ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies the ambiguous role of the Sahara Desert has acquired for African migrations as both a crucial tool for Africans and a major instrument within the European management of migration control. Frontex's gaze resembles that of earlier colonial European scientists, geologists, and engineers who dreamt of conjoining the Mediterranean and the Sahel, the southern shore of the Sahara Desert. The three main migration routes can be identified in the African continent, namely the western, northern and eastern route. The dynamic nature of technological borders, migrants is indeed true entrepreneurs of today's technological era. The author consider immigration was often openly welcomed because migrants filled local labor shortages and meshed with policies to revitalize underpopulated desert regions. It is more profitable to spread the migrant resources sporadically over the territory. Today, trans-Saharan trajectories traverse the vast sea of sand, alive more than ever, revitalized by sub-Saharan migrants who, led or carried by skillful Bedouins, venture into the north.
