For African students, applying for a visa is a losing bet
Years go by and the task is not getting easier. Young Africans willing to study abroad have to go through a long, and more often than not, unfruitful vetting process. Most of the time, the problem is not the universities but the Western embassies and their relentless list of requirements for visa applications.
Lamine is a Senegalese student, and he holds a Bachelor in Science. Lately he has been contemplating going abroad to complete a Masters degree in agri-food. France is the “top of mind” destination. He can locate the country on a map, he speaks the language, and knows its story, or at least that specific part when the French occupied his country for almost three centuries. He enrols at Campus France, the organisation in charge of promoting French universities and schools abroad, and proceeds with an application for a student visa at the French embassy. A few months later, he receives an answer.
«You have not submitted sufficient evidence allowing the consulate to ensure that your stay in France for study purposes is not abusive.»
Apparently, his wanting to study in France was enough to make him suspicious and guilty of potential fraud to the eyes of the French authorities. What did you say happened to presumption of innocence ? No one cares it seems.
«The information provided to justify the conditions of stay are incomplete and/ or unreliable.»
And yet, he had produced all of the necessary documents and other evidence of financial autonomy which was even not required. A French university accepted him but the French administration was obviously not ready.
Cashing on foreign students
The decision of the French embassy did not completely come as a surprise to Lamine, but the timing was quite inconvenient. His university just confirmed that the new academic year would be a blank year. And now , there was nothing he could do but wait it out until the next fall. And again, the elusiveness of the consulate’s answer was proportionally equal to the time he spent gearing up his application. Do they realise what it takes to pick a right course in a good university, put together all sort of financial evidence, and finally look for flat in a city thousands of miles away from his current location?
A few weeks later, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would raise tuition fees from 170 euros to 2,770 euros for foreign students[1], that is 500 euros more than the average net salary of a French civil servant (2,280 euros).
The colour of money
Now Canada has Lamine’s attention. When it comes to colonial history, let’s say they have less baggage than France. He is convinced they will be more welcoming, or at least fairer when assessing his ability or not to live abroad. To say the least, Lamine’s disappointment turns to anger when, once again, he is given a very strange statement as an explanation:
«We are not convinced that you will leave Canada at the end of your period of stay.»
And yet Canada spends significant amount of money to attract foreign talents — and foreign qualified workers in general — through advertising and PR campaigns. Not one year goes by without a French magazine headlining on “settling in Canada”. It is reported students contribute up to 15.5 billion CA$ in the national economy, a welcomed windfall that has almost doubled in the last five years. How is it that the very same country, calling itself a “beacon of multiculturalism”, starts turning away foreign students because of the possibility that, in the end, they decide to stay and work in Canada?
No right to mobility
The answer is surely in a study on student immigration in Canada, recently unveiled by Quartz. This year, an African candidate was 75% more likely to see his visa application rejected by Canadian authorities, against 39% of likelihood for any other candidate. It seems that a “je-ne-sais-quoi” took hold of Canada, and it is very reminiscent of that fear called “Great replacement” in Europe. In light of the response of consular authorities to Lamine, it is quite clear that Canada is willing to keep at bay a very specific kind of foreign students.
While they had so far managed to dodge the measures deployed here and there to limit their mobility, African students have joined the ranks of those whom scholar Achille Mbembe calls the “ border bodies ”, all the individuals with no or little right to mobility outside their continent of origin.
In the meantime, Lamine is doing research in obsolete labs, where mangoes are peeled by hand. If there is one lesson he learned from his recent adventures, it is patience, the bittersweet after taste of his thwarted ambitions.
[1] Coming from outside the European Union
