Sum-up of week 2

Hi everyone! Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this week’s programme!

What have we learned in week 2? Let’s recap what we discussed regarding maritime migration to Europe, the EU’s response to this migration alongside the EU’s longer-term attempts to create a common asylum system.

First we examined the recent increase in maritime arrivals to southern Europe, specifically to Italy and Greece. We underlined how these maritime routes are not fixed but have changed over the years depending on a range of factors. For instance, 2015 saw a massive increase in people migrating on the Eastern Mediterranean route between Turkey and Greece as Syrian asylum seekers began to move en masse towards Europe, although this flow decreased again in 2016, largely as a result of the EU-Turkey agreement.

We proceeded to look at the EU’s attempts to manage these flows through strategic agreements with third countries such as Turkey and by enhancing border controls through the establishment of a European border and coast guard agency and a military patrol operation.

Finally, we looked in depth at how the EU has been seeking to develop a common asylum system since before the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 – for instance, through the implementation of the Dublin regulation that determines which country is responsible for an asylum claim on the basis of where an individual first enters the EU – and we considered the EU’s efforts after 2015 to put into action the principle of solidarity by relocating and resettling some of the asylum seekers arriving in Greece and Italy to other member states.

Next week we will consider some key cases and challenges of contemporary migration in other parts of the world, from migrant agricultural labour and political approaches to irregular migration in the United States to the gender dimensions of labour migration in Latin America; from the refugee crisis of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Australia’s much-discussed policy of relocating asylum seekers to detention and process centres on islands in the Pacific Ocean.