

Will Ceuta and Melilla become Moroccan?

Continuing from yesterday's post examining Morocco as a source of migrants for Europe, recently on my own blog, A Bit More Detail, riffed from Geocurrents' posts on the contested enclaves on the Strait of Gibraltar, examining the positions of British Gibraltar on the Spanish shore and Spanish Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan. Now, at Morocco's Yabiladi, Ibrahim Kone's article "Demographics to the rescue of Moroccan Ceuta and Melilla" ("La démographie au secours de la marocanité de Ceuta et Melilla") argues that higher birth rates among Muslims in the Spanish enclaves will lead to their assimilation to Morocco.

[T]here are more and more Moroccans in Ceuta and Melilla. According to data from the Spanish Institute of Statistics (INE), reported by Libertad Digital, in 2008 34% of infants had mothers Melilla Moroccan cons "only 17% of Ceuta." The table of the popular names of children born in Melilla in the 60s [included at the original article], and one of the last decade is revealing.

Melilla enclave would be the first endangered by the demographic peril. Its population is already half Muslim and Moroccan origin. The fertility of Muslims is higher than that of Spanish (not Muslim) and even higher than that of the Moroccans of "Morocco".

[. . .]

The continuous growth of the number of Moroccans will result in a societal and political balance that will go in favor of the majority. There will be more demands from Muslims, most politicians of the Muslim faith, and from there, there will be a government with a Muslim majority. The Spaniards are ready to accept a being a dominant minority, but never will they be a dominated minority. What will happen in the next few years? Will they agree to stay in Melilla as a minority? This is doubtful as misgivings about Islam are important. The return of Ceuta and Melilla on Morocco's lap could happen in the next few decades as predicted by King Hassan II.

As even the author admits, the fact that one's Muslim in one of the two Spanish enclaves does not translate into automatic support for accession to Mexico. The fact remains that living in these two Spanish cities, southern outposts of the European Union, users of the Euro, and territories of a stable and prosperous democracy, is good; if Ceuta and Melilla became Moroccan, then notwithstanding Morocco's recent economic development they would suffer catastrophe. More, as I noted in my blog post, most of the Moroccans in the enclaves are Berbers who appreciated living in a state that, unlike the Arabizing monarchy of Morocco, offers space for their cultural expression. The profoundly bad assumption that demographic trends among the enclaves' different communities will continue as in the past also needs to be looked at quite critically.

Demographics, it's quite worth noting yet again, is not destiny, or at certainly not the simplistic demographics used by the author.

What do Mexico and Morocco have in common?

Some time ago I came across an interesting article at Morocco Board, Hein de Haas and Simona Vezzoli's "Migration & Development Experiences of Morocco and Mexico". Their thesis is simple.

Over the second half of the 20th century, Mexico and Morocco have evolved into main sources of predominantly low-skilled migrant labor in the United States and the European Union, respectively.

Despite large historical, cultural, and economic differences, these two countries share the geopolitical feature of being located on the globe's main South-North divides and "migration frontiers." This explains the striking similarities between Mexican and Moroccan migration trends.

About 10 percent of Moroccan and Mexican citizens live abroad, and in both countries, remittances have become a vital source of income and poverty alleviation, particularly in rural areas.

In view of the strategic importance of migration, it is not surprising that both the Moroccan and Mexican governments have openly or tacitly encouraged emigration and have recently intensified efforts to foster ties with their emigrant populations to maximize remittance flows and to boost the positive development impact of migration.

de Haas and Vezzoli go on to identify a wide range of similarities between the Moroccan and Mexican migration experiences: in the 1950s and 1960s the two countries evolved into major sources of unskilled labour for booming American and western European economies, from an initial concentration of migrants in areas and countries they were closely connected with (California and the southwest in the case of Mexico, France in the case of Morocco) the communities have expanded geographically to new destinations, emigration is driven by the relative attractiveness of labour markets in the receiving countries, and the remittances of these migrants play a huge role in domestic economies. Of note is the fact that human development indices (life expectancies, literacy rates, fertility rates) between sending and receiving countries have narrowed considerably over the past half-century while the GDP per capita gaps have remained stable. Morocco's relatively more dependent on remittances than Mexico, being a low-income country instead of a middle-income one, but the two countries still share challenges. How can emigration from sending to receiving countries be used for the maximum benefit of the sending countries?

While generally beneficial for individuals, families, and the communities involved, migration's impact on regional development and growth is much more contested. A central observation of the study tours was that depending on the general development context, migration impacts differ across and even within regions. Even more importantly, the study tours observed that migration tends to reinforce preexisting development trends and may therefore set in motion positive (virtuous) as well as negative (vicious) migration-and-development circles.

For example, in relatively isolated and disadvantaged areas, migration may further accelerate population decline and undermine economic productivity. However, in these cases, migration is a symptom, not a cause, of such decline.

The relative isolation of villages in mountainous areas of Zacatecas and some of the smaller, difficult-to-reach oases in southern Morocco marginalize them from economic interaction with more central parts of Mexico and Morocco, respectively. In turn, this lack of economic interaction hinders their development. Young adults then leave these traditional settlements in search of opportunities elsewhere. The resulting depopulation can create "ghost towns" where only a few households are left, among them a handful of young families with children.

By contrast, centrally located and economically thriving areas and regions are more likely to lure migrants and remittances back in; migrants from other parts of the country may relocate their remaining family members to these places, and migrants know that investments in such areas are more likely to produce returns than investments in rural hometowns. These decisions can further accelerate growth, particularly in urban centers. Within rural regions, migrants often prefer to invest in and return to "migrant boomtowns," accelerating existing urbanization trends.

[. . .]

A key observation and hypothesis to explore is that migration can perhaps make the largest difference in "semi-peripheral" regions, where economies are neither booming nor declining, but where they have potential for growth. In these places, remittances might trigger a virtuous cycle by pushing regional economies over a certain tipping point, leading to accelerated growth. A comparative study of regions and towns whose growth is related to migrants' circulation and investments would provide significant insights into the conditions under which migration can boost development processes.

The whole essay goes into much more detail than my quotes and summary suggests, and is certainly worth your reading. Go there.

Institutional Adaptations to Migrants and Transnationalism

I'd like to point our readers towards David Fitzgerald's recent Migration Information article "Uncovering the Emigration Policies of the Catholic Church in Mexico". As the article's title suggests, Fitzgerald reviews how the Catholic Church in Mexico tried first to prevent emigration, then to help emigrants preserve their culture in ways consistent with Catholic mores.

The first mass wave of emigration from Mexico took place during the 1910s and 1920s as Mexicans fled political and economic turmoil at home for work in US agriculture and railroads. By 1929, an estimated 738,500 people of Mexican birth lived in the United States. Many of them migrated seasonally.

Within Mexico, most elites opposed the mass migration of its people, the country's largest asset, to the United States.

The strongest sentiment against emigration during this period came from the Catholic Church, an influential voice in a country where more than 98 percent of the population identified as Catholic even as the Church continued to lose its long and bloody struggles with the government. The Church feared that migration caused the breakup of families, religious conversions, and the introduction of dangerous foreign ideas.

However, the Church's various attempts to prevent migration northward largely failed. By the 1960s, its migration policy shifted to preparing migrants for the journey, establishing closer ties with the Church in the United States, and becoming a voice for migrants' rights while encouraging both their US integration and homeland ties.

With 88 percent of Mexicans older than age 4 being Catholic in 2000 according to INEGI, Mexico's official statistical agency, the Church continues to play an important role in the migration experience even as the number of evangelical Christians grows.

What strikes me most about the Mexican experience is how closely it resembles the Franco-American experience, as I blogged last July

[M]ass language shift from French to English is not unique in the history of North American Francophones. Starting in the late 19th century, relative economic underdevelopment propelled a tremendous migration of Francophones out from their traditional settlement areas along the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to adjacent parts of the continent. Large and thriving communities of Franco-Americans (concentrated in New England, particularly in that region's industrial cities) and Franco-Ontarians (concentrated in northern and eastern areas adjacent to Québec) formed at this time, encouraging some to believe in the idea of a greater Québec encompassing those communities. That vision failed, as the Franco-American community was whittled away through immigration restrictions and acculturation to the Anglophone culture surrounding them. Franco-Ontarians, who with few exceptions like in Anglophone-majority communities relatively isolated from Québec, may be about to follow. And no, the Francophones who are tourists in Maine or long-term residents in Florida don't make up the same sorts of communities.

As I noted in a June 2008 post at my blog, all the blandishments of nationalists and Franco-Americans in the Catholic Church urging French Canadians to stay in Canada, if not on their own land, failed miserably. In one case recorded at the above blog link, the arrival of so many relatively prosperous Franco-Americans helped encourage migration! Towards the end of the immigration in the 1900-1920 period, just as the Mexican Catholic Church tried to prepare and help preserve their culture, so did French Canadians and Franco-Americans inside the American Catholic Church tried to create a self-sustaining conservative culture in the Little Canada urban enclaves. They failed, in the end. Jack Kerouac did write in English, after all.

What impresses me most about the past experience of French Canadians and the current experience of Mexicans is the way in which originally national institutions became transnational, representing the nation at home and abroad. There's signs that this sort of institutional adaptation to transnationalism is present in other instances, as in Morocco's refusal to let emigrants abandon their citizenship on the grounds that they remain part of the nation. Can our readers think of other circumstances?