This article is the English version of : Alain Antil, Christophe Bertossi, Victor Magnani and Matthieu Tardis, « Migrations : logiques africaines », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 81, Issue 1, 2016.

Since the 1990s, global migrations have become a central topic in international relations, both because of their importance in relationships between states (between Northern and Southern countries, and between departure, transit, and destination countries) and because of their new importance in global governance agendas. In 2015, 244 million people lived somewhere other than their country of nationality—a threefold increase in migrants compared to forty years ago. This increase has outstripped world population growth, even if it forms only a very small proportion of that population (around 3%, compared to 5% a century ago).