A 'migrant boat cemetery' in Lampedusa, Italy. Michele Lapini/Demotix. All rights reserved.As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports, a staggering 137,000 people crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Europe during the first six months of 2015 – twice as much as during the same period last year. One third of them were from Syria, while the second and third most common countries of origin are Afghanistan and Eritrea.
The saddest aspect of this report is that refugees are still forced to undertake risky journeys across the sea using services of organized crime. The fact that so many people embark on what is arguably the deadliest migration path in history has to do with Europe's dismaying immigration policy – the absence of legal entry channels for persons in need of international protection and the gradual elimination of an access to asylum procedure for those who arrive ‘illegally’. The latter occurs through the militarization of EU border zones and through routine push-back operations, detentions, and deportation of refugees and migrants.
At the heart of the problem is the continuous and uncritically used notion of ‘illegal’ (or ‘irregular’) immigration, which is deeply embedded in all relevant political and administrative discourses. This notion of illegal immigration reflects a progressive erosion of the refugee status. It results from the unwillingness of European countries to take on responsibility, collectively or individually, to protect people from humanitarian catastrophes and gross and systematic human rights violations in their countries, to acknowledge the right of the people in these grave circumstances to be recognized as refugees and their right to seek international protection, material help and access to asylum procedure.
