Jean Eric Malabre thinks so.

Picture a situation where your son tells you of a school friend who is in hiding because his parents are about to be expelled, said Malabre, a French immigration lawyer who is also a member of the Paris-based Immigrant Information and Support Group. Writing to the boy's teachers, even the Ministry of the Interior, might start a chain of events that could improve matters.

"Little things, but very practical things, can be done on an individual basis…People can get together and make networks work between South and North for things like this," Malabre told TerraViva yesterday.

In a case where, say, a Malian immigrant was expelled, "A French NGO…can get in touch through e-mail with a Malian NGO, and there will be someone at the airport (in Mali, to receive the migrant)," said Malabre.

"And in France, there will be someone to bring his luggage and go to the bank to get his money…(also) to send his papers, because when they are expelled they are without papers in Mali or in Senegal, too."

The strength of this approach has already been demonstrated, added Malabre, by a French non-governmental organisation, the Education Without Borders Network, which assists young migrants and their families to legalise their status.

But, judging by the debate on immigration that took place Saturday at the Centre International de Conference de Bamako, success stories such as this are still relatively hard to come by. For the most part, migration from Africa to Europe – and from Latin America to the United States – was seen as presenting problems for which there were no easy solutions.

The events of September 2005, when 14 people were killed as African migrants tried to enter the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco, were clearly on the minds of many delegates who attended the discussions. This influx was prompted by Spain's announcement that it planned to legalise the status of about 600,000 migrants who were in its territories illegally.

There was also widespread criticism of the European Union's attempt to get surrounding countries to police the flow of migrants into its member states, certain delegates pointing out that this allowed the EU to avoid the blame for abuse of migrants.

Europe's position on migration was especially ironic in light of events in the 19th and 20th centuries, noted Seif Eddine, who belongs to a Tunisian NGO, El Taller International.

"Between 1821 and 1924, we saw the migration of 55 million Europeans across the world, 34 million to the United States alone. So, immigration was – initially – a European phenomenon," he told a session on migration in the Maghreb.

But, migration does not only bedevil relations between Africa and Europe. West Africans who established themselves in the Ivory Coast, with its relative economic strength – only to be expelled later – have also had negative experiences in seeking their fortunes abroad.

For Amadou Lah of the Malian Association of Migrants Repatriated from Ivory Coast, there is only one solution to the problems of migration: prevent it from happening in the first place, by fighting for improved conditions at home.

"We must look at our own strengths, realise what we can do here," he told TerraViva.