Perception of Development
IMS
“Dying fighting is manhood” The grass is always greener on the other side
TRULY paradise?
According to Eurostat January 2015: In 2013, more than a third of the population was at risk of poverty or social exclusion in five EU Member States: Bulgaria (48.0 %), Romania (40.4 %), Greece (35.7 %), Latvia (35.1 %) and Hungary (33.5 %). Lowest shares of persons being at risk of poverty or social exclusion were recorded in Sweden (16.4 %), Finland (16.0 %), the Netherlands (15.9 %) and the Czech Republic (14.6 %). Children and active-age people are more at risk of poverty or social exclusion than elderly people in several European countries Income poverty: 16.7 % of the population in the EU-28 at risk of income poverty Work intensity: 10.7 % of the population in the EU-28 living in households with very low work intensity Material deprivation: 9.6 % of the population in the EU-28 severely materially deprived Unexpected expenses: 39.7 % of the population in the EU-28 could not afford unexpected financial expenses Spain is on the frontline for illegal migration.
Who fights the most? About two-thirds of Africans in Europe are from North Africa (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia). For Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the migrants are from West Africa - Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, in particular. They use Morocco since it is the most country near Spain. The majority of African migrants living overseas are in Europe - about 4.6m compared with 890,000 in the US
For more information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ europe/6228236.stm http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ statistics-
PHOTO: STUMAI GEORGE
Well arranged infrastructure, one of the things attracting people from developing country.
When running away from problem is concidered as a solution
By Stumai George “I have spent time with Senegalese young men and I could see that the perception of better life in Europe has not changed until now“, so says Sebastian Prothmann, an anthropologist who has been studying people´s migration from the developing to developed countries. His study was done under supervision of Goethe University in Frankfurt Germany. Hundred of thousands young Africans join caravans from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa. Thousands have been battling the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Europe. A few make to the European sea shores, even less make the best of their living in this continent. The recent statistics shows a number of illegal immigrants trying to get into Germany, for example, has reached a record high, according to the Daily Telegraph, the British daily. Last year alone, German police arrested 57,000 illegal immigrants, an increase of 75 percent compared to 2013. Having spent three years in suburbs of Pikine in the capital city of Senegal, Dakar, mostly talking to young men aged between 20 to 30 years old, Prothmann wanted to see the reasons behind this escalation. He found out that among them is the perception of better earnings in Europe which has not changed in that part of Africa even when Europe itself has so far changed in terms of how much people are able to earn.
Playing blind “Most of the time I try to ask these young men of Senegal if they are aware of similar problems they try to escape at home they can also face them in Europe. And all the time I get similar answer, that the hardship
of Europe is not the same as that of Senegal. A poor person in Europe is like a rich person in the village of Pikine”, says Prothmann. However, not every young African in Europe today is still nurturing the same hallucinations. Yusra Buwahyd (29), a Tanzanian young woman who has been in Germany for three years now, says she would never risk her life to come to Europe. She studies Media and Communication Science at Ilmenau University of Technology in Thüringen Germany. “Illegal migration is not a good option to fight poverty. I have lived in Germany for three years and that time has given me another picture, which was not in my mind when I was at home. If you come here without plans, your life will be miserable. You might suffer more in hardship than the one at home.”
But for other millions of young Africans, the battle of setting their feet in Europe is justified through that misconception of Europe as a paradise. Prothmann says this perception has something to do with family pressure as well as male egoism. He found many mothers in Pikin being proud because they had a son abroad as well as many young men who think that making a journey to Europe is a sign of manhood. There is a blurred picture of what really a life is in Europe and that contributes to the exodus, according to Bruce Amani (30), a Kenyan young man who has been living and working in Germany for three years now. He himself had dreamt all his life of coming to Europe to find a better future. “The day I got a chance to come to work in Germany, I could not sleep. I was counting days toward the day to travel”, he said, adding that he had felt all his hardship in the small town of Kakamega, south Kenya, would be put to the eternal
“Hardship of Europe is not similar to that of Senegal”
Graphic source:BBC
end. “Now that I am here, I have realized that life is not as smooth as I thought. I see people begging on streets, I see some picking plastic bottles from dustbins just as they do at my hometown. When I work in night shift, I see people sleeping in the central station and also in other buildings like banks” reveals Amani.
Seeing is believing Does Amani tell the real story back home to his people? Does he impart the actual picture of Europe that he is now experiencing, which is quite different from what his people still know? “I do, but they still don’t believe me. One of my childhood friends asked me why then I am still in Europe if what I tell them of another Europe was true!” Amani’s accounts are not far from what Prothmann has found. Some of those who managed to make their way to Europe try to “show some positive outcome of their being in Europe”, which includes establishing some projects like building their parents houses. Things like these make other million young men to feel that Europe is the only way to succeed.” Some of these “elder brothers“, who managed to reach Europe are not ready to reveal the real life they experienced if they were failures. They instead pretend to others that everything is fine, the situation that our expert Prothmann calls “performance“. Senegal is a predominantly Muslim society. Most of them believe that death is inevitable so they should not be scared of. So if one dies during the journey, it is a fate. They call it qadar, an Arabic word means God’s will and decision. That is why despite the hardship and scaring news of death and sufferings of people who try to enter Europe the tendency is the same. The journey is not a real threat to them.