An Unseen Side of our Global Migrant Crisis

Abstract

This is a review of Burning at Europe's Borders: An Ethnography on the African Migrant Experience in Morocco, (OUP, 2020) by writer, filmmaker, and human rights activist, Isabella Alexander-Nathani.  Burning at Europe’s Borders addresses what is now universally known as the African migrant crisis, a long-standing problem first brought to the world’s attention by the tragic April 2011 shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. It presents a composite picture of migration by privileging the unmediated voices of the migrants themselves as well as offers a searing indictment of Europe’s dereliction of its much trumpeted enlightenment values. The book focuses more specifically on the oft-ignored experiences of black Africans in the Maghreb.