Last year, I watched the critically acclaimed film Io Capitano. The plot follows the odyssey of two Senegalese teenagers from their hometown of Dakar to Europe. Against the wishes and advice of both family members and a local sorcerer, the boys decide to leave their poverty-stricken hometown and make the perilous journey to Europe, hoping that reaching the vaunted continent will allow them to realise their dreams of becoming successful musicians. Sneaking out in the dead of night with nothing but the money they earned from their labouring jobs, the boys pay smugglers to take them north to Mali, and so their journey begins. 

Predictably, their fortunes soon sour, as they are faced with extortion, torture, kidnapping, a period of enslavement, getting shot, and witnessing the often-brutal deaths of many of their fellow travellers. Eventually, after many months of deeply traumatic events that leave the teenagers literally scarred for life, they embark on the final stretch of the journey in a ramshackle boat that takes them from Libya to Italian waters. The film poignantly ends with their rescue by the Italian coastguard, with the audience left to imagine what fate would meet them from there on.

The film is beautifully shot and completely heart wrenching, all the more so for the fact that the plot was based on the real stories of six young migrants who had embarked on that exact journey. Directed by the Italian Matteo Garrone, the film violently confronts its European audiences with the horrors endured by those that their continent seems so keen to callously keep out. The implicit message seemed to be that we should open our hearts and open our borders to those who had endured suffering and persecution of a kind we could scarcely imagine. Yet my takeaway was rather different; all that suffering and violence only occurred because Europe has largely opened its borders to anyone brave enough to attempt to get through them.

Though they would almost certainly be treated as refugees upon entering Europe, the persecution our protagonists needed refuge from only came once they had left their relatively safe hometown. Indeed, the film is quite explicit that the boys were not suffering from violence or persecution or extreme hardship at home — what they were fleeing from were unattractive economic prospects, and what they were fleeing to was a land they believed would allow them to realise their dreams of becoming rich and famous. In other words, they were economic migrants, wanting to move from a poorer part of the world to a richer one.

… it was ultimately their choice to expose themselves to these risks and leave the relative safety of Dakar

In doing so, the film crafts a story which is far more morally complex than a simple narrative about the travails of blameless victims trying to seek refuge from a warzone. The boys endured terrible suffering and violence, but not as passive victims of circumstance; it was ultimately their choice to expose themselves to these risks and leave the relative safety of Dakar, against strong advice not to, in order to pursue dreams of a better life. And it is this type of more morally ambiguous migration that is behind much of the pressure Europe is facing at its Mediterranean frontier. According to Frontex data for 2023, the most highly represented nationalities of those crossing into Europe on the Central Mediterranean route were Guinea, Tunisia, and Cote d’Ivoire. On the Western Africa route into the Spanish Canary Islands, it was Senegal, Morocco, and Mali. Much of the irregular migration is therefore much like that of Io Capitano’s protagonists: economic migration from developing countries not at war.

A recent Guardian documentary, also in Senegal, tells much the same story. Those who have left or are planning to state that their motivation is to escape from the scant local economic opportunities by accessing the better quality of life available to them in Europe (if they make it alive). There is no talk of an imminent threat to their lives if they stay put; the danger to their lives comes from embarking on the journey. 

Establishment thinking is still committed to the idea that the way to stop people from developing countries trying to migrate to Europe is to neuter the demand from its original source. The belief is that if European nations assist in improving the economic prospects of those in developing countries, then their inhabitants will no longer feel the need to leave their homes and attempt the perilous journey into Europe. This thinking is why the Labour government has already committed £84 million to “support projects across Africa and the Middle East to improve education and employment opportunities”, justified on the grounds that this will help to reduce the number of small boat crossings into Britain as the beneficiaries of the improved education and employment opportunities will opt to stay put.

This strategy is an alluring one, since it is one in which everyone can win. European nations benefit from a reduction in the number of unwanted migrants attempting to settle on the continent, and the populations of developing countries benefit from higher living standards and better future prospects in their own homelands. Stemming illegal migration through development aid would therefore seem a great strategy, but for the fact that it does not actually work.

The theory that raising the living standards of the poorest countries will keep their people from attempting to migrate to richer lands has been shown to lead to the inverse in reality; as the very poorest in the world become marginally richer, they are more likely to migrate to richer nations. As one economic paper found, “economic growth has historically raised emigration in almost all developing countries”. The reason for this phenomenon is intuitive. Below a certain level of economic development, the population is simply too poor to emigrate, and cannot accumulate the sufficient funds to pay for their journey out of the country. As a country becomes wealthier, people become well off enough to save money, which can then be used to fund the journey out of the country to areas of the world which still have far better prospects.

People will come if … they will be able to settle for as long as they wish

Trying to stem migration at its source through encouraging economic growth in the countries migrants are coming from is therefore a completely fruitless endeavour, and would actually serve to worsen the problem in the near term. Take the example of Senegal, which currently has a PPP adjusted GDP per capita of around $5,000. Britain’s is around $60,000. So even with the most ambitious development aid flowing into Senegal, its wealth would still be a small fraction of a country like Britain’s. The incentive remains for young and ambitious Senegalese people to emigrate to Europe, with the immediate consequence of Senegalese economic advancement being that a greater number would now have the means to do so.

There is a way to neuter demand for the perilous passage, but that comes at the opposite end of the journey. People will come if they know that there is a good chance that once they penetrate Fortress Europe, they will be able to settle for as long as they wish. Only once Europe employs a blanket regime of returns, ensuring that not a single person who risks their life and those of others by making the journey irregularly is allowed to settle, will the numbers attempting the journey finally fall. For what is the point of risking torture, kidnapping, enslavement, and death if you are guaranteed to be sent straight back to where you started from even if you manage to overcome all that? But until then, the incentives are still for the developing world’s young and aspirational to take the risk, and dreams of European affluence will continue to turn into real life nightmares of Saharan savagery.