Anatomy of Escape

On November 6, Vladimir Putin met with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who publicly proposed introducing a visa regime with Central Asia and enclosing the North Caucasus with barbed wire, and reproached him for his harshness. But he immediately supported "a number of ideas" of the Liberal Democratic Party to control migration. Approximately the same, half-heartedly, European leaders speak out on migration issues

On the southwestern edge of Europe, in the Portuguese Lagos, there is a monument to Henry the Navigator. Back in the 15th century, he founded a navigational school on the ocean coast, the successful graduates of which were all the famous discoverers, starting with Vasco da Gama. And on the side of the monument, on the same square at the edge of the ocean, there is a museum of slavery - it stands on the site of a slave market, and there, in addition to amulets and choppers captured along with their owners in close Africa, there is a skeleton of a small slave who did not live to work on plantations and died, apparently, while still on the ship on the way to Europe.
The proximity to the monument is not accidental: 50 years before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries that formed modern civilization, enlightened navigators were mainly engaged in the slave trade. Entered into commodity-money relations with the rulers of the savages. First of all, in commodity, through beads. And this led to the New Age. Well, at the same time - to the swarthyness of modern Portuguese, although the Arab conquerors tried here too ...
Time passed, life began to boil in the colonies, but the metropolis weakened, and one day the colonies got tired of it, and the metropolis itself got tired of tearing resources away from the body. Then comes the era of independence. The elite of the colonies reached out to the metropolis, first of all - the colonialists themselves, followed by them (together with them) - the cadres most educated by them. In the former colonies, looting began - where it was political, where it was criminal-military, and everywhere it was economic. The most successful of the outlying marauders climbed up, who managed to emerge from the whirlpools of sharing the loot. The standard of living fell even more, but the education system set up by the colonialists continued to churn out cadres capable of distinguishing the difference. Therefore, those who, in theory, should have benefited from the departure of the colonialists, rushed into the former metropolis: young local cadres.
At first, in the metropolis, they did not get what they wanted, but those of them who did not stray into a flock, but tried to break through with personal achievements, pretty soon integrated into a big new life. Moreover, its indigenous inhabitants, having lost their imperial drive, have largely lost their competitiveness…

Those who should have benefited from the departure of the colonialists rushed to the former metropolis: young local cadres

“All this happened not only with Portugal, but with all the European powers that lost their colonial status in the 20th century. In the colonies, even where there has been a relative rise after civil, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, the standard of living has in many ways lagged even further behind the former metropolises, which, by integrating the best human resources from the former colonies, further increased the growth rate. But some of them - Portugal, Spain, Italy - after a few decades faced inhibition caused by the need to change their ritual habits.
By the way, it is they who have now turned out to be “extreme”, it is they who are filled with free and independent residents of the former colonies who are already fleeing from complete poverty, unable to fill vacancies relatively close to their place of residence.
And when they fled to the North and began to drown in boats and barges, the metropolis was overwhelmed by a guilt complex - it remembered the sins of colonialism and slaves on cotton plantations. At the same time, forgetting about the European hostages of the Algerian pirates and about the new slave traders equipping floating facilities on the island of Lampedusa ( see the report from this island ), the Europeans' concern for the fugitives is in their favor, because it pushes new customers.
In my opinion, this historical pattern of North-South relations suits not only Africa, but also the former USSR. The difference is that no one forcibly imported slaves from Central Asia to Russia (rather, resources of all kinds were brought there from Russia). The remaining stages of the development of the situation - from the flight of the elite to the flight of the poor - are very similar. The regimes are also similar - from moderately authoritarian to primitive marauders.
However, Russia itself is close to these categories. That is why many representatives of its own population flee to the West - to the "mother country" of civilization.