Eurafrican Migration

Legal, Economic and Social Responses to Irregular Migration

Rino Coluccello, Simon Massey, Rino Coluccello, Simon Massey

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137391346
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137391353
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Política

Informed by witness testimonies, Eurafrican Migration details how the perilous journeys undertaken by irregular migrants are enabled by complex networks of guides during the Sahara phase, and explores the relationship between migrants and the criminal groups who arrange for them to be transported across the sea to southern Europe.

1

At the Edge of Europe: The Phenomenon of Irregular Migration from Libya to Italy

Monica Massari

Abstract: The chapter reconstructs in detail the alternative itineraries taken by migrants moving from Africa to Italy. Identifying their shared experiences, it explores the violence and danger faced by irregular migrants, concluding that the relationship between those making and those facilitating the journey is intrinsically asymmetrical. In arguing that the securitisation of Europe’s territory is a failing policy, the chapter recommends the adoption of the more flexible response to immigration taken by developing countries in Europe’s neighbouring regions.

Massey, Simon and Rino Coluccello, eds. Eurafrican Migration: Legal, Economic and Social Responses to Irregular Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137391353.0005.

Introduction: humans not just migrants

After the explosion of the Arab Spring in 2010 and the revolutions that spread from Tunisia to other Northern African and Levant countries, the massive and dramatic rise of irregular migration between the African and European coasts of the Mediterranean Sea has acquired renewed visibility and public debate. Italy’s southern coastline and, more crucially, Sicily and the small island of Lampedusa – after the partial ‘dismantling’ of the sea-route from Libya due to the entry into force of the agreements between Italian and Libyan authorities in May 2009 – have once again become emblematic physical and symbolic places. In 2014, the number of undocumented migrants willing to risk the perilous sea journey to reach Europe reached a peak of around 207,000, while in the same year more than 3,000 migrants died following the so-called Libyan route in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean sea (UNHCR 2014b; Ministry of Interior 2014a).

So far, scientific analysis of the phenomenon of irregular migration by sea has mostly attempted to present the main changes to the routes, methods of transportation and organisation of smuggling networks, as well as the impact of policies aimed at deterring irregular migratory flows and combating smuggling in migrants. These studies, which also contain analysis of the modus operandi of smuggling networks operating in countries of departure, are mostly based on the analysis of the official data available, the outcomes of judicial and police records, media coverage and interviews with law enforcement officers, prosecutors and organisations involved in this field. Hence, research on undocumented and forced migration has been often effectively formulated and conducted from the standpoint of the state (De Genova 2002: 421), whilst, so far, very little scientific analysis from the perspective of migrants who have been smuggled by sea has been carried out.

This chapter will attempt to challenge more prescriptive, state-oriented and officially pre-established research on irregular migration by sea – in other words, the governmental definition of irregular human mobility by sea – by assuming a different perspective which mostly relies on the standpoint of the migrants themselves. Based on the findings of field research involving interviews with 30 irregular migrants who arrived in Italy by sea during the past few years, mostly following the Libyan route, the chapter aims to provide an overview of the phenomenon of irregular migration to Italy by sea, devoting particular attention to the migrants’ experience and expectations, as well as their relationships with both fellow migrants on the journey and those who provide them with ad hoc services along the way: mediators, go-betweens, dallala, passeurs and smugglers.¹

The extremely dangerous conditions on the journey, dramatic experiences of the migrants and sheer number of people who have drowned, estimated at more than 21,000 from 1988 to October 2014 (Fortress Europe 2014), have led the media to frequently return to this phenomenon, eliciting both sympathy for the migrants’ plight and alarm at the numbers involved (IOM 2013). Those who survive are often deeply psychologically scarred by the abuse, violence and inhumane conditions they experience during the various phases of the long journey from home to the destination country. Traumatic accounts given by refugees, by those who escaped from conflicts and persecutions, and by so-called clandestine exiles often recall the memories of those who survived the most notorious massacres of the twentieth century. These narratives are often self-censored as they cannot be easily detached from the trauma that they reawaken (Massari 2013). Migrants’ stories not only relate dramatic individual experiences, but also ineluctably lead us to face the historical, social and political roots of their suffering, as well as the asymmetrical power structures which actually produce illegality, clandestinity and the condition of de-humanisation to which irregular migrants are often confined. These narratives confirm that complex social phenomena, such as irregular migration, lie within an intricate web of relationships and dynamics that cannot be properly investigated without an adequate understanding of the crucial human dimension which can be best explored by assuming the perspective of the migrants themselves.

The geography of irregular migration by sea

The phenomenon of irregular sea crossings began to affect Italy at the beginning of the 1990s in the months immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia when restrictive policies on immigration first started to be implemented. Since then, scientific analysis of the phenomenon has mostly explored the evolution of the migratory routes, methods of transportation and the organization of smuggling networks (Monzini 2007 & 2008; Pastore et al. 2006; Coslovi 2007; Coluccello and Massey 2007) as well as analysing the impact of some policies aimed at deterring irregular migratory flows to Italy and combating smuggling in migrants (Andrijasevic 2006; Cutitta 2008; Delicato 2009a & 2009b).

During the past two decades, Italy has faced a growing diversification of routes. In this regard, the country might be considered both a destination and transit country along a wider migration route directed toward other Western European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and France, as well as, increasingly, Northern Europe. The growing restrictions imposed on international migration have actually increased and diversified the ways, strategies and modalities in which individuals migrate illegally or without legal safeguards. As a result, journeys have become more difficult, because of very stringent migration controls and visa issuance policies, more dangerous, due to the risks which migrants run, and more expensive given the role played by actors and networks who provide their ‘grey’ and/or illegal services. However, it should be noted that sea crossings are one of the cheapest ways to reach the West, although one of the longest (Monzini 2007: 165–166).

Since the late 1990s, the eastern and southern parts of Sicily, including Lampedusa, have seen increasingly significant landings, reaching their highest peaks in 2008 (36,951 migrants), 2011 (62,692), 2013 (35,085) and 2014 with more than 170,000 migrants reaching Italy by sea, as a result of movements prompted by events in North Africa, in particular in Libya, and Syria (UNHCR 2013: 2; De Bruycker et al. 2013: 15; IDOS 2014).² However, if we except the peak reached in 2014, an average of almost 40,000 persons per year reached the sea shores of the European Union from 1998 to 2013 (De Bruycker et al. 2013: 3). In 1999, the Ionic part of Calabria also started to become a destination for migrants coming from Middle Eastern countries: Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. This route has been mostly managed by increasingly specialised Turkish organisations which transport migrants through mother-ships often filled with hundreds of people, who are then transferred onto smaller, dilapidated or very old boats out at sea. Migrants are usually abandoned once they have landed and left to undergo controls by the Italian authorities, while crew members are usually allowed to return (Monzini 2007). The journey along this route is usually longer since it takes several days or even weeks to cover such a long distance with stop-offs in order to take on supplies and involves very hard travel conditions because of the lack of space due to the high number of migrants being transported. In particular, the coastal areas of Crotone, Catanzaro and Reggio Calabria, as well as the southern part of Apulia, have been recently affected by the return of irregular landings mostly originating in Turkish or Greek ports, as confirmed by the increase in migrants landing in these areas since 2010 (De Bruycker et al. 2013: 15). Most of the Syrian migrants landing in Apulia and Calabria depart from the ports in South-East Turkey, such as Mersin, sail across the Aegean Sea, often via Cyprus and Crete where migrants are often transferred to smaller fishing vessels, towards Italy (Frontex 2013: 21). The cost of a place on a freighter from Turkey to Italy is at least three times the cost of a place on the route from Libya. According to Frontex, a migrant can pay US $6,000, plus the ‘fees’ paid by Syrian refugees to the militias controlling the border with Turkey (2014). However, this route avoids having to travel through Libya which is currently considered very dangerous, even for criminal networks.

During the past decade, Italy has become both a destination and transit country for large flows of migrants originating from different regions: the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Indian sub-continent, China, the Middle East as well as North and sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2002, coinciding with the overall re-articulation of the sea routes to Italy due to the growing importance acquired by Libya as the main hub for Mediterranean sea-crossings, an increase has been recorded in migrants from the Horn of Africa, Tunisia (with a peak of 28,047 migrants arriving in 2011), Morocco, Libya, Egypt and Algeria, some West African countries, such as Nigeria, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, and, most recently, Syria (De Bruycker et al. 2013: 16–18; Triandafyllidou 2014: 12). The latest data available show that in 2014, Syrians were the largest group to arrive in Italy by sea (almost 40,000 people), followed by Eritreans (nearly 34,000 people: a threefold increase compared with the same period in 2013), and migrants from Mali, Nigeria and The Gambia (UNHCR 14 November 2014; ISMU 2014; Frontex 2015).

Beside the significant increase in the numbers, data concerning the main nationalities involved confirm that countries affected by conflict, war and political instability are the main places of origin of migrants and asylum seekers, while the political turmoil that has affected Northern Africa since the civil war in Libya, the explosion of the Arab Spring and the on-going conflict in Syria has significantly contributed to the modification of traditional mobility patterns and to the emergence of composite migratory fluxes. Conventional distinctions among economic migrants, forced and irregular migrants, and refugees have become increasingly blurred, since most migrants who already were in the area, especially in Libya, became refugees, while transit migrants saw a drastic downscaling of their opportunities of moving somewhere else (CESPI 2011: 15).

The heterogeneity of migratory routes that have emerged since 2011 has drastically challenged traditional schemes and taxonomies used at institutional as well as scientific level in order to label and define migrants. The definition of ‘refugee’ contained in the main international conventions, for example, is at risk of becoming inadequate as the intricate web of links composing individual lives and personal trajectories, depending on opportunities and constraints arising during the migratory process, makes it more difficult to fix clear borders between forced or conflict-induced and voluntary migration. Even in apparently forced migration patterns, new subjectivities and unedited expressions of agency often emerge as a result of personal choices and conducts, as well as wider social and cultural transformations which challenge traditional definitions used by scholars and policy-makers. Hence the need to problematise the fundamentally governmental language used to categorise migrants which seems to have little utility other than to comply with the State’s need to control migration according to institutional narratives.

Routes and organisation of migrant smuggling

Several factors play a role in the dynamics of irregular migration patterns and migration controls. In 2009, increased surveillance by the Italian government through the adoption of agreements and strengthened cooperation with several North African countries, most notably Libya, were among the key factors which contributed to the drastic decrease in the number of irregular migrants landing on Italian coasts. From nearly 37,000 people arriving in 2008, strengthened border control measures, increased cooperation with southern Mediterranean countries intended to stop departures and facilitate return procedures and, most notably, the implementation of a push-back policy aimed at intercepting migrants’ boats on the high seas and returning them, collectively, to Libya led to a significant decrease in arrivals from 37,000 in 2008 to 9,600 migrants in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  At the Edge of Europe: The Phenomenon of Irregular Migration from Libya to Italy
• 2  The EUs Soft Underbelly? Malta and Irregular Immigration
• 3  Exploitation of Nigerian and West African Workers and Forced Labour in Italy: Main Features and Institutional Responses
• 4  At the Margins of Consent: Sex Trafficking from Nigeria to Italy
• 5  Irregular Migration, Xenophobia and the Economic Crisis in Greece
• 6  A Hidden Catastrophe: Irregular Migration within the Comoros Archipelago
• Index