Dear colleague,

As to my gut-feeling, the driver of the current rampant outmigration from Africa could be fundamentally poverty and war. Also, wrong perception on "Get a quick-rich in Abroad" push the young generation out of their countries. This phenomenon we will prevail unless practical measures are in place.

Hence, working on the key causes of outmigration would reverse the situation. In this context, on-site job creation could attract the youths to stay at home. In addition, good political commitment on securing peace, job and awareness would be best practices to at least minimize outmigration through these risk-prone countries. Furthermore, valuing the contribution of scholars to the above issue could also be an underlying solution to come.

With best regards,

Hailemariam

In order to answer your question, I believe these are a few critical issues to consider.

A major and inescapable feature of the current form of capitalism, neoliberal globalisation, is unequal development. The global and national dynamics of capitalist development, the international division of labour, the imperialist system of international power relations, and the conflicts that surround the capital-labour relation and the dynamics of extractive capital have made economic, social, political and cultural polarization more extreme between geographical spaces and social classes than ever before in human history. A conspicuous output of this development is the disproportionate concentration of capital, power and wealth in the hands of a small elite within the capitalist class. Nowadays the richest one per cent of the world’s population controls 40 percent of total global assets (Davies et al., 2008). Moreover, ‘from 1970 to 2009, the per capita GDP of developing countries (excluding China) averaged a mere 6.3 percent of the per capita GDP of the G8 countries’ (Foster, McChesney and Jonna, 2011a).

In fostering the above trend, global labour arbitrage has become a key pillar of the new global architecture in reference to the advantage of pursuing lower wages abroad. This allows capital to ‘earn’ enormous monopolistic returns, or imperial rents, by taking advantage of the relative immobility of labour and the existence of subsistence (and below) wages in much of the Global South. Through the mechanism of global labour arbitrage, social and geographic asymmetries are reproduced on a global scale. Social inequalities are one of the most distressing aspects of this process, given the unprecedented concentration of capital, power, and wealth in a few hands while a growing segment of the population suffers poverty, exploitation and exclusion. Increasing disparities are also expressed, ever more strongly, in terms of racial, ethnic and gender relations; reduced access to production and employment; a sharp decline in living and working conditions; and the progressive dismantling of social safety nets.

In this context, migration acquired a new role in the international labour division. Mechanisms of uneven development produce structural conditions, such as unemployment and inequality, which catapult the massive migration of dispossessed and marginalized people. Needing access to means of subsistence or at least minimal opportunities for social mobility, large segments of the population have been literally expelled from their territories to relocate within their own country or abroad. Under these circumstances migration is a forced population displacement encompassing five modalities: migration due to violence, conflict, and catastrophe (65.3 million, including 21.3 refugees, 40.8 million internally displaced and 3.2 million asylum seekers, UNHCR, 2015); the smuggling and trafficking of persons (21 million, ILO, 2015b); migration due to dispossession, exclusion, and unemployment (at least 600 million of international and internal ‘economic’ migrants fall into this category); migration due to over-qualification and lack of opportunities (around 30 million); and return migration in response to massive deportations.

For a broader development of these issues, the following references might be of your interest:

Working Paper Capitalism, Migration and Development

Chapter Migration and development in Latin America

Africa is like that one child that you know will sort themselves out even when they get into trouble, because they eventually put themselves in that situation.

Politics is a major problem for "suffering" countries. Developing countries have people who have decided to take matters into their own hands not to make things better but to selfishly gather what they can for themselves.

The people who are suffering, think that they have 'chosen' someone who has insight to lead them and alleviate the suffering, not knowing that the power of self fulfillment is stronger than that of neighborly love.

Most suffering countries have become used to Promises and failures that optimism is far from them in their own countries, so they move to a 'better place'.

Balance is key in interdependence which I believe is the foundation of some of these sufferings. there is no one thing that causes suffering. there are so many factors. but if these youths migrate and in some way make life better for themselves, they will eventually go back to their countries and effect some kind of change, especially on the community level.

The key point is, suffering will always be present, is how we navigate it that matters. with interdependence comes responsibility, and one of it is to open up your country for other people to come in and expand their reach. it is all a matter of choice. Politics is a choice, whether good or bad, balance for a country is a choice, Development for a country is a choice, alleviating poverty is a choice, fighting corruption is a choice.

On 17 July 2017, the World Economic Forum published an article by the Regional Director, West and Central Africa, of the International Organization for Migration. (See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/the-biggest-cause-of-african-migration-might-not-be-what-you-think/.) The article noted that the most commonly cited reasons for people migrating from Africa to Europe revolve around the search for economic opportunity and jobs. However, referring to Sustainable Development Goal 16: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels" (and more specifically Targets 16.5, 16.6, and 16.7), the article invited attention to poor governance and noted further that economic development and job creation will not stem the flow of migrants unless they are accompanied by effective, accountable, and inclusive governance and a society that gives young people a fair chance.

Going off the top my head, I think the situation boils down to a the lack of "capacity" and the inability of the country from which one is fleeing. The lack of capacity to provide for its inhabitants basic needs such as healthcare and the inability of its civil forces or military to provide protection from the ravages of a civil conflict or a natural/humanitarian disaster. We can expect these kinds of exodus's to continue based upon the efficiency or lack thereof of the state from which they have been forced to flee. We know for a fact weak governmental infrastructure will lead to these types of movements. Instead of having a stable government capable of providing for its citizens in most cases you have a kleptocracy only concerned with enriching those whom are in power at that particular time. The only way this continuing situation will ever be addressed is by improving the governments ability or capacity to provide for its citizens basic needs of being able to live in stable environment and being able to provide for the physiological and phycological needs of its citizens.

I agree with most of the points regarding the government capacities, but I will insist in the structural nature of the problematic. In Latin America ECLAC's school of thought followed by dependency theory explain the root causes of uneven development.

The massive nature of migration under contemporary capitalism and the bonds between domestic and international flows are fundamentally determined by the contradictory and disorderly dynamics of uneven development. Migration thus adopts the particular mode of “compulsive displacement,” a new modality of forced migration, possessing the following two characteristics.

First, migration is essentially an expulsion process resulting from a downward spiral of social regression triggered by deprivation of the means of production and subsistence, pillaging, violence, and catastrophes that jeopardize the subsistence of large segments of the population in places of origin. This outcome is not simply a cumulative or gradual process but an actual breakdown of the social order. It is brought about by structural adjustment policies and by domination and wealth concentration strategies that have attained extreme levels and are forcing massive contingents of the population to sell their labour both nationally and internationally to guarantee their families’ subsistence.

Second, compulsive displacement imposes restrictions on the mobility of the migrant workforce, depreciates it, and subjects it to conditions of high vulnerability and extreme exploitation. If the process of expulsion reprises the original accumulation modes characteristic of the first historical stages of capitalism, then the current liberalization of the workforce is fated to face obstacles in the labour market internationally. Migrant-receiving states regulate immigrant entry with punitive and coercive instruments that devalue labour, in addition to violating human rights and criminalizing migrants. Conditions for labour exploitation and social exclusion, as well as the risks experienced at different stages of transit and settling, endanger the lives of migrants.