Paper long abstract:

Since the turn of the century, the numbers of irregular migrants from Africa arriving in southern Europe by boat, often in perilous circumstances has dominated headlines and exercised the minds of policy makers. Migrants without papers embark from countries along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and from West Africa seeking landfall in southern European Union member states where they hope to benefit from the relative ease of movement within the Schengen area. Although a majority are from Maghreb countries, a significant minority make an equally arduous land journey to the countries of embarkation from sub-Saharan Africa, and from places beyond the African continent. Most irregular migrants are clients of illegal organisations and pay to be smuggled. There is a distinction between smuggling which implies a business transaction and trafficking which involves explicit exploitation, although smuggling results in high financial, physical and emotional costs and can readily transmute into trafficking. In response to the influx, individual countries and the European Union have put in place, often controversial, measures ranging from physical border protection to bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements covering immigration quotas. At the same time numerous non-governmental organisations have mobilised to support and/or to critique the humanitarian and legal provision for arrivals. The panel will examine the phenomenon from the perspective of the countries of origin, transit and destination and reflect the experience and concerns of the migrants and those tasked with addressing irregular migration in terms of law enforcement and humanitarian response.