West African migration to British colonies was flight from French forced labor

Evidence

French officials estimated that between 2o,ooo and 25,000 workers from Upper Volta had migrated to Gold Coast in 1928. As was the case with the navetanes, these workers were often fleeing French labor requisitions in their home territories. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1417

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarship framing colonial migrations as resistance or revolt, supporting the causal reading of flight-from-requisition.