Can It Be Illegal to Leave Your Country?
For some years now, certain videos posted on Facebook, Algerians’ preferred social network, have been causing a sensation here: They show groups of young Algerians brandishing smartphones and singing, taking videos of one another as they laugh, looking at once happy and worried. Over time, more and more young women and small children appear among them. Diversity may be frowned upon throughout the country, but it reigns, apparently, on the little vessels that ferry illegal migrants away.
In Algeria, these adventurers are called by a strange name: harragas, or border-runners — in other words, the bold and the crazy. The term has long stopped denoting any standard characteristics other than being young, preferably minor; Spanish law, for one, forbids the expulsion of anyone under 18 years of age.… Seguir leyendo »