Kamshi AhmedPeople who took the ‘backway’ to EU countries and were sent home find few opportunities.
Banjul, the Gambia – Ten years ago, Alagie’s life in Banjul wasn’t easy. Still, he had both his parents, a wife, a home, and a dream of making a better life for them all in Europe.
Now the 34-year-old, who asked that his full name not be used to protect his privacy, has lost much of what he had.
Alagie left the Gambia in 2014, taking the irregular “backway” to Europe before he was forcibly returned eight years later.
“I wanted the best for my wife and future children,” he told Al Jazeera about his decision to leave, looking sadly at the wedding photo on his wall.
Although still married, he cannot afford to support his wife and their 10-month-old baby, forcing her to return to her parents’ home.
“My wife loves me deeply,” he said. “If it weren’t true love, she would have divorced me and moved on.”
When Alagie first left for Europe, he travelled to Morocco by boat, then smuggled himself by land through Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean towards Italy.
The difficulties started almost immediately. “Many migrants I travelled with from Libya – mostly from Mali, Nigeria, and a few Gambians – drowned. I was among the few lucky ones who made it to Italy,” he said.
Landing in Italy in 2015, he was immediately placed in a refugee camp for several months. “The easy life I imagined in Europe was nothing like the harsh reality I faced in Italy.”
Desperate, Alagie decided to smuggle himself to Germany with others from Senegal, Niger and Nigeria. They thought they would find better opportunities, but after crossing the border, they were picked up by German authorities and sent to another refugee camp.
“It was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We were packed like sardines, isolated from cities and any social life.”
Later, Alagie found work as a petrol station attendant, the same job he held back in the Gambia. He’d send money home to his family every other month while striving to secure asylum.
“Life there was hard, but living in the Gambia is far worse than even the refugee camps,” he said, preferring the hardships in Europe.
But Alagie’s days in Europe were numbered. One day in September 2022, while he was making breakfast in the small house he rented with other migrants, plainclothes German police officers burst in. “They handcuffed me like a criminal and held me in a [refugee] camp for two months before putting me on a flight back to the Gambia,” he said.
Upon arrival in Banjul, he was left with no money or support. “I came home empty-handed, to an empty country.”
Migration and return
Irregular migration has long been an issue in the Gambia, with many young people – driven by poverty – risking their lives to get to Europe in search of better opportunities.
More than 35,000 Gambians arrived in the European Union between 2015 and 2022, according to Frontex, the EU border control agency. During peak periods, some 7,000 Gambians attempted to migrate annually, driven by dire political and economic conditions.
Under the 1996-2017 regime of President Yahya Jammeh, many people fled autocratic rule and were granted asylum in the West due to political repression. Since the transition to democracy in 2017, more asylum applications from Gambians have been rejected compared to before, as the country is considered more stable.
There has also been increased cooperation between the Gambian government and the EU on migration management, including the “Good Practice Agreement”, which outlines procedures around the return of migrants.
Since 2017, more than 5,000 Gambians have returned, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Some are deportees, but most are voluntary repatriations, the IOM said. Some returned because of the severe hardships they encountered in Europe, while others had been stranded in Libya, never making it across the Mediterranean to begin with.
Among the Gambians who leave, many say the dire social and economic conditions make them determined to risk the crossing.
The Gambia suffers from high youth unemployment, at around 41 percent – a driving force behind irregular migration. The economy, which is heavily dependent on agriculture and tourism, also depends on remittances from Gambians abroad. According to World Bank data, remittances accounted for around 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023
ents supported his decision to leave through irregular routes, hoping he would change their lives for the better. Sadly, both passed away while he was abroad, leaving him with a deep sense of regret.
“They died while I was away, without me making their lives better,” he lamented.
‘I thought Europe would be different’
Alagie’s migration journey is echoed in conversations with other people around Banjul.
Musa Faye is in his early 60s. He first left the Gambia at age 38, eventually making it to the United States, where he lived for two decades until he was deported in 2017.
“Life in the Gambia seemed better back then,” he reflected. “Now, it’s a disaster – nothing is functioning, and the country is in a dire state.”
Faye left behind a wife and three children in the Gambia, with the hope of making enough money to take them to the US – but it never panned out
So she embarked on the risky journey in 2010, arriving in Libya in 2011, just as the civil war erupted. That’s when her “nightmare” began.
“I was raped multiple times and forced into hard labour without pay,” Rohey said.
Still, she wanted to continue, eventually paying smugglers to cross the Mediterranean to Italy. “I had to hide some money in my pants just to afford the journey.”
In Italy, she worked as a hairdresser but found life far from the paradise she had envisioned. “I thought Europe would be different – easy money and a good life. I was wrong.” Her room was a tiny, leaking space she describes as a “hell”.
Back in the Gambia since 2019, Rohey works in a salon just outside Banjul. “The salon is almost always empty. Sometimes I walk 6km [4 miles] home because I can’t even make enough for transport fare,” she said.
Rohey considers her return a form of “voluntary deportation”, saying that many migrant women are forced into prostitution – a fate she refused to accept, so she left. “I would rather return to the hardship in my home country than engage in prostitution,” she said.
Years of travel
The road migrants travel to reach their imagined better life abroad is almost always an arduous one, and the journey sometimes takes years.
Ousman Jobe, now 44, first ventured across the Sahara in 1998 at just 18. His journey from the Gambia to Morocco took four gruelling years. “We drove through the Sahara Desert, sometimes covering over 1,000km [620 miles] before seeing another country,” he remembered.
Jobe travelled with more than 40 Gambians in a truck, some as young as 15, including women and children. The journey was perilous. “We ran out of water, and we had to drink our urine or have someone else urinate in our mouths because we had none left,” he said.
The harsh conditions claimed many lives, mostly from Senegal and Mali. As the eldest, Jobe was responsible for burying them. “We buried them in mass graves or sometimes just left their bodies.”
There were other dangers, too. “[Criminals] stopped us on the way to Algeria through Morocco, forcefully taking the men’s money while raping the women in front of us,” he said. “It was devastating to witness, but we were helpless.”
Jobe left the Gambia because he “was tired of seeing my parents in poverty”, he said, and wanted to help them. Tragically, his mother – who sold goats to earn the money needed for his crossing to Europe – passed away in 2021 before seeing the family’s dream of a better life fulfilled.
Morro, another returnee who asked that his real name not be used, also needed “significant funds” for his 2019 journey – money also raised by his parents.
“My parents supported me on this journey because they just wanted me to reach Europe and better their lives,” the now 28-year-old said.
But his journey ended almost as soon as it began when the small boat he was travelling in sank off the coast of Mauritania. More than 60 Gambians died that day, but Morro narrowly escaped. “My swimming skills saved me from drowning,” he said.
He returned home immediately afterwards, but still relives the trauma of that day. “It’s hard to explain. It was the most devastating and painful experience of my life.”
