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In September 2018, the Tunisian State received Matteo Salvini, the Italian Minister of the Interior, a neo-nationalist rightist known for his racist anti-migration positions. Salvini met with his Tunisian counterpart and they held a press conference at the Ministry. In the background, there was a mural depicting the army of Carthaginian commander Hannibal crossing the Alps in the direction of Rome. This “coded message” pleased many Tunisians and made them feel proud, although, the glorious past doesn’t resemble the humiliating present. The grandchildren of Hannibal still dream of reaching Rome, not as conquerors but as irregular migrants arriving on obsolete boats instead of horses and elephants. Carthage has started to drop its children into the sea. They are the “border burners” who left all their beloved ones in the southern land and headed North, to Europe. There are songs talking about the torments and dreams of those leaving their country and going into the unknown.
Hundreds of “Mezwed” (a Tunisian popular music genre), angry Rap and sad Rai songs talk about the despair of the youth from their country’s condition and their embarking on the treacherous sea to say goodbye to the contempt they experience. They talk about the sadness of their mothers and the terror of the boat. Border Burning has become an essential thematic in the popular cultural production, not only in Tunisia but in all the Maghreb. The song of the Algerian singer Rida Taliani “Oh boat, oh my beloved one, take me out of this misery” has become a national anthem for the Maghreb youth.
The phenomenon of “border burning” or irregular migration doesn’t only concern the youth, it is a public affair that affects the Tunisian family and a security / political dilemma affecting the “national security” of the country and its international relations. No week passes by without media reports about the security forces aborting a “border burning” attempt or about the arrival of Tunisian migrants to the Italian shores. Every few months, there is a tragic shipwreck incident that results in dozens of dead and missing ones. The media treatment of the issue is often superficial and full of stereotypes about the “border burners”. Most of the times, expressions such as “illegal migration” or “clandestine crossing of the border” are used with all the negative connotations they bear.
Who are those “border burners”? What pushes them to risk their lives in a sea where tens of thousands of immigrants have drowned before them in the last three decades? How does society perceive them and how does the state treat them?
General information
“Border burning” is the legitimate child of the Schengen Agreement which organized the crossing of the internal and external European borders. With the implementation of this agreement in March 1995, it has become mandatory for Tunisian citizens to fill an application to obtain a visa for entering the signatory European countries. The visa that is only granted after the fulfillment of a bunch of conditions which are becoming increasingly difficult over the years. This drove many Tunisians to ignore those conditions and take their chances with other means. Those who can marry a European tourist or the daughter of a migrant who has acquired a European nationality, but most of the others resort to irregular migration.
Economic migration is a “life necessity” for the Tunisian youth, so Europe’s policy of “shut-doors” did not impede their immigration which only became costlier on both material and human levels. This also opened new doors for the organized crime groups on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea to make more money.
The history of irregular immigration in Tunisia can be divided into three main stages. The first one goes from the mid-90s to 2003. This was before Tunisia enacted a law criminalizing the phenomenon of irregular immigration and before it engaged enthusiastically in the European strategies established to address it. During this period, almost 30 thousand Tunisians had made it to the Italian shores. The second stage goes from 2004 to the end of 2010, this period was marked by considerable strict policies by the Ben Ali regime. The security and punitive solution succeeded in decreasing the number of “border burners” to a few hundred every year but it didn’t manage to address the deep causes of the phenomenon. As for the third stage, it started with the Tunisian revolution on January 2011 and is still continuing until today. In 2011, the Tunisian security forces became deeply confused and an unprecedented increase in the number of “border burners” was recorded as the Italian authorities stated that more than 25 thousand Tunisians had arrived to their shores. Then, the numbers started to decrease over the years with the return of political and security stability in the country. In 2016, they increased again after the deterioration of the economic conditions in Tunisia. The yearly average became of 4000 to 5000 irregular migrants. Almost 38 thousand Tunisian irregular migrants arrived to Italy in the period between 2011 and 2017 to whom almost 2000 must be added for the first four months of 2018.
This means that in two decades, more than 80 thousand Tunisian irregular migrants have arrived to Italy. If we take into account the thousands who got arrested before departure -or during the journey - and the hundreds who were lost at sea, we would conclude that more than one hundred thousand Tunisians have resorted to irregular migration.
It is true that Tunisia has become a transit country for foreign border burners – and especially those of sub-Saharan nationalities - but Tunisians are still the majority among those migrants, with a proportion of 80%.
There are songs talking about the torments and dreams of those leaving their country and going into the unknown. Hundreds of “Mezwed” (a Tunisian popular music genre), angry Rap and sad Rai songs talk about the despair of the youth from their country’s condition and their embarking on the treacherous sea to say goodbye to the contempt they face, about the sadness of their mothers and the terror of the boat. Border Burning has become an essential thematic of the popular cultural production, not only in Tunisia but in all the Maghreb. The song of the Algerian singer Rida Taliani “Oh boat, oh my beloved one, take me out of this misery” has become a national anthem for the Maghreb youth.
The sailing means used are mainly fishing boats, ships, speedboats and, to a lesser extent, cargo boats, yachts and rubber boats. The irregular migration journeys depart from various Tunisian shores but smugglers have prefer to deploy their journeys from certain governorates: Sfax, Monastir, Al Mahdia, Bizerte, Nabul and Medenine. Based on the statistics of the Ministry of Interior on the aborted operations in each region, we can conclude the following: The department of Sfax arrives in first place (37% of the operations in 2016 and 42% in 2017) maybe because of the vastness of its shores (the longest in Tunisia), the presence of a number of small ports and fishing towns and also because Sfax is a big city where it is easier to hide and wait without getting noticed by security forces or any “informant”.
Zarzis (in the Medenine governorate), Chebba (in the governorate of Al Mahdia), Bekalta (in Monastir), Cape Zebib (in Medenine) and Kelibia (in the governorate of Nabul) are also considered to be active stations for the border burners.
Who are the Tunisian “border burners”?
The age group essentially concerned in migration is the youth aged between 18 and 35 years old. The overwhelming majority is unmarried men. Family migrations are almost non-existent. The presence of women in the boats of irregular migration is feeble and does not exceed 2 to 3 per cent but it has been increasing and this growth is expected to become perceptible in the upcoming years.
The border burners come from all the regions of the country but some areas are more involved than the others in this activity: the outskirts of big cities and their popular neighborhoods (the Tunis district, the department of Sfax and the coastal departments) and, to a lesser extent, the poorest inland cities and especially those of the Midwest and Southwest. Lower-middle class segments of the population are the most willing to “burn the borders”, followed by the poor and destitute ones.
Border burning is, above all, an economic migration. It is an extension to the Tunisian traditions of migration entrenched since the late sixties of the last century. The reasons that push the Tunisian youth to burn the borders today are almost the same as those that pushed generations of Tunisians to immigrate before them. What has changed is the Visa requirement imposed by Europe with its set of impossible conditions.
Economic migration is a “life necessity” for the Tunisian youth, so Europe’s policy of “shut-doors” did not impede their immigration which only became costlier on both material and human levels. This also opened new doors for the organized crime groups on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea to make more money.
Europe – and especially the colonial countries in it – carries a large share of responsibility for what is now happening on its southern borders. There is no unjust prejudice in this statement: decades of colonization of the countries of the Maghreb, of plundering their resources and of supporting the corrupt local elites after independence have made those countries unwelcoming to their own populations, especially the young groups. In addition, the promotion of the immigration of the Maghreb youth by Europe after the second World War (as a needed labor force for rebuilding and operating factories) has set significant mobility rules between the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea and social dynamics that are hard to ignore or to simply suppress with a political / security decision. Talking about the European responsibility doesn’t mean exempting the “locals” from theirs. The “national” regimes which have wasted natural wealth and enormous human potential are “native partners in the crime”.
The main reasons are thus economic: poverty, unemployment, weakness in production and in potentialities for economic development, unbalanced development, the congestion of the poor population in the outskirts of the big cities, the prevalence of corruption and clientelism, etc. But the objectives of the migration differ from a migrant to another and from an age group to another.
There is a difference between those who immigrate because unemployment has exhausted them or because their income is woefully insufficient and those who immigrate because they are looking for a way to make a fortune quickly. Even the socio-economic features of migrants keep on changing. The first generation was primarily composed of destitute young people with a low educational level, then the middle-class people became involved in the movement and even university graduates have become part of it.
The young people who want to immigrate can be divided into three age groups: 18-24 years old, 25-29 years old and 30-35 years old. Before the beginning of the revolution, the last two categories were the most present in the boats of irregular migration: young people who became fed up with heavy physical low-income labor, who couldn’t find a work on par with their qualifications, or couldn’t find work at all. They travel looking for stability with the objective of improving their situation and their families’ financial status. The presence of people from the first age group, the youngest ones, was limited before the revolution, yet after it, they became the most present. This change in the order of the age groups can be explained by the fact that news about shipwreck incidents and drowning migrants have made some from the older age groups reluctant to take the step and fearful for their safety. The younger ones do not want to “waste time” like their elders did, so they don’t even try to build a future in their country and instead resort to the fastest and “most successful” solution: immigration, even if it is irregular or dangerous. A number of teenage “border burners” do not immigrate because of poverty but to go on an adventure and prove their courage and their capacity to overcome difficulties. In the previous years, pictures and videos of young boys on the border burning boats circulated as if they were on a cruise! Also, this age group is the most impressed by the pictures showing a technologically developed West, full of sensuality, and by the photos of migrants living a “good and easy life”.
So, the importance of the economic side doesn’t mean it is the only factor. There are other influential cultural and psychological factors. Some also immigrate to run away from judicial decisions or to join a relative or a loved one.
How does the Tunisian society perceive irregular migration?
The word “society” is very loose and it would be more precise to talk about socio-economic classes. The leisure, upper and upper-middle classes look at it from a distance and with disdain. Their discourse on “border burners” relies on two essential points: First, on the criminalization of the phenomenon and the punishment of those “lazy” young people who don’t want to work in their country and prefer to get involved with criminal gangs in Europe, then on the satisfaction of getting rid of thousands of “trash” potential criminal.
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The question of “border burning” principally concerns the poor and lower-middle classes. When irregular migration appeared in Tunisia in the middle of the last decade of the twentieth century, most of the “border burners” didn’t tell their family members – and especially their mothers – about their intention to cross the sea so that they don’t dissuade them from fulfilling “their project”. They would wait until they arrive to the Italian shores and move to a city in Italy or elsewhere in Europe to call their parents and inform them of their arrival, or they would ask one of their friends to tell the family after the boat’s departure. In that period, “border burning” was safer because of the small number of migrants and the good quality of the used boats. With the increasing demand on border burning, the tightening of the Tunisian and Italian states’ security and the organized networks of smugglers, the journeys have become less safe.
In the beginning, the Tunisian families used to refuse that their sons resort to this kind of dangerous and sometimes deadly “solution”. But this refusal started to disappear with time and with the intensification of the unemployment crisis which affected even the university graduates in the beginning of the twenty first century. Many families, especially the poorest ones, started to understand the wishes of their sons to immigrate in an irregular manner. After the revolution and the dramatic increase of the number of border burners with the alarming worsening of the economic condition of the country, the understanding turned into encouragement in most cases. Many families realized that there was no future for their children in Tunisia and it became normal for relatives to cooperate in gathering the needed amount for the young person to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This can be considered as a collective investment: the safe arrival of the “border burner” to Europe and his regularization there can completely change the financial and social situation of the family.
It is true that Tunisia has become a transit country for foreign border burners – and especially those of sub-Saharan nationalities - but Tunisians are still the majority among those migrants, with a proportion of 80%.
Of course, this is the best case scenario and there are less optimistic ones: the son could get arrested before arriving to Europe, the boat might sink, the son could die and sometimes the body could be lost at sea, or he could get caught in Europe and then repatriated. Each year, hundreds of “border burners” get arrested and many boats sink leaving families in despair. Probably the worst cases are the ones where the family doesn’t even have a body to bid farewell and is unable to get the victim’s remains back from Italy.
The question of immigration is very present in the life of Tunisians, especially the young ones who discuss it and exchange “stories” and dreams about it. The popular neighborhoods are full of middlemen who chase the dreamers.
Thousands of young people look for a “border burning thread” (information and middlemen who could get them to the journey’s organizers). Usually, they quickly enough find someone to direct them towards the “path to salvation”. Most of the Tunisians have a story on border burning. They have either lived it themselves or heard stories of their relatives or friends who have. Some stories are “amusing” like the border burners who are defrauded and sail on a boat for hours before being left on the shores of another Tunisian city. Some stories have happy endings. Others are truly tragic. The widespread occurrence of the phenomenon has made it present in the media, in dramatic performances and movies, in literature, popular songs and street arts such as graffiti.
The official approach to irregular migration
The official discourse in Tunisia criminalizes the phenomenon and considers it to be a dangerous practice that must be deterred. The state deals with irregular migration as if it was a phenomenon that didn’t have any socio-economic causes so it avoids taking any responsibility in that matter. But that doesn’t mean that the authorities are completely inimical to “border burning” and “border burners”.
On a practical level, irregular migration doesn’t represent a big threat to the state’s security and it has its “advantages”. Most of the border burners are young people in the age of employment while the country has been witnessing an employment crisis for years. The thousands crossing the Mediterranean Sea every year ease the severity of the problem. Also, the lucky ones who get to Europe become migrants who send hard currency money to their families in Tunisia and participate in the alleviation of the poverty burden from thousands or even tens of thousands of their relatives. The border burners who manage to get residence permits join around a million Tunisians who live abroad and come back, every summer, to spend their vacation in their country, which creates substantial economic dynamism. That is without mentioning the migrants who leave as poor people and come back to invest and employ young unemployed Tunisians. To sum-up, migration, whether it is regular or irregular, is one of the safety valves of “social peace” and a drainage channel for the anger of the less fortunate classes.
This equation is not new; it goes back to the sixties of the last century. Irregular migration also generates big money to the accomplices present in the various security apparatuses in charge of controlling it. This complicity is not speculative; logic implies that it can’t be possible for tens of thousands of “border burning” boats to keep on departing from almost the same stations over two decades without facilitations from the security forces.
Then, what pushes the Tunisian state to adopt increasingly severe policies to combat irregular migration? The answer is obvious: the migration policies of the European Union that wants the countries of the South to take it upon themselves to solve a problem created by the countries of the North. There are of course other reasons, such as the embarrassment created by the tragic shipwreck incidents and the anger they provoke, or the possible relations between the networks of smuggling and those of human trafficking or terrorism. But the European pressures / impositions remain the main reason behind the Tunisian state’s adoption of oppressive laws and practices against those who want to immigrate, whether they are Tunisians or sub-Saharans in transit.
Europe carries a large share of responsibility for what is happening on its southern borders. Decades of colonization of the countries of the Maghreb, of plundering its resources and of supporting its corrupt local elites after independence have made those countries unwelcoming to their own populations and especially the youth. Talking about the European responsibility doesn’t exempt the “locals” from theirs. The “national” regimes which have wasted natural wealth and enormous human potential are “native partners in the crime”.
Pressures have started since the end of the nineties of the last century, a few years after the apparition of the phenomenon of irregular migration. The regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, which had always tried to please the influential western countries so that they ignore its dictatorial practices, was very cooperative on the economic and security levels. In addition to signing the agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a partnership agreement with the European Union, Ben Ali presented himself as an ally of Europe in countering terrorism and addressing irregular migration. Because the phenomenon was new and somehow unique, there was no Tunisian law capable of firmly handling it.
The Tunisian law regulating travels and border crossing goes back to 1975, when Europe was open to migrants without visas. Therefore, the European pressures on Tunisia to bridge this “legal loophole” started in 1998 which is the date of the signature of the first agreement between Tunisia and Italy enacting a cooperation between the two states to limit irregular migration and the acceptance of Tunisia to welcome back its citizens who arrive or reside irregularly in Italy. This agreement would later be fortified by three additional ones, the last of which was signed in April 2011.
Starting from the year 2002, Tunisia became actively involved in the Mediterranean security system and played an essential role in the efforts of the “5+5 Dialogue” created to tackle irregular migration. A ministerial summit around migration in the Western Mediterranean was held in Tunis in October 2002, followed by a presidential summit on the same subject in October 2003. In 2004, Tunisia accelerated the move when its Parliament ratified the Law number 6 of the year 2004 (dated on February the 3rd, 2004) which revised the Law number 44 of the year 1975 (dated on May the 14th 1975) related to passports and travel documents. It was not about the latter but really about irregular migration although the words “migration” and “migrants” were not explicitly used and were replaced by “entering and leaving the Tunisian soil”. This law is, without exaggeration, among the most restrictive in the world in the matter of irregular migration. It states, in the part from the chapter 38 to the chapter 53, custodial sentences and monetary fines (ranging between 3 to 20 years of prison and 8 to 100 thousand Tunisian Dinars) to all those involved in the different stages of irregular migration (helping, organizing, brokering, providing equipment, accommodating, etc.) and it does not even exempt those who support for free. It even punishes those who don’t play the role of the whistle-blowers (chapter 45): “Shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of three months and a fine of five hundred Dinars each person who deliberately refrains, even if subjected to professional confidentiality, from immediately notifying the relevant authorities of information they received or actions they witnessed relating to the commission of offences described in this section”. It is true that most ofthe sentences target the “organizers” and the “smugglers” but it also closes the last door on those wanting to immigrate and who will most likely never get a visa to Europe. The Ben Ali regime managed to almost completely control the immigration flow and, in exchange, received political and financial gains from the Europeans.
Migration, whether regular or irregular, is one of the safety valves of the “social peace” and a drainage channel for the anger of the less fortunate classes. This equation is not new; it goes back to the sixties of the last century.
After the Tunisian revolution and the outbreak of the war in Libya, the deck was shuffled again triggering a new stage of the “border burning” phenomenon. The political mess and the security vacuum in both countries were a golden opportunity for hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharans to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This created a situation of panic on the Northern shores and pushed European officials to try and convince Tunisia to “assume its responsibility” and contribute to downsizing and reducing the speed of the migration flow. The concerned European states are principally Italy (a transit and residence country), France and Germany (residence countries). The Europeans wrap their demands in terms like “security cooperation”, “development assistance”, “logistical aids to develop the Tunisian security capabilities” and “combating trafficking in persons”.
They also promise to support the Tunisian economy, to encourage its youth and to facilitate obtaining a Schengen Visa for its citizens… These are promises that no one finds believable.
Irregular migration and how to control it are items on the agenda of every meeting between European and Tunisian officials, even when the initial object of the meeting has nothing to do with the matter. The weakness of the successive Tunisian governments and their seeking for foreign support at all costs allowed the Europeans to dare on imposing their conditions and proposing procedures and “solutions” for irregular migration that do not respect national sovereignty: opening offices in Tunisia to review the profiles of Africans seeking asylum in Europe, setting camps to receive the repatriated African irregular migrants, placing “hotspots” to capture the data of irregular migrants who get caught by the Tunisian security forces before departure, etc…
The “partnership” plans are concluded quickly between the countries of the Maghreb and Europe to facilitate the transportation of goods between the two shores. But when it comes to humans, only the “people of the North” can travel to the South at will.
It doesn’t seem like the European pressures will soon ease, especially given that the influence of populist isolationist forces hostile to migration and foreigners is increasingly growing on the old continent. Neither can we be optimistic about the relative “resistance” of the Tunisian state as its margin of manoeuver keeps on narrowing down: The Tunisian economy, in crisis, is more or less at the mercy of “donors”, international financial institutions and foreign investors. What Europe doesn’t obtain by coercion, it can get by threats and extortion: blacklisting Tunisia, stopping the loans’ approvals and the installment payments, suspending investment and tourism support, creating impediments to the export of Tunisian goods to Europe, triggering the files of Tunisian terrorists and jihadist networks…
The “Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade” negotiations which have started in 2016 between Tunisia and the European Union uncover the extent of the imbalance between the two “partners”: Tunisia didn’t request a visa exemption for all Tunisian citizens or the facilitation of their access to employment opportunities in Europe, it just asked from its European counterpart to exempt Tunisian businessmen from the visa requirement. Of course, the European counterpart didn’t meet this demand but promised to ease the visa requirements for those.
In conclusion
For almost a quarter of a century, the boats of the “border burners” have been departing from the country at night, sneaking into “the salvation land”. The forms of border burning and its price have evolved just like the features of the border burners, smugglers and organizers have changed, but some things remain unchanged: the socio-economic conditions in Tunisia are becoming increasingly difficult, the European borders increasingly closed and the Tunisian law increasingly harsh. Many studies and opinion polls state that more than half of the Tunisian youth wants to immigrate and that between 30 and 40 per cent of those are willing to embark on the “death boats”. The “partnership” plans are concluded quickly between the countries of the Maghreb and Europe to facilitate the transportation of goods between the two shores. But when it comes to humans, only the “people of the North” can travel to the South at will. Just as in the case of informal economy, no security measures, criminalization, stigmatization or any of the aggressive “solutions” will be able to eradicate the “border burning” problem. If attention is not paid to the economic condition of the youth and if they are not given the hope to live in dignity in their own country with the right to discover the world, the “boat” will remain the “heartthrob of the millions” and their only means of transport to a better tomorrow…
The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of Assafir Al-Arabi and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation cannot accept any liability for it.
Translated from Arabic by Fourate Chahal Rekaby
Published in Assafir Al-Arabi on 29/10/2018
