Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union

The media and prevailing policy discourses convey an increasingly apocalyptic image of the massive outflows of desperate Africans fleeing poverty and war at home. This study tries to achieve a more empirically and quantitatively founded understanding of the nature, scale and recent evolution of irregular West African migration to Maghreb and Europe. Furthermore, the publication evaluates how policies to manage trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean migration have affected current migration patterns.