(In)stability and migration in North Africa

Awad, Ibrahim

(In)stability and migration in North Africa

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Citation

Awad, I. (In)stability and migration in North Africa. 2020. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/43975

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Abstract

This paper addresses the relation between political instability and international migration in the three North African countries that have experienced instability in the 2010s, namely Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. This instability ranged from uprising and revolution to state failure. The paper is particularly concerned with migration to the European Union but also that between the three North African countries. The paper invalidates the assumption that instability and ensuing economic crisis magnify already large international migration outflows. These were not large to begin with. And neither from Tunisia, nor certainly from Egypt, did instability in the 2010s engender larger outflows to the EU than previously. It is instability at destination in the same North Africa, in Libya, that produced large return and transit flows to Egypt and Tunisia. This confirms what Egypt experienced in the 1990s, when occupation and war in Kuwait and Iraq sent Egyptian workers back to their country.