After the recent tragedy in the Med, why can’t we talk about free migration?

Wrecked boats in Lampedusa. Image: Marco Molino.Last weekend 900 people drowned in the Mediterranean. The media has been awash with stories about the catastrophe and many organisations and groups have called for an increased rescue effort in the Mediterranean. But where is the real discussion about migration?

Basically the question this week comes down to this: what should our solution have been for those drowned migrants? In my view there can only be one answer: We should have welcomed them to Europe. There is no such thing as a humane border policy. Migration has always happened and will always happen and any attempt to stop it will inevitably have catastrophic consequences. Yet the right to movement is virtually absent in the current public debate.

I’ve heard many on the right complain in the media that they feel limited in discussing migration (mainly, it seems, because what they want to say is either directly racist, xenophobic or both). But the fact of the matter is that the current debate is stuck in that framing. When almost a thousand people trying to travel to Europe drown, we should not just be discussing rescue missions. When people are imprisoned purely for being in a different country from where they grew up, we should not just talk about the economic benefits of migration. Yet we seem to be unable to actually get to the heart of the matter: people’s right to move.