The situation in Sfax, Tunisia’s economic capital, offers a good illustration of the country’s relationship with migrants and the drivers of attitudes towards them. Located on the Gulf of Gabès, south-east of Tunis, Sfax is one of the closest departure points to the Italian island of Lampedusa, some 130 km away. Given this proximity, in the years before 2021, Sfax was a transit point for migrants travelling onwards to Europe. By 2021, however, migrants had begun to settle in Sfax, and the regional economy had begun to depend on migrant labour and spending.[1]
At first, the Sfax region thrived due to the abundance of migrant labour in the informal economy. Migrants were employed in construction, agriculture, restaurants, and other similar jobs. The presence of migrants also led to the development of Tunisian smuggling networks that moved migrants from the Algerian border, through Sfax, and on to Italy.[2] To enable these networks, locals started to supply boats and engines for the crossings and helped to produce local food, shelter, and clothing.[3] The increased economic activity raised the standard of living for those involved in smuggling and other migrant-related enterprises.[4]
Amid an economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing migrant population in the region, however, several challenges emerged. First, the smuggling economy was upended as sub-Saharan migrants began to organize their own smuggling networks. This led to competition between the existing, Tunisian smugglers and their new migrant-based rivals. The competition also affected businesses that had previously supplied the Tunisian groups. Crucially, it implicated the police and border control authorities, both of whom allegedly had ties to the smuggling networks. As a result, local tensions escalated.[5]
This coincided with President Saïed’s shift towards populism, as he tried to shore up support for his autocratic turn amid economic headwinds. His heated rhetoric against migrants, blaming them for a variety of ills and echoing the ‘great replacement theory’ by suggesting that they are displacing Arab and Muslim Tunisians, appeared to successfully appeal to some elements of the population.[6]
Following the president’s directives (whether implicit or explicit) in February 2023, Tunisian military and police forced migrants from Sfax and relocated them to Ras Jedir near the Libyan border and to the border region with Algeria in the west (AFP, 2023; Gasteli, 2023; HRW, 2023). The Ras Jedir area is designated as a no-access military zone and the migrants forced to move there included ‘people with both regular and irregular legal status in Tunisia’ (HRW, 2023). According to one civil society organization the migrants were ‘expelled without due process’, and ‘[m]any reported violence by authorities during arrest or expulsion’ (HRW, 2023).
While Tunisian authorities deny these allegations, the UN condemned the expulsion of migrants from Tunisia to Libya (La Presse, 2023). In the face of President Saïed’s fiery anti-migrant rhetoric, civil society organizations that attempted to intervene on behalf of migrants were attacked by local groups and labelled as ‘traitors’, supporters of the EU, and advocates for the ‘great replacement’-inspired narrative.[7] These attacks and the president’s role in them sparked a significant controversy between the president’s supporters and detractors, with the latter noting that the former were fuelling racism and promoting the stigmatization of sub-Saharan migrants, in particular, and of people of colour in general.[8]
[1] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of the Union of Francophone Press (UPF), April 2024, and interview with Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for FTDES, Tunis, Tunisia, July 2023.
[2] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of UPF, April 2024.
[3] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of UPF, April 2024.
[4] Online interview with Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for FTDES, Tunis, Tunisia, July 2023.
[5] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of UPF, April 2024.
[6] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of UPF, April 2024.
[7] Interview with Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for FTDES, Tunis, Tunisia, July 2023.
[8] Online interview with Hanène Zbiss, journalist and president of the Tunisia section of UPF, April 2024.
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