To justify US and European military occupation of much of Africa, migrants seeking jobs in the north of the continent or in Europe “are labeled as criminals and terrorists” when they are “just looking for work,” said Ampson Hagan, a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “These migrants, traveling along paths that have been traveled for centuries, are now implicated in terrorist activity,” said Hagan. “Terrorism becomes a way of legitimizing a foreign presence” in the Sahel region, centered in Niger. Hagan asks: “What does it mean for Europe to be policing African migration within Africa?”