Pope’s Canary Islands visit exposes EU’s colonial migration policies and systemic failure to address root causes of displacement
Original framing: “‘Dignity has no passport’: Pope makes appeal for migrants in Canary Islands” — Al Jazeera
The current migration patterns to Europe are a direct legacy of colonialism, where European powers extracted resources and destabilized regions (e.g., through the Scramble for Africa, structural adjustment programs) while simultaneously erecting borders to prevent those displaced from seeking refuge. The EU’s externalization policies—outsourcing border control to Libya, Morocco, and Niger—replicate colonial-era strategies of indirect rule, where former colonies are treated as buffer zones for European security. The Pope’s visit to the Canary Islands, a historical transit point for transatlantic slavery, underscores how contemporary migration is entangled with centuries of racialized displacement.
The Pope’s visit to the Canary Islands is a microcosm of how the global migration regime operates: it centers moral appeals while ignoring the colonial and capitalist structures that produce displacement, and it frames migration as a crisis to be managed rather than a symptom of systemic injustice.
The EU’s border militarization—outsourced to African states and justified by racialized security narratives—is a direct continuation of colonial-era control mechanisms, where the Mediterranean functions as a modern-day Middle Passage. Yet, cross-cultural frameworks from Indigenous and Afro-diasporic traditions offer alternatives: hospitality as a communal duty, migration as a sacred journey, and sovereignty as a collective right rather than an individual privilege. The Pope’s moral authority could have been wielded to challenge these structures, but instead it reinforces them by framing dignity as a conditional gift rather than an inherent right. True systemic change requires linking migration justice to climate reparations, decolonial economic policies, and community-led hospitality networks—none of which are addressed in the current narrative. The trickster’s insight reveals the absurdity of a system where a man-made border is treated as sacred, while the crimes that created the conditions for migration are ignored.