Refugees and immigrants in the Mediterranean
29 October 2015 | In the Media
The war in Syria, the instability in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the repressive regime in Eritrea are the main reasons why hundreds of thousands of people cross the Mediterranean today with the aim of reaching the European coasts.
Xavier Aragall, an expert in migration at the IEMed, delves into the reasons for migrating, the routes used, European border and reception policies, and the implications for Europe, among other aspects, in an extensive article published in the latest Vanguardia Dossier dedicated to the current refugee crisis.
The overlap of two migratory flows, economic immigrants and asylum seekers, is not new to the region but it is a dramatic increase in numbers. This is the peculiarity that has led to the dramatic current situation, which has occurred in large part, according to the analyst of the IEMed, because the protection and reception systems have not worked or have not been properly sized to avoid the crisis. For this reason, and especially because of the magnitude of the number of Syrian refugees, Aragall calls for a significant change in the European Union’s approach to managing the arrival and reception of people.
“It can be said that the EU has so far prioritized coordination over real pooling of resources” writes Aragall, referring to initiatives such as the distribution of refugees from quotas.