African migrants' struggle along new routes in Latin America

Spectacular stories of African migrants' lethal attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea have become an integrated part of our news feed. But what about those men and women that in respond to enhanced European border control find new ways to migrate beyond traditional destination countries?

A new article by DIIS postdoc Ida Marie Savio Vammen explores new transatlantic migration routes from Senegal to Argentina. This article draws attention to the migrants’ experiences along the journey and shows how, over time, different state-driven national and supranational migration policies constrain and enable their mobility. The article also highlights how the risk and uncertainty along the new journey from West Africa to Latin America increasingly mirror the struggles, which African migrants face in the EU–African borderlands.

This article is part of a special issue of Comparative Migration Studies titled: ‘Externalization at work: Responses to migration policies from the global south', that contributes to the emerging literature that shifts the focus of analysis from the border spaces of the global north, to places in the global south, which are conventionally understood as 'transit' or 'sending' countries in Africa, America as well as within Europe itself.