Safe Migration Awareness Campaign In Rural Communities Of Nigeria, The Procedure And Impacts

International migration is undergoing unprecedented changes. The traditional determinants of migration such as poverty, food insecurity and climate change are giving way to new motivations. These new issues, that include but are not limited to ambitions to live a foreign lifestyle, incomplete and asymmetric information are capable of underestimating the risk in irregular migration. As the information about foreign lifestyle flow freely and new opportunities open, it becomes very difficult to manage irregular migration through border control. Within the transitional mode of international migration, the use of awareness campaigns, especially in rural areas of home countries that target the most vulnerable groups, – school-age youths, could become a veritable means of deterring irregular migration. In 2018, Ricosmigration – Rural Information Campaign on Safe Migration - received funding from the German Foreign Office to investigate why young people from Nigeria migrate irregularly and implement a safe migration awareness campaign for youth in rural secondary schools. This report is from the result of the project which cut across interviews of Nigerian migrants living in Italy, potential migrants in Nigeria, and the result of the awareness campaigns conducted in 10 secondary schools in Edo, Nigeria. In the report, we explain the profile of a potential migrant from Nigeria. We also explore how reduced capabilities to lead the desired life and how the increasing use of social media internet has greatly raised the likelihood of migration in Nigeria. We equally show in the detail how we implemented a randomized experiment to test the efficiency of the migration awareness campaign. The project provides a new dimension to the discourse of the root cause of migration by introducing the role of limited opportunities and freedom (capabilities), low life satisfaction, and incomplete information through social media. Additionally, it shows the power of light interventions such as awareness campaigns in reducing irregular migration. In particular, the result showed that about 77.2 per cent of Nigerian youths that responded to the interview have the intention to migrate abroad, and 37.2 per cent would migrate if they win a cash lottery that is enough to cover the migration cost. Our randomized experiment showed that migration awareness campaign could reduce the risk of being a victim of human trafficking by more than 50 per cent. It could also reduce the desire to engage in irregular migration by more than 30 per cent and increased the decision to take necessary steps to avoid human traffickers and follow proper procedures for safe migration by more than 50 per cent. The awareness campaign had a wide coverage reaching about 7000 students in rural communities in Edo State, Nigeria. The success factors of our awareness campaign include the utilization of appropriate channels, delivery of an accurate message that was tailored to the group we spoke to, and the use of respected external facilitators.