In the past years, there has been renewed scholarly interest in migrants arriving in, or on their way to, Europe. Much of this research takes the mobile migrant as its object, forwarding analyses that consider experiences of migrants, encounters on the frontlines of migration governance regimes, and the geopolitics of non-arrival policies along the routes towards Europe. While this work is crucial, it is important to critically reflect on how such analytical and methodological approaches reify contemporary migration in Africa as primarily oriented towards European destinations. In this essay, I reflect on how selection bias intrinsic in much qualitative migration research (including my own) shapes the stories we tell about migration. By reflecting on my own research with regional migrants in East Africa, I consider what can be gained by an attention to the manifold routes that channel, constrain, foreclose and open up mobility towards particular destinations.