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Saying this without lecturing
The irregular migration route from Senegal to the Canary Islands is real, it is deadly, and the number who have died on it is in the thousands over the past two decades, with the Atlantic route among the most dangerous in the world. A language course could easily turn that into a cautionary paragraph, and this lesson deliberately does not, for a reason worth being explicit about. **The people taking these journeys know.** Ousmane's line is the key to the whole lesson: 'il les connaît mieux que moi'. Families in coastal Senegal know who has drowned, by name. Information campaigns have been running for twenty years. The decision is not made in ignorance of the risk but in spite of it, which means any account that treats it as a failure of information has misunderstood the situation. 'Barça wala barsakh' — Barcelona or death — was a slogan among young Senegalese in the 2000s, and it was not a statement of ignorance. **What the decision actually weighs.** Youth unemployment and underemployment, including among graduates — 'un diplômé au chômage' is a recognisable figure. The near-impossibility of obtaining a visa by legal means for somebody without substantial assets, which is why 'la filière' exists at all. The obligations of lesson 82, which make one earner abroad worth more to a family than one more unemployed graduate at home. And the visible evidence of success: the houses in the next lesson are built with money sent back, and they are the most persuasive argument any smuggler has. **What is argued about, and by whom.** Within Senegal: whether emigration is a safety valve or a haemorrhage of exactly the people the country needs, and what the state's obligation is. Fishermen in Saint-Louis and Kayar argue specifically that industrial fishing — including under EU agreements — has emptied their waters and taken their livelihood, which turns a migration question into a fisheries question; this is contested and the evidence is argued over. In Europe: the whole of immigration politics, which this course will not enter. **This course takes no position** on migration policy, which is not a question about language. What it does take a position on is how to be in this conversation if you find yourself in it, because you may. Do not offer the risks as information — you will be telling somebody what they know better than you. Do not ask whether somebody has papers; it is an intrusive question with consequences. And if you are a person who can cross borders freely, notice that this asymmetry is the subject under discussion, and that being asked to explain how you got your visa is a reasonable question to be asked. The grammar fits the subject exactly, which is why it is here. The past conditional is the tense of what did not happen and might have, and every line Ousmane speaks is in it.