For Burkina Faso, as with its neighbors in the region, migration has been a way of life for over 1,000 years as people followed livestock and crops on a seasonal basis. In the last 50 years, more traditional migration patterns have been reestablished, though these have retained important colonial characteristics. Overall, one Burkinabè in five now lives abroad. Yet, between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of people living in Burkina Faso who were born outside the country tripled, from 438,000 in 1990 to over a million a decade later, almost 10 percent of the population. Thus, while a net exporter of people, Burkina Faso itself is rapidly becoming a country of migrants.

How to manage a hairdressing salon or a welding shop? What are the basic rights of a worker in the informal economy? Armed only with their teaching materials, the educators trained by the Programme for the Reinforcement of Trade Union Action in the Informal Economy (PRASEI) have reached a total of over 70,000 workers in Burkina Faso. The fact that in Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulasso, Koudougou and Tenkodogo, the workers within the informal economy can now take part in May Day celebrations or convene collective action is the result of successful trade union awareness-raising. All this is the fruit of an intensive grassroots campaign carried out in 14 provinces of the country and led by the 554 resource persons trained by PRASEI.