Unravelling Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

Abstract

Before unpacking the journeys of the refugees and migrants with whom we spoke, we need to first situate the ‘migration crisis’ within its wider geographical and historical context. This is important because it suggests that the ‘crisis’ was neither singular in the way that it unfolded at the EU southern borders, nor one of numbers per se. Migration across the Mediterranean was not new and irregular boat crossings, particularly along the Central and Western Mediterranean routes,1 have attracted attention since the 1990s. Neither should the rise in sea arrivals have been unexpected given events that had been unfolding in the region since 2011, most notably in Libya and Syria. However, while Italy had put in place a set of urgency measures since 2011, Greece was unprepared for the rapid and sudden increase in spontaneous sea arrivals. The failure to provide appropriate reception facilities for refugees and migrants arriving in increasingly large numbers in the summer of 2015 led to chaotic scenes on the Greek islands, a humanitarian crisis unlike that seen previously and an overwhelming sense that the situation was ‘out of control’. This perception was exacerbated by dramatic images of tens of thousands of people moving onwards through Europe.