In the weeks since Chaima Ben Mahmoude and Sabee al Saidi made it to Europe, they have documented their shopping sprees, rides in BMWs and picture-perfect lattes.
A group thought to be migrants from Tunisia on board a precarious wooden boat wait to be assisted by a team of the Spanish NGO Open Arms, around 20 miles southwest from the Italian island of Lampedusa, in Italian SAR zone, on July 29, 2021.
According to the Missing Migrants Project, 2,048 people went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021, with 23,000 missing since 2014. Experts warn that al Saidi and Ben Mahmoude — social media influencers in Tunisia, with nearly 2 million followers on TikTok and Instagram between them — could inspire others to make the dangerous crossing.
In 2021, authorities intercepted more than 23,000 migrants trying to leave Tunisian shores. This number is starkly higher than in 2019, when around 5,000 people were intercepted, and dwarfs numbers recorded over the last decade. “Shame on her? More like, it’s a shame for us!” posted one TikToker in response to criticism of al Saidi’s video. “She managed to make it to Italy, while we’re all stuck here in Tunisia.”
Ben Mahmoude, who like al Saidi grew up in a lower middle-class family in the coastal Tunisian city of Sfax, said all it took was a call to a friend of a friend. She paid 4,500 dinar for a place in the boat alongside 23 others. Wael Garnaoui, a psychologist researching the harka, says this hope is largely based on “the migration lie,” a phenomenon that he says has been intensified by social media.