Migration is driven by poverty, one constantly hears. The Pope says so almost all the time. It is only just over a week since he repeated the mantra of well-meaning Catholics that every year millions of children and young people are «forced to leave their homeland because of war, poverty, violence, environmental disasters and other tragedies».
Perhaps one should not think too badly of the fact that the Catholic Church in several Western countries is paid out of both public and private pockets to look after migrants, and perhaps one should not demand that the Pope understand what actually drives migration, even though one might have expected it of a Church that has at least been intellectually respectable.
But it is not true that it is the most desperate who immigrate illegally to Europe. Morocco is among Africa’s most prosperous countries. But as we were reminded at the end of July, migration pressure from there is high.
It may appear to be a paradox, but it is not. A certain degree of prosperity is actually required in order to emigrate. The world’s poorest and most desperate are nowhere near having the opportunity to do so (but many of them will have it one day).
It is rare for what is really fairly elementary insight in the field of migration to find its way into influential European media, but Die Welt made an exception the other day.
The German newspaper’s war correspondent Alfred Hackensberger has spoken to people who know what they are talking about. One of them is the 54-year-old Spanish businessman Miguel Sabio, who heads the company Alvaplast Maroc Sarl in Tangier, where it has been active since 1997. The port there is one of Morocco’s most powerful economic engines, in a country where the economy is growing rapidly.
«Morocco really is like a rocket, and in many ways», Sabio explains further. «The changes over the past 20 years have been fundamental on many levels.» In fact, the kingdom has not focused solely on economic development. Public infrastructure has been improved. In the cities, new, affordable bus services operate, and public parks and old towns have been renovated. A high-speed train connects Tangier with the capital Rabat and Casablanca. The line is to be extended to Marrakesh and Agadir.
At the same time, the multidimensional poverty rate fell by almost half over ten years: from 11.9 per cent in 2014 to 6.8 per cent in 2024. It measures not only income, but also access to education and healthcare.
Nevertheless, Moroccans want to go to Europe. Migrants whom Die Welt has spoken to in Ceuta say they want to go to Germany.
But this is exactly as expected, a Dutch sociologist tells Hackensberger. Professor Hein de Haas at the University of Amsterdam has researched Moroccan migration for almost 30 years and has written the book «How Migration Really Works» (2023). He explains the dynamics:
«When countries manage to make the leap from low-income to middle-income status, development generally leads to more, not less, emigration.»
«Improvements in education, living standards, poverty reduction and access to information raise young people’s expectations of life while at the same time improving their opportunities to emigrate.»
Other studies confirm this:
According to a 2024 report from Arab Barometer, 35 per cent, mainly young Moroccans, are said to be considering emigrating. They cite economic reasons and seek «better opportunities».
There is admittedly youth unemployment in Morocco, not least because Africans who come from countries south of the Sahara go there – and have lower expectations than Moroccan young people.
But the labour market in Europe is no bed of roses any longer either, whether for young Europeans or young intruders – but their livelihood is in any case guaranteed by suicidally empathetic welfare states. Experience shows that the road to crime is nevertheless very short for North Africans in Europe.
The insight conveyed by de Haas is not new. Oxford professor Paul Collier set it out in his book «Exodus» as early as 2013. Even a Europe that, in the eyes of Europeans, is in decline will for a long, long time continue to attract people from countries on other continents, even though… no: because these are on the rise. In this way, they join Europe on its way down, and themselves contribute to the process. Could the ancient Greek tragedians have come up with anything like it?
A more prosperous Africa will thus create even greater migration pressure, not less. Many imagine that if only Europe contributes to economic development in Africa, the flow of migration will decline. King Harald himself was among them, as demonstrated by his statement in Rome in April 2016:
– We have to try to do something where it comes from in order to stop the flow of refugees. That is what ultimately has to be the solution. We cannot take in the whole of Africa in Europe, that is not possible, he continues.
Sorry, but it does not help to «do something where it comes from». And less than six months then passed before he proclaimed that Norwegians believe in Allah and have immigrated from Afghanistan.
We find ourselves in the tragicomic situation that insight into what drives migration is virtually absent, even though migration itself is the most fateful issue facing Europe. Our continent stands intellectually defenceless.
It is a new situation for Europe to be the stupidest. The scientific revolution did, after all, take place here. The West became economically and militarily strong because it became scientifically and technologically superior.
But today we do not understand the phenomenon of migration, which threatens us more than military dangers. It is as though we were still concerning ourselves with alchemy and did not know the periodic table.
The fact is that Europe itself determines Europe’s future. Europe therefore cannot avoid defending its borders by force if it wishes to survive. For the time being, it does not appear to wish to do so. It is strength of will that matters, and one still looks for it in vain.
