Where have all the migrants gone?

It is the middle of August, traditionally the height of the Mediterranean’s migrant-trafficking season. Yet thousands of dehydrated Africans and Asians are not arriving on the shores of the Canary Islands, southern Spain, Sicily and other Italian islands.

True, a handful are coming. On August 8th 40 woebegone North Africans were found to have increased the population of the Italian islet of Linosa by almost 10%. A Catholic charity, Caritas, claimed that seaborne migration in the central Mediterranean was picking up. But figures from the European Union’s border-security agency, Frontex, show that a mere 150 people reached Italy and Malta in the first quarter of this year, compared with 5,200 in the same period of 2009. Irregular migration to the Canary Islands, which was taking in tens of thousands of Africans a few years ago, had almost ground to a halt. In the first three months of 2010, just five people came ashore there. Stories of seaborne migration used to roil the politics of southern Europe regularly. Why not now? And where have all the migrants gone?

Part of the answer is that southern European governments have applied diplomacy (and cash) to the problem. In Spain, successive administrations have made deals with countries in north-west Africa that have pushed the migrants’ available ports of departure southward, making the journey to the Canaries even more dangerous and expensive. More controversially, Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy reached an understanding with the Libyans which allows Italian patrols to return intercepted migrants to the tender mercies of Colonel Qaddafi’s police before they get a chance to ask for asylum.

The flow into Europe is not, however, determined solely by the effectiveness of measures taken to limit it. It is also influenced by the number of those willing to risk their lives and savings in an attempt to breach the frontiers of the EU. That is where things get more complicated—and more illuminating. Read full article in The Economist...