Demographic Colonialism: EU–African Migration Management and the Legacy of Eurafrica

Abstract

In this article we analyse the current trajectory of EU-African migration policy. Unlike many other scholars, we suggest it must be understood in its historical context. Migration between Europe and Africa has been a European concern at least since the 1920s. At that time, issues of migration were seen in the context of a co-European colonial effort in Africa. Today, migration issues are to be resolved in the framework of a EU-African partnership model built on equality, interdependence and mutual ‘win-win’ dynamics. However, a closer look at the history of Euro-African migration reveals striking parallels between past and present. Throughout the period from the 1920s and onward, the migration policies devised within various frameworks of European integration have been shaped by demographic projections. Presumed demographic ‘imbalances’ (i.e. population surplus or deficit) have been used to justify vastly different migrant regimes. Each time demography has governed European migration policy vis-à-vis Africa, what has first been introduced as a mutual interest has quickly been transformed into a geopolitical relationship, where one partner has channelled migration to its own benefit. We argue that as long as scholars and intellectuals persist in imitating policy-makers’ disregard of European integration’s colonial history, current structural power asymmetries between the EU and Africa will not only remain obscure; we will also fail to recognize the continued, or even increasing, currency of colonial ideology in the EU’s African relations.