Instead of outsourcing asylum to African countries, here’s what Europe should do

For 40 years, Western governments have entertained ideas of outsourcing asylum processing and refugee hosting to the global South. It is not a new idea. And neither are the controversies that have accompanied it.

Denmark and the UK have been in the news over this issue recently. In January, however, after fierce domestic criticism, the new Danish government announced it had paused its negotiations with Rwanda to bilaterally “transfer” all asylum seekers out of Denmark. Instead it suggested building an European Union alliance to do the same. This step appeared at odds with the criticism of the Danish plans from both the European Commission and the European Parliament.

The UK, too, wanted to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. The plan was temporarily halted by the European Court of Human Rights in 2022. For its part, the British High Court didn’t condemn the policy as illegal. So it may be revived.

In line with these and other recent policy initiatives, prominent migration researcher Ruud Koopmans supported the idea of sending asylum seekers to Tunisia. But his endorsement was poorly timed, coming right after the African Union condemned Tunisia for systematic racist violence against sub-Saharan migrants.

We’ve conducted research into European policies to discourage immigrants, and implementation of emergency refugee evacuations from Libya to Niger. Based on this...

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