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‘Your Land or Your Life’! ECOWAS Free Movement Regime, Migration, and Resource Conflicts in West Africa

  • (IM)MOBILITIES, SECURITY AND IDENTITIES IN WEST AFRICA BORDERLANDS
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Abstract

West African borderlands still depict free labour migration that weaves a complex grid of relations and inter-dependences over the ‘artificial’ borders inherited from colonialism. Migrants consider the sub-region as a single cultural and socio-economic unit within which trade and services are intertwined across countries, and where border crossing is a main part of people’s lives and livelihoods. This study reflects on migration and violent resource conflicts in West Africa such as migrant herders-farmers conflict in Nigeria to interrogate the wider security implications of ECOWAS free movement protocols in the sub-region. It links the deepening resource scarcity in the sub-region to the increase in undocumented migration. The study concludes that due to poor enforcement of ECOWAS visa-free regime and competition for scarce resources, the migration-conflict nexus has intensified banditry and violent conflicts in West African borderlands, especially between herders and farmers in Nigeria.

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Notes

  1. Southern Africa has its fair share with South Africa alone accounting for over 5 million of the African migrants from not only the region, but also from West Africa (see Ngwneya 2010). Also, in alphabetic order, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan are notable examples of countries outside SADC that have significant migrant stocks in South Africa (Isike and Isike, 2012: p. 94).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Federal University Otuoke, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

    Ernest Toochi Aniche

  2. Department of Political Science, Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Igbariam, Anambra State, Nigeria

    Ikenna Mike Alumona

  3. Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nsukka, Nigeria

    Victor Chidubem Iwuoha & Rebecca Ginikanwa Nnamani

  4. Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Chris Isike

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  1. Ernest Toochi Aniche
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Aniche, E.T., Alumona, I.M., Iwuoha, V.C. et al. ‘Your Land or Your Life’! ECOWAS Free Movement Regime, Migration, and Resource Conflicts in West Africa. Soc 60, 320–332 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00857-6

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