The illegal immigration in the Mediterranean
Introduction
Illegal immigration in the Mediterranean (end 20th – early 21st centuries)
Riadh BEN KHALIFA and Yvan GASTAUT (University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis)
The Mediterranean is a geographical region where the movement of people remains very strong: Fernand Braudel called it “a place of movement”. Despite the restrictive measures and logistical effort the Mediterranean States have put in place to filter the flow of migrants, many slip through all the controls. Because of that, analysis based on official statistics is unreliable: there are no accurate figures for illegal immigration, which by definition is not recorded. The attraction of the Mediterranean's wealthy countries, which themselves have encouraged the myth of their own perfection, makes thousands of individuals want to move.
Most of this migration being from the south to the north, the “undesirables” are forced to overcome as best they can the natural, legal and police-controlled barriers. There are two forms of illegal immigration: irregular and secret. The security and moral inconsistencies posed by this duality fuel heated debates on regularizing illegal immigrants, insecurity, religion, national preference and national identity. These issues are used by extreme right-wing movements and play an important role in European public opinion, especially during election campaigns or when a tragic event hits the news.
Having realized they can not fight illegal immigration by themselves, Europeans are using their diplomatic forces to involve both the emigration and transit countries in their policies of limitation. The price for this team-work is discreet political blackmail: developing countries such as Libya demand weapons and materiel to strengthen their border police, to finance development projects and to ease restrictions on particular categories of immigrants (businessmen, students, trainees ...). Despite these measures, the media images of trawlers being intercepted, dinghies and other small craft carrying illegal migrants, gruesome discoveries of illegal immigrants drowned and the arrest of trafficking networks regularly make news headlines.
To better understand illegal immigration in its legal, diplomatic and humanitarian dimensions, a first approach, looking at the hot spots in the Mediterranean, would seem essential.
Introduction
A major route, between Tunisia ...
Libya, an ambivalent situation
Leaving Morrocco, or using it f...
Turkey, a turntable
Abstract
The Mediterranean is a geographical region where the movement of people remains very strong: Fernand Braudel called it “a place of movement”. Despite the restrictive measures and logistical effort the Mediterranean States have put in place to filter the flow of migrants, many slip through all the controls. Because of that, analysis based on official statistics is unreliable: there are no accurate figures for illegal immigration, which by definition is not recorded. The attraction of the Mediterranean's wealthy countries, which themselves have encouraged the myth of their own perfection, makes thousands of individuals want to move. [...]
Author
Ben Khalifa Riadh
Assistant lecturer in history, University of Tunis, Higher Institute of Applied Sciences in Humanities.
GASTAUT Yvan
Lecturer in contemporary history, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, URMIS.