Europe and the spectre of sub-Saharan migration

Abstract

Does Europe need to prepare for a coming “surge” of sub-Saharan migrants? This prediction is based on a model of communicating vessels that fails to take into account three fundamental observations:

1) compared to people in other regions, sub-Saharan Africans are less prone to migrate, due to poverty;

2) when they do emigrate, 70% move to another sub-Saharan country;

3) according to UN demographic growth projections, while sub-Saharan African migrants will have a growing place in societies of the North, they will remain a small minority: around 4% of the population in 2050 – far below the 25% that some have claimed.