Four out of five migrants in West Africa stated that they migrated due to economic reasons when being interviewed by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in 2018 (Lenz and Maheswaran, 2019, p. 14). This statistic is mentioned here not to simplify the various complex and personal reasons why people decide to migrate, but rather to point our attention to the importance of economic questions in the migration debate.

The public debate about fighting the “root causes of migration” seems to have gained importance in Europe recently, but dates back to 1992, when the Edinburgh European Council appealed for measures to address the root causes of migration (Castles, 2004, p. 218). Strikingly, for improving economic conditions in the countries of origin, the Council proposed liberal trade policies as adequate measures; liberal trade policies such as so-called free trade agreements, which are with the post-Cotonou Agreement again offered as a remedy to “root causes of migration” — but which are simultaneously harshly criticised to rather be a root cause of migration themselves by the opposed front. This paradox can be explained by the old debate on “free”1 trade versus protectionism (O’Brien and Williams, 2020, p. 121) and the ensuing, still vividly debated question of which kind of policy set brings about what is usually vaguely called economic “development” and is often assumed as an adequate response to the “root causes of migration” (McKeon, 2018, p. 871).

The reason why a rhetoric of tackling the “root causes of migration” gets ever more important in politics, is that it addresses a fourfold interest: 1. It addresses the shift to the neo-populist xenophobic right who feels threatened by migration, 2. The rhetoric meets the interests of European enterprises who profit from a neoliberal “development” paradigm (ibid.), 3. The “development” apparatus as such gets confirmed as a supposed provider of solutions for the global South and 4. Citizens pro reception of refugees might feel their opinion to get considered.

In the dominant public debate in Europe about so-called economic migrants, which tend to be perceived as a threat, the fact that there is even a demand for unskilled workers in many sectors is often neglected (Castles, 2004, p. 211). Lacking legal migration channels for people looking for even temporary work, many young people in search of a decent work have hardly other options than to choose illegal and dangerous channels of migration in search of a better life for themselves and their families (ibid., pp. 209).

Reasons for migration are of course very diverse and need to be taken into account in their whole range. This paper focuses on migration from (West) Africa to Europe for so-called economic reasons and more precisely on the impact on migration of the currently negotiated post-Cotonou Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). The debate in this paper is inspired by the slogan of refugee activists in Europe: “We are here, because you destroy our countries” (see cover photo), which invites us Europeans to try to comprehend what we have to do with migration elsewhere. From a critical political economy perspective, economic reasons to migrate such as poverty and inequality have been politically created in the first place, thus I speak of ‘politico-economic migration’. This perspective is confirmed by the former Malian minister and political activist Aminata Traoré: “We refute this distinction between economic migrants and political refugees. We say that we are all victims of war, a war of greed for our wealth […]” (in aBamako, 2016).

A quite illustrative and widely discussed example of a politico-economic root cause of migration is the phenomenon of land grabbing. Less illustrative is, however, migration caused by long-term structural violence in the forms of poverty and inequality (McKeon, 2018, p. 871). Thus, this paper examines how “free” trade agreements such as the post-Cotonou Agreement contribute to the pauperization of the global South by simultaneously enriching the global North. Yet, we need to be cautious not to create a simplified link between poverty and migration: Because the most poor lack the financial means to migrate, an increase in economic wealth might lead, in the short-term, to more people deciding to invest their means in migration. Only if a certain level of income is reached, migration numbers go back again (Lenz and Maheswaran, 2019, p. 14). Thus, this paper takes inequality rather than abject poverty as a starting point to scrutinize its repercussions on migration, yet without neglecting that there is a strong poverty-inequality nexus.

The focus of this paper is laid on “free” trade in agrarian goods, because this is the sector most people in the global South including (West) Africa work in (O’Brien and Williams, 2020, p. 137). The agricultural sector includes farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk (Traoré, 2008). Our global division of labour with most of the former colonies as exporters of raw materials and agricultural products was established with slave trade and colonialism and is still the persistent trade pattern of most countries in the global South today (Pomeranz 1999, p. 85; O’Brien and Williams, 2003, p. 84; Traoré, 2008).

A post-colonial, post-developmental, critical political economy perspective will shed light on the following research question: Does the trade part of the post-Cotonou Agreement rather fight the root causes of migration as it alleges or rather exacerbate them? In order to answer this question, first of all, the context in which the research question is embedded, namely the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and of European agrarian subsidies is elucidated. Furthermore, a short historical glance on the precursors of post-Cotonou illustrates its postcolonial continuities. The third chapter carries out a document analysis of the latest draft of the currently negotiated post-Cotonou Agreement, firstly with a focus on the discursive appearance and framing of “root causes of migration”, secondly providing a content analysis of the trade parts of the document. One relevant observation is that building on the existing Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as well as aiming at a facilitation of their concrete implementation and expansion, the post-Cotonou Agreement is a new package for more or less the same “free” trade content of the EPAs. The fourth chapter then theorizes asymmetric power relations in trade as the case between the OACPS and the EU and finally explains how inequality can be considered a root cause of migration.