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Ed Webb

How despair and misery fuel North Africa migration | The North Africa Journal - 0 views

north-africa.com/...ry-fuel-north-africa-migration

Tunisia youth unemployment economy migration Algeria Italy Europe UNHCR

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • With the coronavirus pandemic further squeezing already scant economic opportunities, Algerians and Tunisians are more determined than ever to reach Europe
  • 60 people, mostly women and children, drowned off the Tunisian coast. But this has not put Hamid off. An engineer by profession, he has work, but is forced to live with his parents because his salary is not enough to rent a separate apartment
  • The migrants are known locally as “harraga”, “those who burn” — a reference to successful travellers setting their identity papers alight upon reaching their chosen destination, to avoid repatriation
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  • as the unprecedented peaceful movement has been ever more harshly repressed and the oil-dependent economy has tanked on low crude prices, illegal departures have ticked up again
  • authorities arrested 1,433 people trying to depart illegally from Algeria’s shores in the first five months of this year — more than three times the figure for the same period of 2019
  • Sociologist Mohamed Mohamedi said the Hirak protest movement had offered citizens brief “hope of shaping a life” in Algeria. But, he said, “the return of the ‘harraga’ is due to the return of hopelessness”. Mahrez Bouich, a professor of philosophy and politics in Bejaia in northeastern Algeria, agreed that the lack of hoped-for changes, along with economic stagnation, were to blame. The pandemic has “exacerbated social inequalities and injustices”, Bouich said.
  • Aboard the boats are doctors, nurses, policemen, the unemployed and entire families, lawyer Zerguine said, arguing that the phenomenon cannot be explained by unemployment alone. Those who decide to leave “want to live with the times, they want more freedom and dignity”. Mohamed, the prospective migrant, said Algeria’s social conservatism had overlooked young people. “My grandparents are more open in spirit than my parents — it’s mad,” he said. “Society has regressed and I refuse to regress with it.”
  • In neighbouring Tunisia, clandestine departures towards Europe quadrupled in the first five months of the year compared to 2019, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. And while a growing number of migrants attempting the crossings are from West Africa, Tunisians also appear to have ever more reason to leave. Many are disillusioned with the aftermath of the country’s 2011 revolution, while the coronavirus pandemic has further crushed their economic prospects, said Khaled Tababi, a sociologist specialising in migration. Many jobs have simply disappeared, especially in the tourism sector, he said.
  • “Living in a foreign country hit by the pandemic is easier than living here without money, without prospects and with the unemployment that strangles us,”
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