Migration as Disorder Versus Migration as Strategy

Migration as Disorder Versus Migration as Strategy: How the European Republican Worldview Misread Human Movement

BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE

One of the deepest civilisational misunderstandings between Europe and Africa lies not in race, technology, or governance alone, but in how migration itself is conceptualised. The European republican worldview has historically framed migration as a problem to be controlled, criminalised, or militarised.

In contrast, ethnopublic African societies have always understood migration as a strategic, civilisational tool—a means of economic expansion, spiritual exchange, and communal growth without chaos.

This difference is not incidental. It flows directly from opposing political philosophies about land, authority, borders, and human belonging.

1. The Republican Lens: Migration as Disorder

The European republican worldview is territorially obsessed because it was forged in an environment of perpetual intra-ethnic warfare, where survival depended on the ruthless defence of land against people who looked, spoke, and worshipped the same way.

From the Roman imperial collapse through the feudal wars, crusades, and dynastic conflicts that ravaged Europe for centuries, territory became synonymous with life itself. Borders were not abstract lines but blood-soaked frontiers repeatedly breached by familiar enemies. This constant cycle of invasion and retaliation produced a deep cognitive trauma: a civilisation trained to assume that any outsider is a potential invader. When those “outsiders” later did not even resemble them ethnically or culturally, the suspicion intensified into dehumanisation.

Over generations, this trauma crystallised into political doctrine—territorial sovereignty enforced by violence—and was exported globally as republican governance. In the Americas it emerged as cowboy culture and frontier vigilantism; in the Congo as industrialised atrocity under Belgian rule; in Australia as settler extermination; and across Africa, Asia, and the Americas as genocide disguised as civilisation.

What appears today as legalistic border control and sovereign rigidity is, at its root, a traumatised inheritance—an old European fear of invasion universalised into a global political order. It is built on:

• Fixed borders.
• Exclusive sovereignty.
• Property absolutism.
• Centralised authority over land and movement

Within this framework, migration is inherently suspicious. A moving population is seen as:

• A threat to sovereignty.
• A disruption of order.
• A strain on resources.
• A challenge to identity.

This worldview produced:

• Rigid border regimes.
• Passports and visas.
• Immigration criminalisation.
• Statelessness as punishment.

Movement without State permission becomes a statutory offence. Human mobility is reduced from a natural behaviour to a legal violation. The republican worldview has always applied its fear of migration to itself, using force both to safeguard its own territory and to enter others’.

This is not contradiction. It is coherence — built on a flawed premise of its own historical lens of human movement.

2. The Republican Worldview: Migration Governed by Fear, Enforced by Force

The republican worldview has always applied its fear of migration to itself. It has never exempted itself from this fear. Rather, it has institutionalised it. At the core of republican political philosophy is a specific metaphysical assumption:

Territory is the exclusive property of a bounded people, and sovereignty is inseparable from land.

Once territory is equated with ethnic or national sovereignty, migration ceases to be a social process and becomes a security threat. From this premise flows a single, unavoidable conclusion:

Movement must be regulated by force—both inward and outward.

Thus, republican societies do not merely fear migration; they operationalise fear as doctrine.

3. Force as the Logic of Republican Migration

Under the republican worldview, migration is governed by a dual application of force:

A. Force to Safeguard One’s Own Territory

Republican systems enforce:

• Border militarisation.
• Immigration law backed by police and prisons.
• Criminalisation of unauthorised movement.
• Exclusionary property laws for foreigners.

This is not incidental. It is the logical defence mechanism of a worldview that treats land as exclusive sovereign possession. Movement without permission is therefore defined as violation, not participation.

B. Force to Enter Others’ Territory

The same worldview applies identically outward. If territory is sacred and closed, then entry into another people’s territory cannot occur through mutual accommodation alone. It must occur through:

• Military conquest.
• Legal coercion.
• Treaty under duress.
• Economic domination enforced by violence.

This is why European migration historically required:

• Military superiority.
• Armies before settlers.
• Forts before cities.
• Legal fictions after conquest.
• Host societies are rendered inferior or invisible.
• Religious justification.
• Racial hierarchies.

The use of force abroad is not hypocrisy—it is consistency.

The contradiction is structural. If migration is defined as disorder, then the only way to migrate safely—within that worldview—is to impose order by force. Peaceful integration was never the goal—control was.

The republican worldview does not believe peaceful migration is structurally possible between sovereign territorial units without hierarchy. Therefore, when it migrates, it does so by subduing sovereignty first.

4. European Migration in Practice: Disorder Externalised as Conquest

While criminalising migration internally, Europe exported a far more violent version of movement externally. European migration rarely arrived as peaceful settlement. It arrived as:

• Armed conquest.
• Forced displacement.
• Religious domination.
• Economic extraction.

Wherever Europeans migrated, they did not integrate—they subjugated.

The Americas: Indigenous populations were exterminated, enslaved, or displaced. Migration became genocide.

Australia: Aboriginal societies were erased under the doctrine of terra nullius—land declared empty because European law could not recognise ethnopublic ownership.

Africa: Migration became colonial occupation. Borders were imposed. Economies were restructured for extraction. Ethnopublic governance was dismantled.

Asia: Trade posts evolved into empires through deception, treaties signed under duress, and military coercion.

In every case, European migration turned what could have been mutual coexistence into tragedy—because it treated migration not as shared strategy, but as territorial domination.

5. Republican Migration Is Not Movement — It Is Transfer of Sovereignty

This is the philosophical crux. European migration was never merely people moving. It was:

• The relocation of sovereignty.
• The imposition of law.
• The replacement of indigenous authority.

Migration became an act of jurisdictional takeover. This explains why European settlers could not simply coexist:

• Coexistence would imply shared sovereignty.
• Shared sovereignty violates republican territorial logic.

Thus, indigenous governance had to be erased.

6. The Ethnopublic African Worldview: Migration as Strategy

Ethnopublic African societies emerged from a radically different understanding of land and people. Crucially, they did not erase host societies. They integrated into them. They never equated land with exclusive sovereignty. In the ethnopublic worldview:

• Land is shared, not owned absolutely.
• Authority follows people, not territory.
• Movement is normal, cyclical, and purposeful.
• Migration expands community rather than replaces it.
• Belonging is relational and negotiated through contribution, not bureaucratic.

Migration is strategic, not chaotic. Africans migrated to:

• Expand trade networks.
• Establish new economic nodes.
• Spread spiritual knowledge.
• Relieve ecological pressure.
• Strengthen kinship alliances.

Because sovereignty is not territorially absolute, migration does not require force. A migrating group does not threaten the host’s existence—it adds to it, by demonstrating the civilisational value they bring to benefit the host community from day one.

7. Why African Migration Did Not Produce Border Wars

African ethnopublic migration did not require:

• Border militaries.
• Permanent fortifications.
• Ethnic cleansing.

Because no group assumed that presence nullified another’s sovereignty. This is why Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic migrations historically resulted in:

• Layered settlements.
• Trade federations.
• Spiritual integration.
• Linguistic continuity.

Not annihilation.

8. The Yoruba Example: Migration Without Chaos

The Yoruba are one of the clearest historical examples of ethnopublic migration as strategy. Wherever Yoruba people migrated:

• They carried skills, crafts, trade, and governance.
• They respected host customs while maintaining their own identity.
• They formed economic value for local communities.
• They avoided violent displacement.

This is why Yoruba communities historically:

• Absorbed easily into host societies.
• Lived in long-term harmony.
• Became indispensable economic contributors.

Even today, Yoruba migration follows this ancient pattern—across Africa and globally. They migrate for:

• Economic opportunity.
• Religious transmission.
• Communal advancement.

Not conquest.

The Yoruba example demonstrates that migration need not produce chaos when it is guided by a culture of contribution rather than conquest. From ancient times, Yoruba migrants did not arrive as empty claimants of land, but as pioneers carrying value—craftsmanship, spiritual knowledge, trade expertise, administrative skill, or agricultural innovation—that made host communities better off by their presence.

This pioneering instinct is not incidental; it is culturally embedded. Yoruba society has long socialised its children into a forward-looking ethic where achievement is observed, emulated, and surpassed. From early childhood, success within the community becomes a living curriculum: a neighbour’s child excels in scholarship, trade, leadership, or ventures abroad, and immediately that pathway becomes a reference point for others. Parents consciously mentor their children not to lag behind but to extend the frontier of possibility.

This generational reinforcement produces individuals who see the world not as a closed territory to be feared, but as an open field to be entered with purpose. Historically, this is why Yoruba migrants integrated successfully across West Africa and beyond in ancient times: they arrived prepared, skilled, and socially intelligent, offering tangible benefits that secured acceptance and harmony. Migration, in this tradition, was never disorder—it was strategy, value exchange, and civilisational expansion through mutual gain.

9. Ethnopublic Migration Creates Civilisation, Not Collapse

African migration historically produced:

• Market towns.
• Trade corridors.
• Shared religious systems.
• Linguistic continuity across regions.

This is why African spiritual philosophies—from Kemet to Ifa to Bantu cosmologies—remain structurally unified, despite geographic dispersion. Migration did not fracture Africa. It distributed it.

10. Borders Versus Belonging

The republican worldview mistakes borders for civilisation. The ethnopublic worldview understands civilisation as people in motion. Borders freeze human life. Ethnopublic migration sustains the innovative expansion of human life. This is why modern republican border regimes:

• Criminalise Africans crossing colonial lines within the African continent.
• Punish ancient migration routes.
• Treat mobility as deviance.

While the ethnopublic memory recognises migration as:

• Survival.
• Innovation.
• Expansion.
• Renewal.

11. Why Modern Migration Crises Exist

The so-called “migration crisis” is not caused by African movement—it is caused by:

• Artificial borders.
• Extractive economies.
• Republican legal frameworks.
• The collapse of ethnopublic governance.

People are not migrating more than before. They are migrating against systems designed to stop them.

Conclusion: Two Worldviews, Two Outcomes

Where the republican worldview sees migration as disorder, it migrates with violence. Where the ethnopublic worldview sees migration as strategy, it migrates with harmony.

This article, therefore, is not a condemnation of Europe’s resort to republican systems, nor a dismissal of their historical necessity. It is an exercise in historical clarity and philosophical honesty. Europe did not abandon ethnopublic order arbitrarily; it was compelled to do so by centuries of internal warfare, territorial contestation, and ethnic conflicts that made organic publicism increasingly unworkable within its context.

The republican State—re-public, a reconstruction of public order—emerged as an artificial but ingenious solution to harmonise fractured communities, suppress endless cycles of war, and impose a single governing structure capable of overriding ancestral rivalries. In this sense, republicanism was not a civilisational failure but a corrective technology, designed to stabilise a society traumatised by its own history.

Yet, reconstruction is not the same as origin, and remedy should not be mistaken for destiny. Humanity began in ethnopublic formations, where migration, governance, and coexistence were governed by shared moral economies rather than territorial paranoia. Africa retained this organic continuity far longer than Europe, not because it resisted progress, but because its societies did not experience the same scale of internal civilisational fracture that demanded permanent reconstruction. The tragedy of modern history is not that Europe invented the republic, but that it exported a temporary solution as a universal end-state, enforcing it upon societies that had not lost their ethnopublic coherence.

Through this Manifesto, Africa does not reject the lessons of the republic; it contextualises them. Republicanism teaches humanity how to rebuild harmony when organic order collapses—but it should not be mistaken for the final evolution of human governance. The ethnopublic offers something deeper: a return to governance as nature designed it—plural, migratory, cooperative, and morally anchored. In this light, the contrast becomes clear: Europe conquered everywhere it went—not because migration requires violence, but because its worldview made violence necessary. Africa migrated everywhere it went—without chaos—because its worldview made coexistence possible.

Ethnopublic societies migrate through strategy and reciprocity. Republican societies migrate through security and subjugation. One produces civilisational continuity. The other produces conquest, resistance, and endless border anxiety.

The future of human civilisation does not lie in walls, visas, and detention centres. It lies in remembering what Africa always knew:

Migration is not a threat to order. Migration is how civilisation moves forward—together.

The crisis of migration today is not about numbers of people moving. It is about a worldview that cannot imagine movement without force. Africa once did. And can again.

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