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In migration control policies, social rights are often restricted in order to discourage immigration. The right to education seems to be the exception to the rule. This paper examines whether the right to education – beyond legal technical questions of the personal scope of application of human rights treaties, and the nature and the meaning of the right – is able to provide empowering leverage to undocumented children, or rather remains a lofty ideal on paper. Empirical data are drawn from the Belgian situation. Sociological research has shown that while quantitative educational democratisation has been highly successful, qualitative educational democratisation remains problematic. With regard to undocumented children, real-life limitations to school access (both individual and institutional), as well as psycho-social and institutional impediments during the schooling process seriously limit equal schooling and life opportunities. Unequal responses to organisational and pedagogical challenges that the presence of mobile students puts to schools, reinforce institutional factors of educational inequality for undocumented children. A key factor in understanding the tension between the legal recognition of the human right to education and daily realities is the outright contradiction between the approaches towards education on the one hand, and to migration more generally on the other hand. The latter is increasingly dominated by a securisation ideology.

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Europeans generally assume that sub-Saharan Africa is a continent in crisis, whose population is desperately seeking to enter the European El Dorado. A Eurocentric perception reflected by the academic research which almost exclusively focuses on an African exodus towards Europe. Consequently, evidence of an increasing presence of sub-Saharan Africans in non-European countries is ignored. Hypothesizing about the determinants of this geographical shift, authors have suggested changes in perceptions on Europe as preferred destination for sub-Saharan Africans. This argument is, however, overshadowed by the dominant transit hypothesis claiming a status quo in sub-Saharan Africans' perceptions on and migratory aspirations to Europe. Although contested, the transit hypothesis is still used to explain contemporary subSaharan African migration as in the case of Turkey. Based on a case study of Senegalese in Istanbul, this contribution explores the empirical validity of the transit hypothesis. Acknowledging the legacy of colonization in directing migration patterns, this paper raises the question whether instead of the transit hypothesis the presence of sub-Saharan Africans in non-European countries represents changes in their perceptions on Europe. Qualitative research findings illustrate that perceptions and migratory aspirations are more differentiated and dynamic, challenging the prevailing assumption on sub-Saharan Africans' presence in Turkey. This paper argues that the transit hypothesis fails to do justice to the diversity of reality and supports the argument that we should regard Europe as one of many possible destinations for sub-Saharan Africans instead of the destination.