Europe's Trade Policies as Push Factor for West African Migration? Engaging Rice and Poultry Farmers in Ghana and Nigeria

This paper examines the trade-development-migration nexus in West Africa in relation to EU and UK officials’ recent pursuit of free trade deals. It adopts a decolonial political economy approach allied to discourse analysis to understand how EU and UK negotiators construct free trade as a solution to unemployment, outward migration and food insecurity in West Africa. By focusing upon lived experiences of African entrepreneurs and labourers within the import-competing rice and poultry sectors based on 6 weeks of fieldwork in the region, it explores alternative ways of viewing free trade agendas. Namely, it explores African business concerns about whether free trade deals may undermine jobs, stimulate inter-continental migration, and jeopardise food security under the weight of cheap foreign importations.