West Africa as a Migration and Protection Area

West Africa, through its strategic position between North Africa and the tropical zones, but also through its opening towards the Atlantic and the Americas, has always been a place of intensive mobility and intermixing of populations. Since the 1960s, it has included a number of areas of political and economic stability (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria), which have made it an attractive space compared to the rest of the continent. West Africa, while a land of immigration since the colonial period, has also become a land of emigration. There have been substantial population movements from the countries at the centre of the sub-region towards the coastal countries as well as other African countries (Gabon, Congo, Cameroon) and, to a lesser extent, the former colonial countries (France, Great Britain, Portugal). In the last few years, the arrival of fishing boats from the Sub-Sahara on the coasts of Spain and Italy, highly politicized and with intense media coverage, has also given the sub-region a new image: one of a “transit” area from which “thousands of Africans” are departing in the hope of reaching the European El Dorado.