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Europe is ageing and lacking arms. Whether we look at real demography or the real economy, all indicators converge towards the same reality: without immigration, the European social model becomes untenable.
Fertility under the replacement threshold, rising median age, rising dependency ratio: European societies are entering an accelerated ageing phase. At the same time, many key sectors — health, agriculture, building, catering, personal services, IT — difficult to recruit and accumulate unfilled posts.
However, the political response is becoming more tense. The extreme right and populism flourish by designating the alien as a scapegoat and promising to « regain control », fuelling a deep dissonance between the objective need for immigration and its ideological rejection.
Faced with this structural paradox of the Western model, Africa occupies a central place. The youngest region in the world, its population is growing rapidly, while its economies are growing rapidly. — fragile by poor governance, conflict, information and weak education and health systems — It is difficult to absorb the annual influx of new entrants into the labour market. This episode analyses the sources of this great global misunderstanding and the human, economic and political issues it reveals.
