La mia ultima analisi online pubblicata su Pambazuka. Mi sono dedicato all'analisi storica delle relazioni Europa-Africa, con un occhio aperto sui flussi migratori odierni. Dal colonialismo in poi, argomento nell'analisi, l'Europa non ha mai smesso di dominare l'Africa, cercando perfino di istituzionalizzare questo rapporto di subordinazione nei processi di formazione dell'Unione Europea, che dell'Africa e delle sue risorse aveva ed ha ancora bisogno. Di conseguenza, i flussi migratori cui assistiamo non sono affatto un'emergenza, bensì da considerare fisiologici all'interno di un sistema socio-economico, quello "Eurafricano", che è dichiaratamente ingiusto e mira a produrre disuguaglianza.
LINK to the original page:
eng -> here
Abstract:
The recent
debate on African migrants to Europe, oftentimes intertwining with the danger
of international terrorism or the increase in national unemployment, imposes a
wider reflection on a phenomenon, that of migration, which is far from being
simply an 'emergency’. On the contrary, I argue that it is dynamic, totally
physiological and even predictable, within a well-defined system of
international relations whose historical profile will be briefly described in
the following article.
The
collective imagination propagated by politics, media and much common speech
suggests seeing Europe and Africa as otherwise separate continents that get in
contact with each other through that perilous and highly symbolic act that is
the arrival of a boat to the shores of southern Europe. The rescue and
reception of migrants are often highlighted firstly as an act of solidarity on
the part of European governments, and we tend to underestimate that this logic
has a major role in activating the mechanisms for the definition of European
consciousness: essentially, the exposure to speeches of this kind facilitates
the construction of an imaginary in which European countries take on the role
of ‘saviors’ against nations and populations that can be blamed instead for the
grim fate that they were able to forge for themselves.
This type
of narrative, emphasizing the African migrant as essentially being ‘Other’ in
respect to the European ‘We’, was first made legitimate by a historic step that
proved to be essential for the social construction of that ‘We’ just mentioned
above: the said step was the final and solemn settlement of the colonial past
as well as the atrocities and injustices committed during the European expansion
in Africa.
In 2004,
Germany in fact apologized to Namibia for the genocide of 65,000 Herero [1]; in
2008, the then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did the same to
Gaddafi, agreeing also to compensate for the damage caused by colonialism [2]
(and in the same year the obelisk of Axum was returned to Ethiopia). More
recently, Sarkozy, Hollande, Brown and Cameron offered public apologies for the
violence of colonialism in the countries respectively ruled by France and
Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; however, both their
tones and arguments were, still, rather problematic [3].
On the
whole, yet, while this long-awaited action generated mixed reactions in Africa,
it was functional in Europe in order to create the perception that the accounts
with the past had been closed, thus opening up the opportunity to establish new
relationships between the two continents based on claimed parity and equality.
Therefore, in the collective imaginary as much as in the words of the European
political leaders that succeeded one another in recent years, the thread that
necessarily held together the stories and the destinies of Europe and Africa in
a relation of subordinating power was finally cut.
As
mentioned above, the new position of equilibrium has given Europe new impetus
to intervene in African affairs. Ironically, colonialism has now turned into a
double-edged sword to criticize Africa opportunistically: for example, Gordon
Brown made the suggestion already in 2005 to ‘celebrate’ the ‘great British
values’ exported with colonialism [4]; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy
declared that ‘We’ve especially got to stop excusing them from all
responsibility for the underdevelopment of their continent….Blaming Africa’s
failure only on the consequences of colonialism is contrary to reality’ [5].
Even US President Barack Obama would join the group in 2009, telling Africans
to stop blaming colonialism in instrumental ways [6].
Why bother?
This alleged evolution in the relations hides an important contradiction: Africa
and Europe are more interconnected than we might think, and a relationship of
economic subordination of the first to the second does persist. Traces of that
can be found in the analysis of the policies of the European Union (EU).
As early as
in 1982, Professor Guy Martin noted that the post-independence agreements
between Europe and Africa (from Yaoundé to Lomé II) represented the realization
of the neoclassical theory of international development based on the division
of labor, where Africa was responsible for providing both raw materials and, at
the same time, emerging markets for Europe’s finished products [7]: this
dynamic was nothing more than the continuation of colonialism by other means,
namely those of modern finance corresponding to liberalization, open markets
and deregulation. In this regard, Martin retrieves in particular the continuity
between the French penchant for a ‘policy of non-industrialization’ in colonial
Africa and the nature of French relations with Africa in the post-independence
years.
This
‘balance’, which obviously is not a balance at all, made Africa de facto
dependent on European technology, while Europe too became dependent on raw
materials imported from Africa, yet with an important distinction: the control
that the global north (including Europe) could exercise at any time on Africa
and its raw materials was decisively larger than the pressure that African
governments and markets could instead ever apply on the first. Examples of this
are the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) provided to the continent in the
1980s by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and partly by other
creditors (including the EU): the SAPs consisted of loans that included
conditionality clauses, like the application of the neo-liberal recipe as a
solution to the problem of debts. The results produced by SAPs are
well-summarized in the famous reference to the period 1980-1990 as Africa’s
‘lost decade’: the continent entered the new millennium with mass unemployment,
deteriorating terms of trade and national GDPs lower than what it had forty
years before [8].
A vision of
this type of European-African relation has a name, ‘ideology of Eurafrica’,
which has been spreading within European circles since the 1920s. According to
the aforementioned Martin, the ideology consists of the integration, and
ideally the absorption, of Africa by Europe [9].
In more
recent times, Professor Peo Hansen extended the concept of Eurafrica, noting
how it was essential for the very process of European integration during the
twentieth century [10]: in the first half of the century, Africa represented
the natural way out to solve European problems of overpopulation; later, in the
European political debate, Africa was instead represented as a ‘reservoir’ of
resources from which could be extracted those assets that were necessary for
the development of the continent, ranging from hydroelectric power to other
natural resources, eventually to the employment of African human capital, with
the scope of solving the demographic problems afflicting the European continent
that now, in the second half of the century, needed in fact the inflow of
individuals to balance the expected aging of its population.
Hence,
Africa was party to the European integration discourse to the extent that it
was necessary for the development of European countries themselves. This
domination in disguise was in fact justifiable on the ideological basis that
partly perpetuated the idea of Africa as a backward territory without history;
this made the European intervention, despite the past colonial experience,
morally right as it was moreover often mixed with humanitarian intervention.
Even in
recent times, Hansen reminds us, the project of Eurafrica has not gone into the
background at the EU level, especially as concerns demographic and migration
policies: it seems that the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet was not wrong when
he declared in 1957 that Eurafrica would be ‘the reality of tomorrow’ [11].
But how
does the ideology of Eurafrica find space in current affairs?
From the
economic point of view, the Africa-Europe trade occurs ‘between unequal
partners’ [12], given that it emphasizes the creation of jobs in the EU, whose
members are moreover the largest trading partners of many African countries.
Europe has pursued a specific project over time that aims at treating Africa as
an extension of its market, but then does not take responsibility for the
consequences that this market has on the lives of the individuals and the
communities. In other words, Europe does not assume the responsibility, above
all the social responsibility, arising from the failure of the market that it
has planned for the Eurafrican region with so much care: and migration is after
all one of the possible and rather predictable answers people everywhere have
always given to the deterioration of economic conditions.
On this
basis, we can state that EU policies themselves in primis perpetuate the status
of Africa as a continent of emigration: consequently, the migration flows that
we are witnessing should be classified according to the physiology of an
integrated system and for no reason as an emergency situation of any sort.
Following the same principle, it is less clear on which level the measures
enacted to block these flows can be motivated and justified.
In
addition, the recent policy of the European Union does not hide the need to
accommodate migrants in the perspective of the aging European population,
stating that ‘more sustained immigration flows could increasingly be required
to meet the needs of the European labor markets and ensure Europe’s prosperity’
[13]; the goal remains nevertheless to attract only ‘highly qualified workers
from third countries’ [14] on the basis, thus, of the strict needs of the
Union, in a clear re-evocation of the approach described above, according to
which Africa is a tool for Europe’s demographic balance.
Therefore,
we need to point out an alarming continuity between the colonial period and
that of SAPs: if colonialism had allowed the extraction of and the profiting
from continental resources, SAPs have later secured the opening and the
integration of African markets into the neo-liberal system. The destruction of
local economies, plus the harsh experiences linked to state building, have contributed
in determining the resulting mass mobilization in search of better
opportunities. The EU now sits on this uncomfortable legacy, attempting to
manage African emigration, both at the community level and as single member
states’ initiatives with governments beyond the Mediterranean. Is this a
further step toward the consolidation of the Eurafrican structure?
These
dynamics should therefore be understood in the context of a macro Eurafrican
region, as this is indeed the horizon at which many of the policies developed
in recent decades seem to be directed.
And if
there is a Eurafrican region, there must be also a population connected to this
geographical space and yet Africans are still represented as eternal ‘Others’
from the European ‘We’, being not only excluded from the circle of legality and
rights but often even from circles of solidarity. According to the perspective
proposed here, migrants instead should not just be welcomed, but welcomed as
the most vulnerable parts of a socio-economic system that includes them fully,
to which they contribute with their work (whether considered legal or not),
maintaining so the functionality of European societies.
All of this
directs me to the last point of the analysis: despite nations’ strategies for
representing African migrants as different from the European ‘We’, both
ethnically and culturally, they represent instead a specific part of this ‘We’:
the migrants arriving on European shores are nothing but a new social class of
an economic system that is currently integrating: in particular, they embody
the most vulnerable class, victims of historical and economic injustices to
whom it comes now to provide remedy, ensuring them equal opportunities and
rights. This society is also their society, even more so since the
redistribution of risks and consequences of market failures has mainly burdened
Africa, while Europe has been more eager to put hands on the dividends of this
‘partnership’, relegating, then, humanitarian intervention and cooperation to
the comfortable realm of voluntary solidarity.
Even when
talking about terrorism, poverty and unemployment (themes that are strongly
felt in the contemporary European debate), it should be recalled that African
states are the ones currently paying the heaviest price. It takes a clearer
view on the origins of the migration flows in order to understand to what
extent these are caused by poor leadership or political or environmental
crises, and in what cases they are provoked and accelerated by neoliberal
economic policies exposing societies to more volatility they can actually take.
Meanwhile,
in European societies, the strategic representation of migrants in
ethno-cultural terms, rather than in economic and social ones, performs a vital
function: creating the perception that they are non-members, in order to
‘legitimize’ the refusal of hospitality or, alternatively, their exploitation
on all levels and from all activities that may instead advantage the market of
national as well as EU citizens. This ideology can be easily questioned, not
just on ethical grounds, but also through the analysis of the economic dynamics
uniting the two continents.
Moreover,
it is argued here and elsewhere [15] that this is also a strategy that aims at
strengthening the identity of a Europe otherwise in crisis when dealing with
the rest of the world: the ability to extend its market but not its horizon of
solidarity beyond Europe (and increasingly not even beyond the national borders
of the member countries) is the most obvious sign of the inadequate response of
Europe to a globalized world that is moving at a very different speed.
*END NOTES
[1] As
reported, among others, by The Guardian. Article available online at the
following link:http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/16/germany.andrewmeldrum
[2] See the
government’s official note at the following
link:http://www.governo.it/Presidente/AttivitaInternazionale/dettaglio.asp?d=40143
[3] The
2007 Dakar speech delivered by Nicolas Sarkozy has been in particular the
object of criticism in reason of his reference to several stereotypes as well
as sentences that have been considered highly offensive.
[4]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-334208/Its-time-celebrate-Empire-says-Brown.html
[5] In
Nicolas Sarkozy (2007), Testimony: France, Europe, and the World in the
Twenty-first Century (New York: Harper Perennial), p. 196
[6] As
reported by The Telegraph; article available online at the following
link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/5778804/Barack-Obama-tells-Africa-to-stop-blaming-colonialism-for-problems.html
[7] Guy
Martin (1982), “Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica: Neo-colonialism or
Pan-Africanism?”, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 20(2), p. 221
[8] See
Mueni Wa Muiu e Guy Martin (2009), A New Paradigm of the African State: Fundi
wa Afrika (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 89
[9] Guy
Martin (1982), p. 222
[10] Peo
Hansen (2011), “Building Eurafrica: reviving colonialism through European
Integration, 1920-1960”, Paper Presented at the EUSA Twelfth Biennial
International Conference Boston, March 3–5, 2011
[11] Quoted
in Peo Hansen (2011), p. 28
[12] See
the interesting article by Africa Renewal, published by the United Nations,
available online at the following
link:http://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2014/trade-between-two-unequal-partners
[13]
Extracted from the “Green Paper on an EU approach to managing economic
migration” (11 January 2005). Available online at the following link:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:c11331
[14]
Council Directive “2009/50/EC of 25 May 2009 on the conditions of entry and
residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified
employment”. Available online at the following link:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:l14573
[15] See
for example the argument of the historian Bo Stråth (2002) in: “A European
Identity: to the Historical Limits of a Concept”, in European Journal of Social
Theory (5)4: 387-401
* THE VIEWS
OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE
VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM
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