The Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe describes a “politics of separation” that fuels an irrational and counterproductive fear of migrants. In this frame of mind, the only solution to the woes of the wealthy world lies in further securing borders. It’s a fortress mindset, but one that finds support across the political spectrum, and has been exported around the globe.

In Africa, the legacy of colonial violence plays out in border management amid the migrant crisis. Niger, which many West African migrants pass through on their way to the Mediterranean, provides one sobering case study. In 2015, the E.U. tied development aid to the country’s commitment to curbing migration, funneled hundreds of millions of euros toward border surveillance projects, and supported a law criminalizing the transportation of migrants. Smugglers were in turn driven toward remote desert passages, where deaths increased sixfold in just two years.

There’s been pushback to the Global North’s meddling. Juntas in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have withdrawn from West Africa’s primary economic bloc, framing the decision in a joint statement as a rejection of “the influence of foreign powers” in “the spirit of Pan-Africanism.” Whether this is the Pan-Africanism of Thomas Sankara, the anti-imperialist former president of Burkina Faso whose memory is regularly invoked by coup leaders, remains to be seen. In general, the vision of a unified Africa has been distorted over time, as enfeebled national leaders continue to espouse notions of continental unity while largely capitulating to desires for foreign capital. Today, African populations are forced to accept the consequences of foreign powers’ race for resources on their continent, and suffer displacement, violence, and the effects of climate change.

But there is still inspiration to draw from Pan-Africanism. Afrikki, an activist network, convened in Nairobi in February to develop an action plan for seeding political change across the continent — a Pan-Africanism from below. As Ugandan civil rights activist Sylvia Tamale has argued, “the ideal of Pan-Africanism cannot be achieved within the institutionalized coloniality of state politics.” Besides, she writes, ordinary people “hardly respect the made-in-Berlin borders; just as global finance capital does not respect borders when exploiting and dominating African states.”

This sort of grassroots Pan-Africanism recognizes that true human freedom entails more than just choice in the marketplace or the ability to sell one’s labor. An Africa free of borders, open to all who tie their destinies to the continent, might also serve as the basis for a new model of global migration. Entertaining the idea of a borderless world in today’s era of nativism means abandoning our attachment to outdated nationalist ideals, but, as Mbembe reminds us, “the very concept of utopia refers to that which has no borders, beginning with the imagination itself.”