Alessia Girvasi 7947
Immigration, Family, Social Systems and Education in cultural learning environments
Essay – Refugees in the mediterranean sea
Semester II
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of the migration flow in the area of
the Mediterranean sea. Moreover, the topic that will take the lead role in this paper is the Eastern
Route. Revolving around this there will be three major points: (1) The EU-Turkey statement and
Action plan, (2) Greece, violence, and borders, (3) Refugees and migration during this
COVID-19 times. But before getting into details, it is important to take a step back to
comprehend what is behind what so-called Mediterranean migration “Crisis”.
Trans-Mediterranean irregular migrations to Europe originate in the 1970s with more
than 2.5 million migrants that crossed the Mediterranean sea since then. So this now very
important issue goes back a long time recalling its start after the response to the introduction of
visa requirements for those, who were mostly labor migrants, who until then had been exempted
(Fargues, 2017). Historically it was noticed that there were and there still are three main routes
for migrants, based on the reports published by the International Organization for Migration,
European Council of European Union and the UN Refugee Agency:
1. The Western Route: it is considered the first and shortest route from Morocco to Spain,
crossing the Strait of Gibraltar which is less than 15 km long. This route involved later
also migrants from Algeria, Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, and Cameroon.
a. From 1999 to 2003 the number of migrants trying to reach the shores of Spain
increased rapidly to less than 5,000 to 20,000 due to the policies Spain adopted
for visas.
b. In 2003 Morocco issued a law that criminalized any exit without documentation,
with a penalty such as “Up to one-year imprisonment for the migrant and up to
five years for those facilitating the irregular exit, and life sentence in case of death
of the migrant”(United Nations, 2003).
c. In 2006 the precedent law was enacted but the migration did not stop, it simply
evolved to avoid the surveillance with routes that would pass trough Mauritania
and Senegal to the Canary Islands more than 1,000 km away.
d. Between January and March 2019 around 6,900 migrants between land and sea
arrived in Spain, more than the two preceding years. Thee countries of origin
were mostly Morocco and Guinea. (D’amato, 2019)
2. The Central Route: is the route that includes migrants from North Africa to Italy and
from Albania to Italy. The Italian cost is placed in the center of the Mediterranean sea,
making itself an “entry point in Europe for migrants arriving from all the countries
bordering the sea, from Tunisia to Turkey” (Fargues, 2017). Data shows that:
a. From 1991 to 2001 between 150,000 to 250,000 people made the travel, the
majority of them were Albanian, going through the channel of Otranto.
b. From 2003 to 2010 280,000 undocumented migrants arrived in Italy through the
Channel of Sicily composed of the islands Lampedusa and Pantelleria.
c. The Arab revolts in 2010 caused a peak in the cross-Mediterranean migration. In
the following years, Lybia and Tunisia became transit countries for those who
wanted to smuggle into Italy which led to 62,692 migrants only in 2011
(compared to 4,000 in 2006 and 9,000 in 2010).
d. From 2014 the numbers quadruplicated reaching over 180,000 in one year and
started to subside only after 2017.
e. Between January and March 2019 the number of refugees smuggled in the
country reduced significantly: 500 compared to over 20,000 in 2017. They would
come mostly from Tunisia and Algeria. (D’amato, 2019).
3. The Eastern Route: mainly regards the route from Turkey to Greece, that saw its peak
around 2014-2016. Greece alone received 1,047,939 undocumented migrants which are
66% of all migrants arrivals in the whole Mediterranean sea in the same window of time.
a. The movements of sea arrivals to Greece are defined by two major turning points:
the fence barring the River Evros and the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016.
b. As soon as the land borders were shut, migrants started flowing by sea to the
islands reaching a peak of around 7,000 people per day.
Looking back at the history of the migration process in the Mediterranean sea, there are
two questions that can be brought up from the events, as it is specified in their report published
by IMO:
1. Is it actually effective to erect walls on routes that the migrants take?
It is important to notice that in history and in recent times, closing a route led to the
opening of another one, most of the time longer and more dangerous for the people in the
traveling mission.
2. Who is actually controlling a route, those ones where the migrants embark or disembark?
As the IMO states: “The European Union and some of its Member States subcontracting
the control of migration and refugee movements to countries with poor human rights
records, authoritarian or failed regimes or even countries left to the mercy of militias, is a
particularly worrying issue”(Fargues, 2017).
Getting closer to our modern times it is still unprecedented the number of victims that the three
routes combined have given rise to. It has been estimated by the IOM that the total number of
casualties revolves around 33,761 migrants that lost their lives between 2000 and 2017, making
“Europe’s Mediterranean border by far the world’s deadliest” (Fargues, 2017). The peak of
deaths is shown to be in 2016, exactly when the EU and Turkey went through with the agreement
that led to the closing of the land route to Greece.
1. EU-Turkey Action Plan.
This agreement issued on the 18 of March 2006 can be defined as a statement of
cooperation between Turkey and the European Union in order to control the flow of migrants
traveling along the borders of Turkey to get to Greece and consequently enter the EU. During
those years, as precedently underlined, the large number of illegal migrations was continuously
rising, and combining with the “further deterioration” of the political climate in Europe led to a
lot of pressure on Turkey as responsible for the control of the departures. At the time of the
agreement, Turkey was hosting 3 million refugees, mostly coming from Syria, without being
able to provide effective protection and care for them, while the EU needed the numbers of
incoming migrants to lower down. The results of this are that “ thousands of people have been
abandoned in inappropriate and hostile living conditions across Europe, with little access to
sufficient physical, psychological and legal support” (Long, 2018)
What is exactly this agreement of cooperation about?
The European Council and the Council of European Union released a detailed article
explaining exactly which steps to follow “in order to break the business model of the smugglers
and to offer migrants an alternative to putting their lives at risk” (European Council, 2016).
