Colonial Legacies and the Irony of Return Migration

If the Onesimus story teaches us about freedom exercised through choosing to remain, modern migration patterns reveal an even more uncomfortable truth: sometimes the only real choice is to return to the master’s house.

Not out of love. Not necessarily out of loyalty. But out of the crushing reality that the master’s house is the only place where the systems, the language, the opportunities, and the connections exist to survive.

This is the third paradox in our series: after examining theological freedom and political referenda, we now confront the most sobering case of all—the return of former colonial subjects to their former colonial masters.

The Numbers Tell a Stark Story

In the 1950s, there were only 2,000 registered Black African workers in France, mostly from Senegal and Mali. By the mid-1990s, this number had risen to 60,000. Today, over half of all African extra-continental emigrants from former French colonies live in France.

About 85% of Sub-Saharan migrants settled in France come from a former French colony. The same pattern holds across Europe: Pakistanis and Indians flood to Britain, their former imperial ruler. Congolese seek refuge in Belgium. France and the UK host the largest and third-largest Congolese communities in Europe.

This is not random. This is not coincidence. This is the legacy of empire creating paths of least resistance that persist generations after independence.

Why Return to the Master’s House?

Language and Legal Systems

Over 80% of Sub-Saharan African migrants in France come from seven former colonies: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Republic of the Congo, and Senegal.

Why? Because French colonial rule created a Francophone world. When you grow up speaking French, educated in French schools, working under French legal codes, France becomes the logical destination when economic opportunity dries up at home.

The British Empire did the same. Indian and Pakistani migrants speak English, understand British legal systems, have family networks established during colonial labor recruitment. The infrastructure of empire—linguistic, educational, commercial, legal—outlasts the empire itself.

 Economic Dependency

After decolonization, European economies needed cheap labor and African workers were attracted by the prospect of paying jobs.

Here’s the bitter truth: colonial powers extracted wealth from their colonies for centuries, then left those territories economically underdeveloped. When independence came, the former colonies found themselves with:
– Economies structured to export raw materials to the metropole
– Limited industrial capacity
– Educational systems designed to produce colonial administrators, not entrepreneurs
– Infrastructure built to extract resources, not develop local economies

Independence didn’t magically fix these structural problems. So when Africans, Indians, Pakistanis need work, education, opportunity—where do they go? To the places that speak their language, recognize their credentials, and have established migration pathways.

Family Reunification and Chain Migration

A significant increase in students, family reunification and labor migration occurred under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

Once the first wave of migrants establishes communities in the former colonial power, they create networks. Family members follow. Communities grow. The location of family members, friends and acquaintances significantly affects migration decisions, reaffirming the importance of social networks in facilitating mobility.

This isn’t conquest. It’s human nature—seeking safety, community, and opportunity where your people have already established a foothold.

The Absence of Alternatives

The diversification of African migration beyond Europe is partly driven by increasingly restrictive immigration policies by former colonizing countries, prompting Africans with education and skills to explore new destinations in North America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

When former colonial powers tighten borders, migrants don’t stop migrating—they diversify. But the overwhelming pull remains toward the former metropole, because that’s where the systems are familiar, the language is known, the legal pathways (however restrictive) are established.

What are the alternatives? Newly independent nations struggling with corruption, underdevelopment, civil conflict—problems often rooted in colonial border-drawing, resource extraction, and institutional weakness left behind by empires.

This Is Not Freedom

Here’s where the Onesimus parallel becomes darkest.

Onesimus might have chosen to return to Philemon out of love, loyalty, or reasoned assessment that Philemon’s household offered him the best life available.

But modern migrants returning to former colonial powers often do so not out of choice in any meaningful sense, but because **there is nowhere else to go.**

This is not the exercise of freedom. This is the drudgery of humanity—the grinding reality that colonialism so thoroughly restructured the world that even after independence, even after liberation, the only viable path forward runs through the master’s house.

The Depravity is Structural, Not Moral

When we say “depraved of all options,” we’re not making a moral judgment about migrants. We’re describing a structural reality:

Colonial empires created dependencies—linguistic, economic, educational, legal—that persist long after the formal empire ends. These dependencies weren’t accidents. They were designed features of colonial control.

So when independence comes and these structures remain, where do people go? They follow the paths already carved. They go where their language is spoken, their credentials recognized, their communities established, their economic opportunities concentrated.

By 2022, the total number of new foreigners coming to France rose above 320,000 for the first time, with nearly a majority coming from Francophone Africa.

This isn’t immigrants “flooding” anything. This is people following the logical paths created by centuries of imperial connection—connections they didn’t choose, systems they didn’t design, dependencies they inherited.

The Theological Point Sharpens

Now we return to Paul and Onesimus with new eyes.

Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon. Critics scream: “See! Paul endorses slavery!”

But consider: **Where else could Onesimus go?**

In the Roman world, a runaway slave without patron, without papers, without connections faces:
– Certain recapture and brutal punishment
– Inability to work legally
– Vulnerability to violence
– No access to food, shelter, or safety

Philemon’s household, transformed by the gospel into a brotherhood, offers:
– Safety and security
– Food and shelter
– Community and belonging
– Legal protection
– Familiar systems and relationships

Is this freedom? Only in the sense that choosing the least-bad option among limited choices is a kind of freedom.

Is this endorsing slavery? Only if you think Paul should have sent Onesimus into certain death as a demonstration of anti-slavery principles.

The Modern Parallel is Exact

Pakistani and Indian migrants going to Britain aren’t expressing love for the British Empire. They’re following paths of economic opportunity created by empire and reinforced by linguistic and legal continuity.

Over 80% come from countries that were under French or Belgian influence until the 1960s. They’re operating within systems they didn’t choose but must navigate.

Africans going to France aren’t staging a reconquest. After decolonization, European economies needed cheap labor and African workers were attracted by the prospect of paying jobs. They’re seeking survival and opportunity in the only economies that speak their language and recognize their credentials.

This is the drudgery of humanity: we make choices within structures we didn’t create, following paths laid down by history, seeking the best available option among limited alternatives.

So We Blame Paul?

Critics who blame Paul for sending Onesimus back to Philemon operate from a position of privilege. They imagine that true freedom means rejecting all existing structures, breaking all bonds, asserting radical autonomy.

But this is fantasy freedom—the freedom of people who’ve never faced real constraints, never had to choose between bad options, never had to navigate systems designed to exclude them.

Real freedom, the kind Onesimus faced and modern migrants face, looks like this:
– Assessing your options realistically
– Choosing the path that offers the best chance of survival and flourishing
– Working within existing structures because destroying them isn’t an option
– Building community and security where you can find it
– Making the least-bad choice and calling it freedom because it’s better than the alternatives

The Uncomfortable Truth

Onesimus returns to Philemon not necessarily because he wants to, but because it’s the best available option.

Migrants return to former colonial powers not because they love empire, but because empire created the only viable paths forward.

This doesn’t make slavery good. It doesn’t make colonialism justified. It doesn’t make oppression acceptable.

It makes human choice tragically constrained by structures larger than any individual can overcome.

Paul understood this. He didn’t command Onesimus to flee into certain death as a demonstration against slavery. He helped Onesimus navigate reality—the reality that Philemon’s household, transformed by the gospel, offered the best available life.

Modern migration patterns prove Paul right. When people face constrained choices—when the systems, language, opportunities, and safety all point toward the former master’s house—they go there. Not out of love for the master, but out of practical necessity.

Conclusion: The Drudgery Revealed

The drudgery of humanity is this: we rarely get to choose between good options and bad options. We usually choose between bad options and worse options.

Onesimus chose Philemon’s household over certain death as a fugitive.

Tajiks chose the Soviet Union over civil war (and got civil war anyway when the choice was taken away).

Scots chose the UK over economic uncertainty.

Africans, Indians, Pakistanis choose former colonial powers over underdevelopment and limited opportunity at home.

None of these choices represent perfect freedom. All of them represent constrained agency—humans making the best decisions they can within structures they didn’t design and can’t easily escape.

So when we read Paul’s letter to Philemon, we should see not an endorsement of slavery but a realistic acknowledgment of human limitation. Paul doesn’t destroy slavery with a letter. He transforms a specific relationship within slavery, turning master and slave into brothers while acknowledging the brutal reality that Onesimus has nowhere else to go.

Is this satisfying? No.

Is it realistic? Absolutely.

Is it any different from what we see today, as millions of people from former colonies migrate to former colonial powers because those are the only viable paths available? Not at all.

The drudgery of humanity is that we are “depraved of all options”—not morally depraved, but structurally deprived, left with limited choices shaped by histories we didn’t write and systems we didn’t build.

And in that reality, choosing the master’s house—whether it’s Philemon’s household, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, or the former colonial metropole—isn’t weakness or betrayal.

It’s survival.

It’s the tragic exercise of freedom under constraint.

It’s what Onesimus did. It’s what millions do today.

And if we’re going to blame Paul for that, we’d better start blaming every migrant who seeks opportunity in a former colonial power.

Or we could recognize that both Paul and modern migrants are navigating a world they didn’t make, choosing the best available options within systems they can’t individually overthrow.

The only real question is: Are we transforming those structures into brotherhood, as Paul urged? Or are we maintaining the oppression while demanding that its victims demonstrate their freedom by choosing death?