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Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences

Mini Review Volume 3 Issue 4

International migration and money transfers in the Horn of Africa

Amina Said Chir

Associate researcher, University of Djibouti, Djibouti

Correspondence: Amina Said Chiré, Associate researcher, University of Djibouti, Djibouti

Received: April 09, 2018 | Published: August 16, 2018

Citation: Chiré AS. International migration and money transfers in the Horn of Africa. J His Arch & Anthropol Sci. 2018;3(4):596-599. DOI: 10.15406/jhaas.2018.03.00137

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Abstract

This contribution has sought an understanding international migration tour of the Red Sea basin. To do this, she explored the links between it and globalization. It has mainly examined the role of the economic and technical dimensions of the latter in the migration of nationals of the Horn of Africa to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It also examined the new spatial configurations resulting from the practical organization of this migration, forced to innovate in order to continue to drain all the candidates to exile.
The results achieved are promising for scientific research in the region.

Keywords: migration, globalization, determinants, Horn of Africa

Introduction

Since 2007, there has been an acceleration of migratory movements around the Red Sea basin between the countries of the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia) and péninsule Arabian. In 2012 for example, there are some 107 5 00 migrants who crossed the Red Sea and landed in Yemen (UNHCR, 2012). These migrations have generated, according to international organizations, an income valued at US $ Sh 10 million. To try to understand this international migration, and propose the question in the light of globalization, as we consider, like Simmons 1 that its current evolution are linked to a global process of economic, political and cultural transformations. On the one hand, economic globalization is favored by international migration. On the other hand, it encourages host countries to protect themselves with legal and physical barriers. To continue to drain candidates at the start, migration adapts to these constraints by becoming irregular. At the same time, it generates new spatial configurations that are interesting to study. In this contribution, we will examine the role of globalization in international migration around the Red Sea Basin as a first step. We will question the new social and spatial configurations generated by this interaction between the two phenomena in a second part. To understand the role of globalization in international migration around the Red Sea basin, we propose to come back in the general context of the latter to examine the forces that govern it.

General context of international migration around the basin of the e Red Sea

The general context of our contribution is that of the Horn of Africa,1 a region populated by 121 million inhabitants and consisting largely of arid and semi-arid lands (70%) and thus exposed to multiple natural hazards such as drought, floods and epidemics, but also to incessant conflicts resulting in famines and desolations. In this particular context, both internal and international migration is important. By migrating, we mean the movement of people from one place to another, particularly from one country (emigration) to another (immigration) for political, social, economic or personal reasons.

Relatively classical determinants

In the Horn of Africa, Somalia had a net migration rate of -7.5 / 1000 people (2017) and Ethiopia a net migration rate of -0.2 / 1000 (2017). Eritrea is the country in the region with the highest net migration rate at -14.7 / 1000 (2016). The Republic of Djibouti is the only country in the region to have a net positive migration rate of 5.9 / 1000.2 Ethiopia, Somalia and the Republic of Djibouti are a registered migration triptych that its demographic exchanges over time. In this triptych, Somalia and Ethiopia appear to be outsourcing poles for migrants, while the Republic of Djibouti can be considered as a pole of attraction since it has been channeling since the 1970s important flows of refugees and disaster victims. The factors behind these migrations are relatively classic factors: political, economic and demographic factors. In Somalia, the forces governing departures are of a security nature. They are linked to the civil war situation that has prevailed for 30 years. In Eritrea, it is rather factors related to poor political and economic governance that push people to the start. In Ethiopia, factors related to poor development put people on the road to exile. In the latter country, the minimum wage is between $17 and $22. Young people are the first to emigrate to escape underemployment and the narrowness of the land base in the countryside. Thanks to this particular general context, globalization has helped to make these two countries virtually inexhaustible pools of candidates for exile. This hypothesis will be defended in a following section.

The new determinants of globalization

To try to understand the complexity of the migration of nationals of the Horn of Africa towards the Arabian Peninsula, it is appropriate to add to conventional determinants, new determinants from the globalization that now surrounds the region in a a new globalized space whose epicenter is in the Arab-Persian Gulf. Since the early 2000s, the pole of attraction of Ethiopian and Somali migrants has gradually moved to the oil-producing countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Since then, the entire Horn of Africa has been a new migratory couple with this last region, a couple in which it appears as the outsourcing pole. The attraction factors of this epicenter are certainly searching for historical, linguistic, socio-cultural links and close proximity geographic area that unites the two regions. They are also looking for in the new circulatory function ensured by the A Arabian peninsula in the migratory system of the inhabitants of the Horn of Africa. Finally, in the economic and technological globalization, there is a need for low-skilled employment areas in the host region. Economic globalization initially pushed the people of the Horn of Africa to move in the countries of the Persian Gulf to get supplies of various commodities. In a second step, it led them to settle there before joining Europe, making the region a step importance on the way to this last continent. In a last time she brought the s to settle for protection and better living conditions.

The technique globalization, that is to say all processes from the technical progress and to reduce the space / time, to accelerate materials, informative, but also human exchange, also played an important role in the migration to the peninsula A rabies. This is to interview several levels in the acceleration of emigration towards the Arab-Persian Gulf in the sense that she perm the acceleration of trade whatsoever. This aspect is borrowed from Castles' approach which defines globalization as " a proliferation of cross-border flows and transnational networks".3 The technical globalization has facilitated the acceleration of international migration since it also allowed the acceleration of the movement of capital which in turn helps to streamline the r mobility, etc. This aspect of Mandalay tan Ed therefore participated in the emergence of a genuine irregular emigration market to the Arabian Peninsula. The appearance of this market is also explained by the increase in the demand for emigration on the one hand and the barriers erected by host countries to protect themselves from mass immigration on the other.

Indeed, although the Arabian Peninsula is very close, since it is separated from the Horn of Africa by a strait as wide as 23 kilometers, the Traffic between the two regions are not free and access to the Eldorado that we note represents today the countries of the Persian Gulf is coined by networks of local and international smugglers operate out the Djiboutian territory. This territory is indeed a must in every sense of the word for all actors of international migration in the region. The international migration market is getting organized from Djibouti. Apart from its geographical proximity to Yemen, the territory also offers optimal conditions for setting up a business. Djibouti whose the liberal economy is dominated by the tertiary sector (88.9% of GDP) has a network high-performance telephone and a variety of modern infrastructures linking it to the rest of the world of the region. The free convertibility of its currency and its free banking system and relatively developed make it a paradise for any investor. For all these reasons, since 2007, there has been an exponential increase in the total number of newcomers to Yemen. In 2012, UNHCR had identified 107500 persons with crossed the straits of Bab el Mandeb. This recrudescence is linked to an increase important Ethiopian candidate. According to UNHCR, these now represent three, four migrants crossing the Red Sea. Until 2008, migrants Somalis accounted for three quarters of all arrivals registered in Yemen. This inversion of the percentages of Somalis and Ethiopians between 2008 and 2009 seems to coincide with the end of Ethiopian engagement in Somalia. This also seems related to the efficiency of Ethiopian smuggling networks, as well as telecommunications and remittance networks, an aspect developed in the following section (Table 1).

Flow organization

Entrepreneurs in migrant smuggling networks often come from Djibouti, where they are landowners, owners of phone shops or bosses of bush taxi and other means of public transportation. It is therefore natural that they install the headquarters of their "enterprise" in the country in which their sources of income, but also their social capital, which can often be very useful. They then offer their services to Ethiopian and Somali networks. These are responsible drainer customers locally and two group-wide national level before proceeding with their international transfer to Djibouti in a first time, before their transfer to Yemen in a second time. Between the different nodes of different local, national and international scales, connections are established and the flow of information, money and people is regular via communication networks whether telephone or road. Wherever the phone pass, capital can circulate and this explains the extent of population transfers between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Money transfer systems more known as Hawalas are highly developed in the Horn of Africa, where they have been introduced by the Somali diaspora of one million people spread across Africa, eastern countries, the Persian Gulf countries, Western and Northern Europe, North America North and Australia. This demographic component sends each year to his country 1 to $ 2 billion. This money is for the family to help him cope with his daily expenses2. Part of it, however, is used to cover the travel costs of those who wish to try their luck abroad. In this case, the diaspora also provides valuable essential information for migrants' journeys. To send money, the diaspora makes extensive use of hawala systems. Alternative systems the hawala system, for example, is often defined as a "Financial service that accepts cash, checks and other monetary instruments or other methods of storing value in one place and pays a corresponding amount in cash or other form to a beneficiary located in another place through a Communication, message or transfer or through a clearing network to which the money / value transfer system belongs"4 This system allows transfer large amounts of money in the world without producing documents or very little. The migrant transfer system is based on this system of transfer of funds.

To carry out their businesses, migrant network owners recruit in the urban margins and decommissioned neighborhoods of the city of Djibouti young smugglers afar and Oromo, first links in their network and appoint a charismatic leader and polyglot. The latter is responsible for administering the network, but also for establishing conn x ion with network Ethiopian and Somali couriers moving in Ethiopia and in Somalia to secure the exclusivity of migrant remittances by Somalia. Once these con x ion established and sealed agreements, the central node is connected to Djibouti those settled in neighboring countries in the form of regrouping points of the candidates. The links are materialized by the technical networks, which are the telephone network, the transport networks. Business is done through modern means of communication what are the phone and the internet. The network administrator also travels to Obock, point of embarkation of migrants, in order to recruit smugglers and dhow captains Djibouti and Yemenis. Of Djibouti-vile, the head of the network prepares the logistics. He rents one or more houses to house migrants. He is recruiting a phone shop to allow his clients to phone calls needed to send the remaining money by the family. He rents taxi - bush to get them to the Obockois coastline from where they will embark for the Yemen. He has finally recruited a restaurant owner to feed them. Thus, smuggling networks spread their activities throughout the neighborhood, often without the knowledge of the inhabitants or with some complicities. This is the case today in the neighborhood Arhiba famous for its traffics of all kinds. The intensity of the territorialized relations induced by the smuggling of migrants leads us to speak today of new spatial configurations, the object of our second part.

1 The Horn of Africa is made up of four countries: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Republic of Djibouti and Somalia.

Year

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2014

Number of migrants

11000

26000

50000

77000

53000

103,000

107   500

170100

Somalis

75%

75%

75%

25%

25%

25%

25%

79%

Ethiopians

25%

25%

25%

75%

75%

75%

75%

21%

Table 1 Number of migrants reaching the Yemeni coast

The new spatial configurations from migrating in the Horn of Africa

As demonstrated above, economic globalization has played an important role in the emergence of a real market for illegal immigration in the region. C 'is the pursuit of economic progress and better pay conditions that m is the people of the Horn of Africa on the way of exile. And it is the same doctrine of greed that also pushes smugglers to attract more and more departures in order to minimize costs and maximize profits by attracting more and more candidates to exile. But the trafficking of irregular migrants is possible only because economic globalization is now global and money can circulate everywhere. To capture the new spatial combinations induced by the migrant smuggling and the role of economic globalization at home, it is the intensity of territorialized by the smuggling of migrants that must be examined as a framework emergence. These new spatial configurations only emerge because they come build on an existing network of networks linked to technical globalization. Wherever there is a telephone network, it is possible to recruit customers and send money. The migrant smuggling networks are spreading the information that they are organizing the transfer of migrants to the Arabian Peninsula. Once grouped at the local level, migrants are transferred to national regrouping points (there are 3 in Ethiopia).

From these points, they are supported by the Djiboutian networks informed by phone of their arrival. This results in new territorial configurations. To seize this news territorial combinations, it is necessary to reconcile the concepts of network and territory many geographers consider as incompatible, thus dissociating reflections in network terms and those in terms of territory. This dissociation is due to the fact that the networks are associated with flows, mobility and territories with static, long time, anchorages (Séchet and Verschambre (dir), 2006). To capture new spatial patterns resulting from migrant smuggling irregularities in the Horn of Africa, we must start from the assumption that the territory it is a form of network. As a first step, the territoriality of the networks of Migrant transfer is relatively traditional. It builds and borrows networks that constitute a country such as the urban network, the telecommunications networks. Then, she is the need to innovate when it comes to moving from the national to the international level. Indeed, migrant transfer networks have to establish for a limited time more or transport networks of migrants moving away from national networks and international organizations. The reason is that institutional territories affect the networks of transfer of migrants by putting their functioning or even their existence in question controls on people, especially at borders, that migrants must to cross clandestinely.

To escape institutional controls, smuggling networks seek to rely on customary societies and territories in exchange for financial rewards or payment of rights of way. The smuggling of irregular migrants is strangely reminiscent by its modes of operation the Eastern Slave Trade. Each clan or group of clans takes the responsibility of transporting migrants within the limits of its territory before passing the baton to the neighboring clan, which offers the same services: guidance and security. So all the clans, owners of the territories crossed benefit from the financial repercussions of traffic. For example, the southernmost border crossing between Djibouti and Ethiopia is often closed or a bottleneck, a detour through neighboring territory Somaliland is often required, which can lead to additional costs. This extra cost is minimized by reducing the cost of merging Ethiopian transfer lines and Somalia at the main border crossing between Somaliland and Djibouti. The gathered migrants are then conveyed together to the city of Djibouti, before being transferred together also to the main point of embarkation for Yemen which is the port of Obock.

Once in Djibouti territory, the lines of transfer of migrants are constrained to evolve outside the transport networks and official channels of communication because of the existence of checkpoints every 50 kilometers, except between checkpoints and with complicities reporting movements of the gendarmerie. If the telephone contacts must be quasi-permanent to the point of becoming confused with the routes taken, the payment only occurs at two moments: on arrival at Djibouti city and at the time of embarkation for Yemen. In Djibouti city, migrants must pay the costs of their transfer from their country and their stay on the square. At Obock, they must pay the costs of their transfer to Obock and those of the crossing. The money is sent either by the family back home or from the diaspora. After analyzing the details of migrant remittances, can we really speak of new territoriality as to their relationship to space? There are two ways to respond to this question, following the definition of the territorial concept that we retain: -If the territory is identified only with anchorages, identities, immobility and long time, we certainly cannot talk about territory about configuration territorial patterns drawn by migrant remittances. This means that we are considering separation the notions of network and territory by associating the network with flows, with mobilities. -If the territory is identified as a network form from its configuration that can rhizomic, it can be argued that the smuggling of migrants generates new net territorial configurations through the new spatial relationships that it causes.5,6

Conclusion

In the Horn of Africa, international migration is determined by classical factors such as the underdevelopment of the countries of the Horn of Africa. They are also favored by many aspects of globalization. The economic globalization of the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf has created a breath of fresh air for workers in the Horn of Africa region. At the same time, it gave rise to fears that led host countries to put in place both legal and physical barriers to restrict the arrival of these same workers. These contradictions have favored the appearance of irregular migration compulsion to innovate more points of view to continue to drain all candidates initially. Result: we have seen the emergence of new territorialities which are in fact the Territorial resurgence city s oldest.

Acknowledgements

None.

Conflict of interest

Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

References

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  2. https://www.populationdata.net/
  3. Castles S, Hein DH, Mark JM. The Age of Migration: international population movements in the modern word. 2nd edition, In: Simmons A, editor. New York: Guilford; 1998.
  4. http://www.irinnews.org/en/Report/95048/SOMALIA-The-diaspora-realty-in-the-Development
  5. Séchet R, Veschambre V. Thinking and doing social geography. Contribution to an epistemology of social geography, Rennes: University Presses of Rennes, 2006; 397 p.
  6. http://www.africapartnershipforum.org/fr/documentsdereunion/43053249.pdf
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