The fourth age of emigration: a survey of families of the disappeared
Introduction
In this paper, we set out to study the structures and implications of a “new age of emigration”, which we shall situate from 1995 onwards, the date marking the entry into force of the Schengen agreement. In cementing freedom of movement within the European territory, these agreements instituted a ban and limitation to mobility for populations originating from former colonies. Following on from Abdelmalek Sayad’s[1] analyses, this paper outlines the new relations of domination that have been entrenched between formerly colonized societies and European metropolises, based on the management of borders and the control of migratory flows.
We can sum up our argument as follows: ever since 1995, migratory flows from former colonies to Europe have been subject to a visa policy which, while superseding the former colonial domination, perpetuates its fundamental objectives, namely the domestication and subjugation of the populations of the South. By administering migratory flows and bolstering borders to a deadly extent, this policy produces profound effects and major fractures within the societies concerned, which are immediate consequences of this new form of border management. In a global economy, this new era of North-South relations constitutes an unprecedented system of government, hinged around two main axes: the regulation of human mobility and the control of goods. This system reduces the economies of the South to a state of structural underdevelopment, relegating them to the simple role of suppliers of selective labor and raw natural resources to the economies of the North.
Before delving into the specifics of this “new age of emigration”, we have opted to base our study on migratory relations between Europe and the Maghreb societies, two fields of analysis with which we are already acquainted, and in which we have already carried out several research projects[2]. Specifically, this article draws on surveys of the families of the disappeared, in order to ascertain the distinctive features of this migratory era, which is also redefining relations between former colonial states and post-independence societies. Through the experience of families of the dead and disappeared, victims of European borders, we analyze the mechanisms of domination established by border systems, as well as the emerging forms of resistance within the collectives of the families, at arm’s length from traditional political organizations.
We posit that we are currently experiencing “a fourth age of emigration”, typified by the appeal of European borders, which is profoundly destabilizing local communities in the South. Unable to implement a policy to preserve their members, these societies are confronted with unprecedented phenomena, such as the inability to identify and bury their deceased exposed to the repressive policies that close the northern border. This powerlessness is set against a backdrop of criminal migration policies pursued by former colonial states. These policies, camouflaged by far-right populist or philanthropic rhetoric, conceal the responsibility of states for the massacres of migrants, whose crossings are criminalized by the legislation of destination and transit countries. They combine ordinary law and exceptional law, lethal technologies and cold indifference to death, thus resulting in human tragedies on an unprecedented scale.
While the appeal of industrialized countries and liberal democracies has existed since the “second age of emigration”[3], as explored by Abdelmalek Sayad, it was then inscribed in the distinctive context of urbanization and modernization in the former colonies, impelling members of these societies to seek an alternative where labor power was more needed[4]. However, the current “fourth age of emigration” involves a quite different dynamic: the desire to settle in European countries is now emerging as a mirror image of border repression and migratory selection policies.
This age marks the advent of “Fortress Europe/West”, built notably by means of visa regimes that prohibit free movement. This Fortress maintains a multifaceted technological, racial, organizational and symbolic superiority. The principles of closure and selection become the pillars of a hierarchical migration policy, which operates along two main lines; Firstly, this policy distinguishes between lives worthy of circulation – subject to visa requirements and demands for integration into the nation – and those who die on the borders, or struggle to “achieve legal status” (to be documented). Secondly, it establishes a clearer dividing line between societies in the North, which are sovereign and possess “sacred borders”, and those in the South, whose borders are only worthwhile insofar as they serve as additional barriers and layers to protect Europe.
We shall first outline the singularities of the fourth age of emigration. The objective of this demonstration is straightforward: to establish a global diagnosis that will reintroduce the conflictual aspect of migration management imposed by the North, and reveal its disastrous consequences for societies in the South. This diagnosis is an essential prerequisite for a more even-handed, egalitarian and respectful relationship between the North and the South.
Secondly, we will explore the code of a conflicting policy towards the state, initiated by families hurt by the disappearance. Faced with the inability to mourn until the truth behind the demise of their loved ones is confirmed by the desisting states of the South, families cling to the hope of searching for and finding their children, dead or alive, through struggle and protest.
Unlike mainstream studies, we will also delve into the words of the families, who do not dissociate the material conditions of their experiences from their struggles for the truth: a survey of families is also a survey of the reality of their children’s death. Likewise, the families’ political commitment, devoid of all attempts at aestheticization, promotes concrete and urgent struggles, such as DNA identification of the bodies. The article shows how this demand is, in essence, a call for a public policy that is unwilling to exist.
The article concludes with a lengthy interview with Imed Soltani, a leader of a particular kind of political representation, embodying and expressing the suffering and struggles of families dealing with Europe’s borders.
A new age of emigration
In order to grasp an understanding of the specific nature of the new age of emigration that dawned in 1995, and which we are exploring through the study of migratory relations between the Maghreb and Europe, it is crucial to define the nature of the ages that preceded it. Sayad recalls that the first age of “orderly” emigration[5] begins with colonization (1830 in Algeria, 1881 in Tunisia, 1912 in Morocco, etc.) and concludes with the assertion of the superiority of the industrial metropolis over the colonized territories. In his view, this first age was marked by the ability of villages – of the village community as a whole – to neutralize the disintegrating effects of immigration. The second age, on the other hand, ushers in the peasant community’s “loss of control”[6] over the emigration of its members, leading to disintegration and “Depeasantization”[7], synonymous with individualization within the immigrant society. The second age culminates in the generalization of emigration relations throughout the colonized country (Algeria in his case study) and the establishment, within the metropolis, of a “permanent structure”[8] of immigration and a “sort of small ‘societies of compatriots’”[9], since, despite the autonomization of immigrants, the feelings of “provisional” and “transit” (10)[10] persist, while at the same time establishing a community.
A “third age” is emerging with the new generations of migrants’ children. In the eyes of the Franco-Algerian sociologist, it is typified by the logics of a community that is doubly autonomous – with regard to both the society of emigration of the parents (the former colonies) and the society of immigration (France and Europe more generally), a hiatus that will give rise to political debates on the theme of “integration” fuelled to no end by nationalist discourses in Europe. Following this brief detour through Sayad’s sociological analysis, we can now highlight, by way of contrast, a number of characteristic features of the sequence that commenced in 1995, a major date, as we have said, for a catastrophic upheaval in migration policies. This new sequence of the fourth age would be distinguished by several features, which we summarize as follows:
Firstly, this is the age when emigrant populations hailing from former colonies are confronted with a sprawling public policy continually fueled by mobility-restricting measures. With each election or major political event (war, terrorist attack, or diplomatic crisis with a country in the South, etc.), these measures are tightened, particularly affecting emigrant populations from former colonies. Unlike the previous age, when visas were not yet commonplace, this policy has had a profound impact on the mobility of people from the South, altering both relations between members of the societies of origin and the conditions under which migrants settle in host countries. Family reunification, for instance, initially designed to encourage the reunification of immigrant workers’ families, has paradoxically brought to an end the right to a transitional settlement between the country of origin and of the country of employment. It compelled families to settle in Europe, yet at the same time made the temporary access that once guaranteed a permanent connection with the country of origin impossible by means of a visa.
This restrictive border policy imposes omnipresent management of emigration and immigration, profoundly altering individual identities and relations of family, community and national affiliation. It reduces the choices of migrants and communities, leaving them exposed to dangerous itineraries (clandestine immigration) and repressive injunctions (detention centers, clandestine status pending regularization, family separation, feelings of persecution in an inhospitable society, etc.). These measures include visas, residence permits, naturalization criteria, forfeiture of nationality and deportation.
Secondly, the new age of emigration is also stripping societies in the South of their elites, resulting in a two-pronged mutilation. On the one hand, European migration policy, with its stringent selection criteria, puts pressure on these elites. The visa, which is temporarily open to broad social categories, constrains individuals to swiftly seize the opportunities it offers, leading to a massive exodus of talent. On the other hand, the elites of the South, lured by Europe, lost their ability to contribute to the elaboration of an independent national policy, thus shattering the dream of autonomy that had enlivened the anti-colonial struggles[11]. The hasty departure of members of the South’s bourgeoisie, dictated by the logic of selective borders, effectively reduces this class to a spectator position, being alienated by the political decisions taken by the former colonial countries. As mentioned above[12], the North’s bourgeoisie, heir to colonial structures, remains dominant in this context. Through control of its borders, it asserts its culture and values as hegemonic references. However, despite such identification, the elites and middle classes of the South suffer the devaluation induced by visa regimes. As a result, they are coerced into investing in the “freedom of movement” of their members, an effort that translates into emigration to the North, which in itself constitutes a manifestation of the mutilation of post-colonial society.
Thirdly, the pressure exerted on emigration societies, amplified by unprecedented policies of selection and closure, is tragically embodied in the spectacle of death and disappearance. This reality particularly affects the most fragile populations and the working classes, giving rise to the phenomena of “hrig/harga” (irregular migration) and a host of tragedies on various migratory routes: the perilous Mediterranean crossings to Europe or the Atlantic to the Canary Islands; the dangerous overland routes, such as the Balkan routes or the Sahara desert leading to transit countries; the desperate attempts to cross the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, where the barbed wire is an embodiment of the violence of these borders. These mass deaths, the consequences of the Schengen agreement, have devastating effects on the societies of origin: community anguish linked to the mutilation of the community and the complicated mourning of the families of the disappeared, the reinforcement of a trans-class desire for the West and a profound sense of inferiority when facing the power of the North.
The question of death, which is at the heart of this border management, refers to a warlike rationale that European societies struggle to recognize. This warlike habitus[13], based on a historical evasion of responsibility, is part of a long tradition of implicit acceptance of structural violence: whether it’s silence on colonial wars, shunning of debates on the destruction of Palestine or Ukraine, or indifference to the deaths at borders. This denial is echoed in official discourse, where responsibility is laid at the feet of vague figures such as “gangs of traffickers”, thereby obfuscating the reality of a war waged against migrants.
Fourthly, since 1995, the tightening of borders, now impassable without a visa or at the risk of death, has profoundly altered relations between migrants and their countries of origin. This closure has led to painful separations, preventing travel (including that of migrants’ ascendants and descendants) for important events in the lives of individuals and communities, such as the burial of one’s own parents[14], weddings, births and religious ceremonies. Regularized migrants and wealthy families, who are able to obtain a visa, become the only ones able to maintain cross-border links – provided that the southern country does not fall under the sanction of the governments of the northern countries. On the other hand, the others remain blocked, estranged from their loved ones, further undermining intergenerational relations, particularly between the children of migrants and their grandparents.
This major alteration renders the former “society of compatriots” more autonomous, further detaching its immigrant members from the country of origin as never before, and even separating, for instance, the children of migrants from their grandparents, who face the hassles of visa requirements that are difficult and sometimes impossible to access. Rather than a disorganization of relations between migrants and their societies of origin due to the “integration” policies that have emerged since “family reunification” and the introduction of visas, it is the feeling of inferiority and marginality that now reigns in the immigrant community. Indeed, what the sociology of Islam in the suburbs, which is alarmist about the symbolic markers of Islam or the suburbs of Islam, treats as “radicalization” is an aversion to taking borderization seriously. It is within this new separation that an affliction culminates, one that the sociology of the suburbs refuses to address, and which is expressed, in certain areas and among populations that are often quite young, by a rejection of the discourse of integration, and the cultivation of a mythologized imagination of the society and religion of the country of origin[15]. This fourth point is not unrelated to that concerning the contestation among the children of immigrants to this new closure. This is the age when the generations of post-colonial immigrants, having experienced integration, binationality and the struggle to assert their distinctiveness, face a new phase of identity-based and political attacks. These multiple attacks – ranging from the forfeiture of nationality to Islamophobic practices – are steadily escalating in the wake of anti-terrorism laws and the rise of the far right in Europe, legitimized by immigration and asylum laws. This is the age when these new generations experiment with policies of struggle, ranging from legal challenges to exiting and returning to their parents’ countries of origin.
Fifthly, in the face of this reality, contestation of the government’s immigration rules is organized in an intimate, subterranean setting, unrecognized by the traditional instruments of mobilization (parties, unions, established associations, etc.). At the forefront of this contestation of the border regime are the “clandestines”, the candidates for clandestine emigration and the families of the disappeared. They constitute the cutting edge – both individual and organized in movement – of the critique of the new sequence that unfolded in 1995. This is an age of emigration in which, in the face of the conservative practices of the governments of the former colonial states[16], the ultimate act of dissidence consists in “burning” the borders of the fortress and organizing all the solidarities and struggles that emerge from this act: the organization of migrants and solidarity for the increasingly perilous crossing, the struggles of families for the identification of bodies and for the truth about the disappearance, the struggles of undocumented [migrant] collectives for regularization, the solidarities weaving around the reception of undesirable migrants, the struggles against the criminalization of emigration, and so on.
These phenomena bear witness to an age in which the border is no longer merely a geographical line, but rather an instrument of systemic domination, reshaping North-South relations and dictating to societies in the South a framework of dependence and marginality. This fourth age of emigration is thus imbued with a dual dynamic: the violence exerted on bodies and identities, and the emergence of resistances that, notwithstanding the obstacles, are striving to restore meaning to mobility and to the human dignity chanted, among other moments, in the Arab Spring of 2011.
[1]Abdelmalek Sayad, The suffering of the immigrant (La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré), Paris, Le Seuil editions, 1999.
[2] Garnaoui, W; Sakhi, M; Giglioli, I, « Méthodes d’enquête ethnographique, regards, croisés sur le sud global » (Ethnographic survey methods, crossed perspectives on the global South), Revue De l’Institut Des Belles Lettres Arabes, 86(232), 2024, 105-130. https://ibla.tn/index.php/ibla/article/view/427
[3] Abdelmalek Sayad, The suffering of the immigrant (La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré), op. cit.
[4] Giraud, Pierre-Noël, The Useless Man. A political economy of populism, Odile Jacob editions, 2015.
[5] Abdelmalek Sayad, The suffering of the immigrant (La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré), op. cit., p. 68.
[6] Abdelmalek Sayad, The suffering of the immigrant (La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré), op. cit., p. 77.
[7] Ibid, p. 78.
[8] Ibid, p. 110.
[9] Ibid, p. 111.
[10] Ibid, p. 112.
[11] Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, Maspero, Paris, 1961.
[12] Sakhi, M et Garnaoui, W, « La fabrique du désir de l’Occident frontiérisé », Revue De l’Institut Des Belles Lettres Arabes, 86(232), 2023, 189-209. https://ibla.tn/index.php/ibla/article/view/47
[13] Elias, Norbert. The Germans. Power struggles and development of habitus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Seuil, 2017.
[14] During our interviews and observations with immigrants who have become undocumented in France and Belgium, we came across numerous situations where people did not go to their parents’ funerals, for example. Some of them are students who, for obscure reasons, have not been issued residence permits. Leaving the country without a residence permit is synonymous with being exposed to visa application procedures and the risk of refusal.
[15] See, Olivier Esteves, Alice Picard, Julien Talpin, La France, tu l’aimes mais tu la quittes. Enquête sur la diaspora française musulmane, Seuil, Paris, 2024.
[16] We argue that the desire to establish border management policies in the face of mobility belongs to a conservative tradition obsessed with the very idea of governance. It is conservative not in the liberal sense of the stato-modern tradition which, from Hobbes to Weber via Montesquieu, theorizes the rule of law on the basis of the monopoly of violence, but rather in the sense of fascist governance, which finds its incarnation in the regimes that marked Europe in the last century, and is based on the purity of the idea of governance through rationality without the need for justification. Mussolini defined fascist thinking as follows: “Our program is quite simple: we want to govern Italy. People always ask us about our programs. There are already far too many such programs. For the salvation of Italy, it’s not programs that are needed, but men and the power of will” (quoted by Karl. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, editions of the la Maison des sciences de l’homme Foundation, 2006 [1929], p. 111), (Reden [speeches], edited by H. Meyer, Leipzig, 1925, p. 105. Cf. also p. 134 ff.)
