Resumen de Living with Uncertainty: The Story of Sub-Saharan Migrants in Libya and Tunisia
Mustafa O. Attir, Mohamed Jouili, Ricardo René Larémont
Migration across the Sahara from the Sahel to North Africa is a longstanding practice. Its origins can be traced to 1500 BCE when three routes were established to traffic goods and people: the Ghadames road (from Gao in present Mali to Ghat, Ghadames, and Tripoli); the Garamantean road (from Kano and Lake Chad to Bilma, Murzuk, and then Tripoli); and the Oualata road (from what is now Mali to Sijilmasa in Morocco). Traffic increased significantly from the eighth to the seventeenth century CE when the principal commodities in trade were salt, gold, and slaves. These trading routes have continued to be used in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with people and commodities in continuous movement from the south to the north and vice versa. These contemporary patterns of mobility are examined in this chapter. Migrants are arriving in Libya and Tunisia, for the most part, from the neighboring countries of Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon. Migrants from these countries frequently settle in Libya or Tunisia, or are engaged in circular migration between Libya and Tunisia and their home countries.
