Legal and safe migration to Europe has become increasingly difficult for African citizens owing to racialised structures of mobility. Visas put huge burdens on African applicants while migration partnerships have had little impact, despite Germany’s need for migrant labour, argues Franzisca Zanker.
The border fence between Fnideq (Morocco) and Ceuta (Spain) in North Africa is one of the most important borders across which people on the continent try to immigrate into the European Union.
© picture alliance / NurPhoto | Lucas Neves
Germany’s new policy guidelines on Africa were released in January 2025. The appearance of this wide-ranging document is timely as we are currently commemorating the 140th anniversary of the infamous Berlin Conference (1884/85), the starting point for the near complete colonisation of an entire continent. Above all, the guidelines include the continued commitment to a reckoning with Germany’s colonial past. They also include a call for “regular and orderly migration” as well as the strengthening of student and academic exchanges through expedited visa processes in these two areas. Given the scope of the document and its aspirations, it is appropriate to reflect on the colonial continuities of our contemporary Afro-European visa regimes.
In 2023 a parliamentary query was submitted to the government (a so-called “kleine Anfrage”) on the issue of granting visas to students and scholars from Africa. The query in part referred to the rejection of a visa application submitted by Cameroonian scholar, to which the German government responded that this was not discrimination but simply a decision based on standard regulations. That may well be true, but what if the regulations themselves are the problem?
Speaking as someone who has never had a visa rejected anywhere in the world with either my British or my German passport, I find it particularly shameful to report that I have never organised a conference or a workshop with colleagues from Africa without having to deal with issues related to visa delays, rejections or other problems. What does someone with a German passport need to travel to Namibia or Tanzania? No visa at all for Namibia, although this will change soon, and a visa on arrival costing 50 USD for Tanzania. A Namibian or Tanzanian requiring a Schengen visa needs an invitation letter, a round-trip flight reservation, proof of accommodation, proof of employment or proof of willingness to return to their home country (such as an employment letter), proof of financial status, proof of sufficient funds (through bank records) and medical insurance covering costs of at least 30,000 EUR. Moreover, applicants will need to make an appointment at the embassy of the European country they want to visit. The cost of the visa is 83 EUR. In 2022, 30 per cent of all African applicants had their visa rejected, much higher than the global average of 17.5 per cent. According to another recent study, African applicants are disproportionately affected by the non-refundable nature of Schengen visas. In 2023, the EU raked in 130 million EUR from rejected visa applications, with some 42 per cent of those revenues coming from applicants living in Africa.
Legal pathways from Africa to Europe have steadily decreased since the 1980s. Despite the constant talk of equal partnerships and legal migration pathways at the European and German diplomatic levels, accessing European countries in a legal, safe and so-called orderly manner is becoming increasingly impossible. According to a report commissioned by the European Commission, until 2012 the vast majority of African migrants entering Europe had visa and residence permits issued before arrival. There was usually between 400,000 and 500,000 African migrants arriving annually; since 2012 the numbers have almost halved to around 270,000-290,000 annually. The report observes that while legal migration has decreased significantly, irregular migration flows across the Mediterranean have increased. From this, we can infer if the regular pathways are reduced, irregular ones will emerge in their place. And the consequences can be fatal: according to the Missing Migrants Report, no fewer than 31,360 migrants have gone missing, presumed dead, in the Mediterranean since 2014.
All things considered, we have a system whereby legal migration to Europe – in a safe and orderly manner – has become increasingly difficult for African citizens. Is this simply a question of regulations that happen to be particularly challenging for people from Africa because wealthy Europe is such a popular destination and would otherwise be overrun? First, let us remember that African migrants made up just 14.5 per cent of the global migrant population in 2020, which is much lower than Asian (41%) or European (22.5%) migrants. The vast majority of African migrants remain on the African continent, and less than one third of African migrants live in Europe (27.2%). Second, Germany ranks third in the Henley Passport Index meaning that Germans can travel visa-free to 192 destinations; by contrast, Tanzania ranks 69th and there are just 73 destinations which its citizens can access without a visa. Thus, the inequalities in mobility can be taken as a fact.
The legal scholar Tendayi Achiume refers to a “neocolonial empire” where some places get to dictate mobility restrictions more than others. In other words, deep-rooted inequality determines who gets to move and how; and this is tied to racialized structures that control the movement of both Black people and people of colour in particular ways. It demonizes certain persons as a securitised threat. What does this have to with colonialism? Quite a lot, according to authors such as Lucy Mayblin and Joe Turner, Henrietta McNeill and Thomas Spijkerboer among others. Why have visa waivers increased globally but stagnated or decreased for citizens of African countries in particular? Under what conditions are mobility regulatory frameworks established, including, even, the Geneva Convention on Refugees, which initially addressed only European refugees? And what are the origins of the pervasive inequalities in wealth distribution that dictate who can migrate? Or, to put that question differently: from where does all the wealth come in those countries whose citizens enjoy most freedom of movement? Safe to say that international relations are shaped by colonial legacies, and it is those legacies that continue to dictate mobility regimes to this day.
Given the political calls for safe and orderly pathways and the need for skilled migrants, an obvious way forward is via student and traineeships visas. According to the German government data, between 2012 and 2022 only 283 Namibian students and 16 scholars received visas. That is not a lot over a decade.
Another means of increasing mobility are bilateral labour agreements, which can be a good way forward and are sometimes referred to as double or triple wins: a win for the country of destination (more workers with particular skill sets), a win for the country of origin (in the form of remittances sent home) and a win for the migrants themselves (who can benefit from employment and the learning of new skills, among other things). This option potentially offers more innovative and realistic avenues for legal migration, as does, for example, the recently concluded Kenya-Germany bilateral deal, which provides for the issuance of visas to Kenyan IT specialists who have no formal qualifications (Article 7.3) – something that would normally impede access to the German labour market. But does everyone really win from this kind of deal?
First, it is questionable how many Kenyans will, in fact, be able to travel to and work in Germany. Relatedly, it is not clear how this approach will tackle youth unemployment of 67 per cent in Kenya. Second, it is likely the deal will allow, above all, already highly educated Kenyans to go to Germany – for example, those working in the healthcare sector, which poses the threat of a brain drain. Indeed, there is already a shortage of medical doctors in Kenya there is currently one doctor to 5,263 Kenyans: more than five times the WHO-recommended ratio.
Of course, questions can be raised about the political posturing of Kenyan President Ruto, who went out of his way to claim that up to 250,000 Kenyans may get jobs in Germany. But there is also posturing from the German side, which, on the one hand, acknowledges – albeit not too vocally – the acute need for migrant labour and, on the other hand, tries to assuage what may be the constructed fears of German voters. And it does so by reinforcing that in exchange for visas being granted to labour migrants, the Kenyan government has to take back Kenyans who have no legal claim to live in Europe. Deportations “in big numbers” has been a long-standing goal of the current government. Why, after all, are Articles 10–18 of the agreement devoted to cooperation on returns – including of citizens of third nations – from Germany to Kenya, which, arguably, has little do with labour migration? In 2023, five Kenyans were returned from Germany, according to Eurostat data. The same year a total of 85 Kenyan citizens were ordered to leave after it had been determined they had no legal right to remain in Germany. Are these numbers really so high as to justify devoting such a large chunk of the agreement to the issue of returns?
What this underscores is the conditionality of such partnerships, with one side clearly calling the shots and unilaterally establishing the conditions for (increased) labour access to European labour markets. For African governments complying with returns, the pressure is domestically difficult, especially when there is no visible and credible access to visas. In the case of the German-Kenyan deal, the partnership presented an opportunity for President Ruto to sell (potential) job creation for his disgruntled electorate, with the costs of the return of so few Kenyans being low; and the German government, for its part, was able to publicly showcase its commitment to deportations, even if these are at a symbolic level only.
It has been 140 years since just over a dozen of men representing non-African countries sat together in a room in Berlin and unilaterally decided the fate of an entire continent and millions of its people. Achiume reasons that there is a moral-legal argument that people from formerly colonized regions should be able to travel freely to the territory of what are former colonial powers. After all, there were never any restrictions for those colonisers and their families to move to the colonies. We could not be further from this reparative vision. The question is: “What are we so afraid of?” And perhaps, from an economic realpolitik perspective: “What do we need?” The fact is that Germany needs migrant labour, but recent studies show that many migrant workers are leaving Germany because they do not feel comfortable here. Indeed, Germany ranks as the European country in which people experience the most discrimination and racism based on the colour of their skin. We need to question ourselves, our political leaders and the media, which paints a largely distorted picture of an uncontrolled number of migrants posing a securitised threat. That picture does not tally with the real figures or the reality in terms of migrant labour needs. It also lacks any acknowledgement of the difficulties faced by migrants, especially those from Africa.
This leads us to back to the most important question of all: when are we going to take responsibility for and acknowledge our complicity in what is an unjust mobility regime?
Dr Franzisca Zanker is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Research Cluster “Patterns of (Forced) Migration” at the Arnold-Bergstraesser Institute at the University of Freiburg.
Germany’s Africa policy must maximize co-benefits by focusing on the migration-development nexus, argues Susan Ekoh (IDOS). The government needs to mainstream climate change needs in migration cooperation due to the present realities and future projections of climate-induced mobilities.
