Mediterranean: the fortress on stilts?

Méditerranée : la forteresse sur pilotis ?

This image recurs frequently in newspaper cartoons: Europe, impregnable fortress for many illegal immigrants lapping at the gates of Europe. The images of the Coast Guard stopped the passengers of a small motor boat in the middle of the Mediterranean are legion. But beyond this symbol, the migration issue is much broader and complex, it uses the registers has internal and external security, diplomacy, the macroeconomic balance and social cohesion and includes the following issues:

  • circulation within the Schengen area and visa policy
  • the fight against illegal immigration
  • "managing humanitarian" of illegal immigration
  • the policy of attracting "brains"
  • integration issues of people of foreign origin, foreign or naturalized and the fight against discrimination.

Migration flows are by definition. The latter evolve and reappear continually at the mercy of new regulations (visa, asylum, etc.), conflicts, natural disasters, the structuring of sectors, socio-economic situations.

Moreover, in addition to this diversity and these mutations perpetual, the migration issue is a political theme "sensitive", so often activated electioneering.

In response to migration issues that have arisen so common to the European Union after the creation of a single act of circulation, new regulatory frameworks and new resources (agencies, specific body, etc.) were created, especially for border surveillance.

In this area, as Mr Khader, "if the European normative acts relating to immigration and free movement, in general, it is the southern Mediterranean, which is subject to all controls, all attention, all the concerns. Indeed, on nearly 19 million foreigners living in EU states, the quota Mediterranean (mainly from North Africa and Turkey) represents nearly 5.7 million. "

Indeed, the security paradigm has now become the dominant model of migration policies in Europe and particularly in Southern Europe (Spain, France, Italy, Greece).
Although it is difficult to give a firm answer on the question of the number of migrants entering and exiting the South of the Mediterranean, there is strong growth in flows of irregular migrants between 2000 and 2003 insofar the number of irregular migrants intercepted in Spain increased from 1573 in 1996 to 15,000 in 2000. However, from 2004, there is a significant ebb in the number of migrants transiting the Maghreb countries, after the surge from previous years.

In this context, it is important to highlight several trends that lead to relativize the monolithic image that we have migration issues in the Mediterranean:

- A phenomenon of internationalization of migration in a space that has historically been a migratory crossroads (Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia (including Central Asia: Iraq, Afghanistan)
- The feminization of migrants although the phenomenon remains largely male.
- Immigration, especially from Sub-Saharan Africa as a major societal done in the Maghreb. Often accepted as mobility transition of a movement that is projected to Europe, immigration now mark its footprint space and social landscape Maghreb.
- Causes and determinants of these flows south / north still difficult to identify. Poverty is rarely the cause of the retirement decision. Various studies show that the typical migrant is neither an illiterate or unemployed, or a poor person but rather a man between 18 and 30 who stopped his formal education either during school or in obtaining baccalaureate and, in some cases, he or she has studied at university.
- The migration North / South often overlooked. There is a kind of heliotropism is confirmed with the installation of retirees or young Europeans of North African origin in North Africa. These phenomena are still limited yet proven, including the purchase of real estate by EU nationals in Morocco for example.
- The double localization. Migration is less definitive and transport facilities which involve an increasing mobility transforms the migratory. Thus migrants live simultaneously in two areas with frequent trips throughout the year.
- The territorialisation of migration around the concept of co-development. In the Mediterranean, including Italy and Spain where the regional level is powerful, new immigration policies are emerging with the ambition to build on the economic opportunities that can represent the existence of a diaspora in a territory.