Coping with Europe’s Boat People. Trends and Policy Dilemmas in Controlling the EU’s Mediterranean Borders

Irregular boat migration across the Mediterranean has emerged as an increasingly important policy challenge to European countries. It has come to be viewed both as a “security risk” as well as a humanitarian issue, given the steadily rising death toll among the would-be immigrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean from the south.

In response to the “migration crisis” in the Mediterranean, EU countries have, over recent years, devoted considerable resources to strengthening their southern maritime borders. This has involved the increasing militarization of the EU’s Mediterranean borders, as well as an intensification of collaboration in border control between the EU and at least some southern Mediterranean countries.

The main effect of these border and immigration control efforts in the Mediterranean thus far seems to have been a diversion of the migratory flows towards longer and thus also more dangerous routes across the Mediterranean, thus directly contributing to increasing the risks for the undocumented immigrants seeking to reach the EU by boat.

ISPI: Policy Brief: Coping with Europe’s Boat People. Trends and Policy Dilemmas in Controlling the EU’s Mediterranean Borders [PDF] http://www.ispionline.it/sites/default/files/pubblicazioni/pb_76_2008.pdf

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