Experts accuse Rome of masterminding the refugee crisis
199 boats carrying 8,500 migrants arrived on the island of Lampedusa within three days. Far-right politicians see the Italian island as evidence of what they describe as Europe’s “flooding” of migrants. Experts disagree.
Chaotic scenes: Lampedusa’s reception camps are overcrowded.
Photo: Agence France-Presse
the Pictures of crowded boats The overcrowded reception camp in Lampedusa had a major impact, as it was no longer possible to provide adequate care for the new arrivals. Multiple French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen of the right-wing populist National Rally party speaks of a “flood of migrants” with a view of the island, which is only eight kilometers long. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 130,000 people have arrived in Italy – about double the number in all of 2022.
But Pierre Henry, president of the French Fraternity, puts these numbers in perspective. Last year, Europe received four million Ukrainians within three months, without anyone complaining about the “migrant invasion.” “A few thousand people are now talking about ‘floods’, which is ridiculous,” says Henry. The current situation cannot be compared to the refugee crisis in 2015, when 850,000 people, most of them Syrians, arrived in Greece.
Migrants arrive in Lapidosa by boat.
Photo: Agence France-Presse
“We are talking about very few people.”
“There is no flood of migrants,” says geographer Camille Schmoll, who specializes in migration. “We are talking about a very small number of people, compared to the major receiving countries in the world.” Türkiye alone hosts 3.6 million migrants, and Iran more than three million.
“The focus is on Lampedusa because the images are impressive and because there is a lot of visibility there – this has to do with the fact that the island is narrow and the reception center is overcrowded,” says Schmall. This situation has been repeated repeatedly since 2011, when 60,000 people arrived on the island within a few months.
Schmoll made serious accusations against the Italian government: It is “deliberately” causing permanent overcrowding in order to turn it into a crisis, criticizing the researcher who works at the French university EHESS and who wrote a book about migration across the Mediterranean. Her colleague Henry also talks about coordination by the Italian authorities in light of the overcrowding of the center in Lampedusa, which includes 389 seats.
“Logistical problem”
French migration researcher Mathieu Tardis says Lampedusa suffers from a “logistical problem.” “If these few thousand people had reached the Italian mainland, it would not have caused controversy. We are dealing with political exploitation,” says Tardis.
Schmall says the far right uses images for propaganda to create fear. She believes that migrants “could easily be accepted into Europe with better coordination.” But the discussion over the European Distribution Mechanism has been deadlocked for years.
Henry says that this debate is fueled by “racist arguments” accompanied by “astonishing images” that do not reflect the reality of migration movements. We are primarily talking about Africans from sub-Saharan countries. But according to European statistics for 2022, applicants for asylum in Europe come mainly from Syria (138,000), Afghanistan (132,000), Turkey (58,000), Venezuela (51,000), and Colombia (43,000).
In addition, due to its geographical location, many immigrants arrive in Italy. However, the country is far from being first in Europe when it comes to asylum applications. Some people are distributed to other countries, others try to reach the North on their own. Of the one million asylum applications registered in European countries in 2022, 84,000 were in Italy, 156,000 in France, and 244,000 in Germany.
AFP/BASH
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