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

This article analyses current EU-African migration policy, but argues that it must be understood in its historical context. Whereas migration today is to be managed in the framework of an EU-African partnership model built on equality and mutual 'win-win' dynamics, a closer look at the history of EU-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. Each time demography has governed European migration policy vis-a-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. It is thus argued that unless scholars start to attend to European integration's crucial colonial history, current power asymmetries between the 'partners' will not only remain obscure; we will also fail to recognize the continued, even increasing, currency of colonial ideology in the EU's African relations.