Europe-Africa Cooperation on Migration : Understanding and Bridging Divergent Attitudes and Policy References

By invitation

The Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute, and the Policy Center for the New South, with the support of the Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM), are organizing a Policy Roundtable titled “Europe-Africa Cooperation on Migration : Understanding and Bridging Divergent Attitudes and Policy References”, on November 16, 2023, in Rabat.

Europe-Africa cooperation on migration over the past 25 years has been characterized by limited success, political tensions, and enduring policy and implementation challenges. A recent review, on Taking stock of Africa Europe cooperation on migration: Enduring tensions and policy challenge, has shown the striking gap between the frequency of new policy announcements on this cooperation and the rather limited progress made in practice. For example, a key priority of this cooperation for African countries has been to enhance legal pathways for migration to Europe, e.g., through expanded labor migration channels, including for lower-skilled workers whose opportunities for migration to Europe are currently quite restricted. Despite a range of small-scale ‘pilot’ initiatives, little opening of legal pathways has been achieved in practice. Similarly, an important objective of EU countries—to achieve higher rates of return and readmission of irregular migrants through cooperation with African countries of transit and origin—has also remained largely unmet.

At the same time, some of the existing cooperation agreements that have been implemented, including those involving EU financial assistance for stronger African border controls and migration management to reduce irregular migration to Europe, have been criticized for their lack of effective protections for (irregular) migrants and their fundamental rights, thus making these policies highly contested in both Europe (where migration is one of the most salient political issues) and also Africa (where migration is a lower priority issue).

In the context of these long-standing debates and past experiences of Europe-Africa cooperation on migration, the purpose of this Policy Roundtable is three-fold:

- First, to reflect critically and ‘take stock’ of major policy achievements and failures in this cooperation over the past 25 years.

- Second, to present and discuss the implications of new MEDAM research on the public and political constraints and preferences vis-à-vis this cooperation, including new findings on divergent public attitudes and policy preferences of national policymakers.

- Third, to explore policy options that recognize and address these divergent attitudes and interests, better protect migrants’ rights, and improve policy for cooperation on migration in the future.

For more information, please contact us at: events@policycenter.ma.