Mediterranean Transit Migration

Undocumented Sub-Saharan african migrants in Morocco / Michael Collyer

Transit migration is a term that is used to describe mixed flows of different types of temporary migrants, including refugees and labor migrants. In the popular press, it is often confused with illegal or irregular migration and carries associations with human smuggling and organized crime. This volume addresses that confusion, and the uncertainty of terminology and analysis that underlies it, offering an evidence-based, comprehensive approach to defining and understanding transit migration in Europe.

This timely book assesses national and supranational bilateral approaches to dealing with the rising tide of migration into the European Union via the Mediterranean Sea. International law and EU migration law specialists critically assess the legal tools adopted to engage with the ‘refugee crisis’. While the EU works to develop a unified approach to Mediterranean transit and origin countries, the authors argue that a crucial role should be accorded to individual states in finding a solution to this complex and sensitive situation.

Particularly in Europe, there is a common misconception that Turkey is primarily a country of emigration (or migrantsending country) and a source country for asylum seekers. However, reality is that Turkey has morphed into a country of immigration, and more prominently a transit country, as a result of intense migratory movements over the last two decades. This paper analyses the evolution of Turkey's migration policies and the way in which EU-Turkey relations have affected Turkey's migration laws and practices.

The upheavals of the Arab Spring grabbed the world’s immediate attention, and concern quickly grew over their potential aftermath, with the fear that a ‘tidal wave’ of immigrants and refugees would ‘flood’ European territory. The Arab Spring has highlighted the Mediterranean as a migration region, and new research is now required to bring to light too often neglected mobility patterns and border practices that predate and outlast the tumultuous spring of 2011. The edited volume Space, Mobility and Borders in the Western Mediterranean tackles these contemporary issues related to migration in the Mediterranean region. It brings together high-quality, original academic contributions from both empirical and theoretical points of view by scholars from diverse disciplines, who draw upon Anglophone, Francophone, Spanish and Italian research. It reexamines borders in the light of a now full-blown body of literature that seeks to capture the complexity of their contemporary features beyond their most direct visual enactments, in particular the sweeping deployment of policing devices and operations along the North/South fault line. Another distinctive binding thread in this book is that it emphasizes migrants as active subjects interacting with local events, national policies and the bordering process. Offering an examination of the intricate interplay among the events of the Arab Spring, migration’s multiple types and actors, and the evolving relationship between migration control and borders in the region, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of migration studies, European Union Studies and Mediterranean Studies.

Migration in the Mediterranean region is a widely debated and much studied topic. This is due to the present refugee crisis, consequences of Arab revolutions, the proximity with emigration and transit countries, but also to the involvement of southern European countries and the mass arrival of migrants. The management of Border controls, migration, development, human trafficking, human rights and the clash or convergence of civilizations has generated a great deal of controversy and media attention. Migration in the Mediterranean offers a unique multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework, bringing together scholars from different subject areas. This book aims to address the following research questions: What are the main characteristics of migration movements in this region? What are the most important theoretical challenges? What are the perspectives for the future? This book begins with an overview of the economic perspective of the Mediterranean migration model, with a particular focus on labour market outcomes of migrants. It then presents the original results of field studies on the unintended effects of the EU's external border controls on migration and integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region, before addressing the themes of mobility, migration and transnationalism. This volume focuses on migration with a multidisciplinary approach, with scholars from various areas including sociology, economics, geography, political science and history. This book is well suited for those who study international economics, migration and political sociology.

This article sets out the main findings of the research project Documenting the Humanitarian Migration Crisis in the Mediterranean, which maps migration trajectories and transit points across Europe in order to develop a humanitarian response to the Mediterranean migration 'crisis'. On their long journeys, people seeking refuge in Europe pass through various places of transit, both informal spaces such as railways stations, parks and makeshift camps, and institutionalised spaces such as reception centres, detention centres and hotspots. The focus on transit points helps to understand migrants as subjects rather than objects and journeys as fractured and complex movements rather than linear routes from A to B. In addition, it sheds light on the effects of migration management policies on people on the move and puts forward a set of recommendations to EU policy-makers.