What 72,000 Bodies at a Fence Revealed about Africa and Europe

Spain has already constructed a 1,600-foot floating barrier along the sea border following the Ceuta crossings. In the past decade, tens of thousands of migrants have died in Mediterranean crossings alone. But as Hein de Haas, a sociologist of migration, has explained, restrictive immigration policies fail to stop migration as there is a structural demand for cheap migrant labor in Europe. The waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean are full of the remains of those who perished while trying to reach Europe, victims of a system that treats human mobility as a threat to be managed rather than a reality to be humanely addressed.

But the combination of rising inequality and violence globally, and the need for a workforce, means people won’t stop migrating. This means that current border policies don’t stem migration but instead increase death and suffering. Precisely because it takes much longer, thousands of migrants are stuck in Morocco. Mehdi Alioua, a Moroccan sociologist, has called this phenomenon  “transit migration.”  Each must find rent and work, saving for yet another attempt at a better passage. Some have children, who grow up speaking fluent Darija, the Moroccan colloquial tongue, and who eventually become part of the working class fabric of Tangier. Some migrants with means share rented apartments in the affordable, peripheral neighborhoods of Mesnana and Boukhalef in southwestern Tangier.