This report is based on field research carried out in northern Niger in July and August 2018 and in Chad (N’Djaména and north-eastern Chad) between January and March 2018. Interviews were conducted with more than 100 traditional, local, regional, national and international policy makers and representatives, members of international NGOs and development partners, local NGOs and implementing partners of EU projects, experts, journalists and refugees. This report is also based on interviews conducted with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in France between May and October 2018. In addition, the report relies on prior research, including other interviews with migrants in Chad, Niger, Tunisia and France in 2017 and 2018. Interviews, in particular with the migrants, were most often conducted in the interviewee’s mother tongue, including Chadian and Sudanese Arabic and non-Arab languages from West Africa and Sudan, as well as French.

We have anonymised most respondents, given the sensitive nature of the topic under study.

To further triangulate the qualitative research findings, we have used the Mixed Migration Monitoring Mechanism Initiative (4Mi) data collected in West Africa and Libya by the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC). These datasets contain survey data from 3,500 migrants and refugees in Libya and 5,000 migrants and refugees in West Africa (surveyed in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) in the period May 2017 to September 2018. 4Mi monitors in Niger are located in Agadez city and Niamey. The monitors target northbound migrants and refugees, which means that the data in the West Africa dataset generally only cover migrant experiences in Niger up to Agadez city. We therefore use the 4Mi West Africa dataset as a main reference point for the situation of migrants and refugees in Niger up to the city of Agadez (although it is impossible to rule out that some respondents may have unsuccessfully attempted the desert journey to Libya or Algeria once before and may have been surveyed while trying to make a second attempt). We use the Libya dataset, which covers the whole of migrants’ journeys up to Libya itself, to gain more information on migrant journeys in the desert beyond Agadez.

It should be noted that the data 4Mi collected offers a snapshot of surveyed refugees and migrants and their experience at the time of data collection in specific locations. The data is not representative: all findings derive from the surveyed sample and should therefore not be used to make any inferences about the total population of any mixed migration flow.