Table of Contents
Paolo Magri
Matteo Villa, Elena Corradi
2.
Marta Foresti, Jennifer Hagen-Zanker, Helen Dempster, Christopher Smart
3.
Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, Kate Gough
4.
Daniele Albanese, Matthieu Tardis
5.
Eugenio Cusumano
6.
Enrico Coletta, Giulia Baistrocchi, Giuseppe Ciarliero, Luigi Limone
Introduction
Today we live in the era of peak globalisation. Despite simmering trade disputes, goods, services, and capital easily cross national borders. The same holds true when it comes to labour migration, at least for the high-skilled, rich global North.
Even as globalisation reached its apex, it took citizens some time before they started to fear international trade, finally realising that while trade liberalisation raises average living standards it might also increase the income gap between the richer and the poorer. For international migration, however, it is the other way around: citizens look at people crossing national borders with fear, and it is very hard for them to tackle the issue in a more rational, cool-headed manner.
Part of that is due to the fact that people come with strings attached: when they move, they bring along their culture, their education, and their beliefs. This makes it much harder to weigh costs and benefits in a rational way, and avoid reactions to immigration driven by fear.
By focusing on our emotions and instincts, we often tend to lose sight of the big picture. We speak about protecting our borders, but do not look at whether alternative, legal channels are available to those who may ultimately resort to migrating irregularly. And we tend to look at the future with uncertainty and uneasiness, rather than planning for what awaits for us down the road or even just around the corner.
Even today, Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror. Yet, the 2013-2017 migration crisis (the period of high irregular arrivals to Europe) is increasingly in the past. The Eastern Mediterranean route connecting Turkey to Greece reached its peak level of flows in October 2015 (when more than 200,000 persons crossed the border irregularly in a single month) and ended in early 2016, after the EU-Turkey statement shrunk those flows to a trickle. The same happened in July 2017 for the Central Mediterranean route, after Italy and the EU struck deals with transit countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and convinced smugglers in Libya started to detain migrants for longer instead of sending them at sea as a consequence of more effective control by concerned local authorities.
Of course, today the risk of new, sudden surges in irregular migration to Europe is not zero. Spain experienced a significant increase as late as 2018. Turkish President Erdoan threatens to send more migrants to Europe even as those currently hosted on Greek islands remain in dire conditions. And Libya feels like a powder keg, ready to explode.
Moreover, Europes public opinion does not seem ready to think of the crisis as a thing of the past. According to the Eurobarometer survey, in late 2019, 34% of European citizens still ranked immigration among the most important issues the EU has to face. That was down from 58% in 2015, but it still left immigration as the first reason for concern to European citizens, followed at a distance by climate change (22%) and the economic situation (18%).
The enduring perception of migration as a threat has gone hand in hand with the inability of EU Member States to handle the increase in arrivals by showing solidarity to each other. In fact, inaction and botched responses have likely entrenched a state of perpetual crisis. Many still remember the European attempts to help Italy and Greece in 2015. Back then, Member States formally agreed (not without any complaint) to relocate about 100,000 asylum seekers in two years, from countries of first arrival in Europe to other countries within the EU. Yet today, four years after the plan was launched, just around 35,000 persons have actually been relocated, while more than 600,000 have made it to Italy, Greece, or Spain over the same timeframe.
Against this background, EU countries have hurriedly attempted to come up with patchwork solutions, acting on three fronts. First, they externalised border management, by asking third countries to stop those already on the way, and discourage further departures. Second, they tried to strengthen returns of rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin. Third, they leveraged development funds in order to improve conditions in countries of origin and transit. In the short run, this strategy of containment and local development appears to have paid off, with irregular flows crossing the Mediterranean shrinking every year since 2015. But will it last and are its costs worth it?
In essence, EU countries still struggle to come up with alternative solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways: either for people migrating for work, family and education reasons; or for those in need to get protection in Europe without risking their lives along the route (although some, including Italy, are leading the way in the latter respect). More in general, EU countries appear much less eager to look ahead and plan accordingly.
This is precisely what the authors of this Report set out to do. This Report tries to take a glimpse into the future of migration to Europe. It analyses the structural trends underlying migration flows, the interaction between migration and specific policy fields (such as development, border management, and integration), and the policies to put in place for safe and orderly migration.
In the opening chapter, Matteo Villa and Elena Corradi analyse the structural trends driving migration from Africa to the EU, accounting for demographic and economic forces, and try to leverage this knowledge to forecast what could happen over the next two decades. They focus on Africa, a continent geographically close to Europe and with the fastest growing population in the world. Africas population is set to double between 2010 and 2040, from 1 to 2 billion people. However, the authors find that migration from Africa to Europe is not expected to follow the same trend. Their findings call for a more sensible approach to migration policy, one that puts evidence-based findings centre stage. There is a clear need for pragmatic attempts to investigate plausible futures, and to avoid either scaremongering or minimising the extent of the challenges ahead of us.
