Transnational migration: a staged migration. The example of Sub-Saharan transmigrants stopping over in Morocco (original) (raw)
Since the generalisation of the visa regime across the Schengen area in the 1990 s , followed by the restrictions on issuing them which now stand in the way of the majority of Africans wishing to migrate to Europe, staged transnational migration, which we refer to as " transmigration " , has become one solution for African migrants, opening or reopening new migratory routes from Sub-Saharan Africa, through the Maghreb, to Europe. So thousands of Sub-Saharan transmigrants enter and relocate themselves collectively every year in the Maghreb, setting up stopovers which, since their establishment in the 1990 s , have continued to serve as migratory staging posts for newcomers: these stopovers have a social history which has gradually become a part of migratory trajectories. Our study of the Sub-Saharan transmigrants' transnational networks therefore asks how we should see the creation of unrestricted spatial configurations produced by these moving populations, but within a geopolitical context where the borders are not as porous as the term " transnational " would suggest. In response to this, the notion of a stopover, seen simultaneously as an observation location, a methodological framework and an analytical tool, seems much more relevant to us than the notion of " transit " , which is too restrictive from the space-time point of view. Here we shall try to develop and illustrate this idea, working from the example of Moroccan stopovers in the transmigration of Sub-Saharan Africans.
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