I’ll keep this brief since there are some excellent guest posts just a little bit further on down the page just waiting for you to read and comment on. I’m not sure whether this is more about form or content, but the UN has a supremely interesting and readable report out today, as part of its State of the World Population programme, entitled A Passage to Hope, Women and International Migration, and whatsmore the report is presented in an extremely blog-like format, as I say highly readable and with the content readily available. And as if that wasn’t enough, the ‘traditionalist’ Financial Times (traditionalist in terms of content, not in terms of format) actually has a hyper-link to the report itself inside its article (bravo FT!). People often ask what kind of importance and influence blogs have, well sometimes I feel you only have to cast your eyes around a little bit.

On the substance front the contents of the report are obviously very relevant to our recent debate about Sub-Saharan migration to Spain. Indeed on the SotWP homepage you can find a link to a fascinating first person account by a Burkinan migrant (Adama) of his convoluted 3 year journey up through Mali, Algeria and Morocco, before finally reaching Spain via the Canary Islands. Clearly in migration terms people like Adama are the pioneers (anthropologists tend to call them the ‘heroes’, those who blaze the trail) who struggle against all adversity to find land and establish themselves (and tragically many do not make it all the way). What the arrival of Adama means is that many more will inevitably come behind, following a network logic which I have attempted to describe in the previous post.

But the new UN report isn’t about Adama, it is about the relatively new phenomenon of female-lead migration. Obviously the report highlights the situation of sex workers et al, but I would like to underline the fact, which is absolutely evident here in Spain, that the welfare services in Southern Europe at least simply cannot handle the rapid population ageing which is taking place without the massive arrival of female care-workers from outside the EU. The later economic development of Southern Europe and the comparative underdevelopment (not to say virtual non-existence in many cases) of institutional care make this inevitable.

One last thing while I am here, we have often talked about the economic growth imbalances which comparatively small migratory movements are causing between and within countries. The outward migration of skilled and highly educated workers from Germany is one such case, while the regional tensions which might arise inside Spain is another. Well today Randy McDonald has a timely and very interesting post about how oil revenues and subsequent economic growth differential in Alberta have produced a migration and fertility phenomenon which may well change the face of Canadian politics as a linguistic divide becomes a growth-model and socio-political one. Finally (the last thing after the last) anyone interested in looking into earlier European ties with Senegal (now being renewed) might like to glance at this link that Randy sent me on Senegalese participation in the European revolution of 1848, or read about the fate of one group of Senegalese soldiers who fought on the allied side in WWII, as described by Senegalese director Sembène Ousmane in his film Camp de Thiaroye (my input). And for those who still want to ask what all these Senegalese may have to offer the future Europe we are collectively building, maybe I could recommend the little known but excellent work of the Senegalese group Orchestra Baobab.