"Building a comprehensive framework of African migration patterns: the case of migration between Senegal and Europe"

Migration theories, which guided prior research, have been predominantly based on static dichotomous categorizations. In particular most research has been guided by assumptions conceiving migration primarily as: 1) a one-off move from a departure country “A” to a destination country “B”; 2) directed to Europe (revealing a strong Eurocentric bias); 3) entailing a permanent settlement; 4) and with little or no spontaneous return from Europe to origin countries. According to this logic, previous research concentrated almost exclusively on specific phases of the migration process (settlement and integration in destination countries; temporary returns and circulation between sending and receiving countries; permanent return in origin countries) or on their effect on sending and receiving countries. Furthermore, available data on migration are few, weakly comparable and fail to capture the longitudinal character of migration. These limitations particularly apply to migration from sub-Saharan Africa, where the diversification and growing complexity of migratory flows, rather than an increase in volume (as conveyed by public opinion and the media) has been the most significant change in the last decades. In addition to conceptual problems, this lack of data prevents gaining an improved understanding into the complex and rapidly changing dynamics of African migrations. The aim of the PhD research is to fill these conceptual and empirical gaps by analyzing migration trajectories as 1) complex mobility systems, conceiving migration as a continuous process that develops over migrants’ lives through different phases and steps; 2) from the origin country, through intermediate-transit and destination ones 3) studying the extent of mobility within the EU 4) and including (short and long-term) circulation and permanent returns to origin country. Following these principles, the theoretical and empirical objective of the study is to identify and to analyze the main migration patterns between Africa and Europe, through a longitudinal analysis of their complex composition, geographical extent and changing nature over time. The research draws on the MAFE dataset, which provides a unique opportunity to empirically pursue this research objective. The MAFE Senegal project yielded a new individual biographic data set in 2008, through comparables surveys in both sending (Senegal) and receiving countries (France, Italy, Spain) among both documented and undocumented migrants. MAFE data are: 1) multi-topic (various aspects of the respondents' lives are covered by the questionnaires, including work experience, family formation, residential mobility, legal status, etc.); 2) multi-level (meso and macro comparable data in four surveyed countries are associated to individual-micro data on migrants); 3) longitudinal (through retrospective data) 4) transnational (collected and giving account for both sending and receiving countries). The unique nature of this dataset allows to undertake innovative research on complex structure of individuals’ migration. By investigating the individual migrants’ trajectories, the research focuses in particular on “transits” and “temporary returns”. The analysis showed the increasing crucial role of interconnectivity played by these forms of mobility between West African and European migration systems. Finally, by analyzing the intersections of the different mobility structures (linear, step-wise and circular) and geographical areas (sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Europe) in which Senegalese migration develops, the research finally elaborates a typology of the main patterns of mobility between Africa and Europe and outlines the profiles of migrants who undertake different mobility patterns.