Migrant Deaths in Europe

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Migrant Deaths: discussion

Between 1993 and April 2018, at least 34,361 migrants died in their attempt to reach Europe, while moving through European countries, or in European immigration camps (data by UNITED for Intercultural Action). According to the Migrant Files project, which combined UNITED data with data from the Fortress Europe blog, the count is at least 30,000 from the year 2000 alone (Heller and Pécoud, 2017). This suggests that the total for the last 25 years is probably close to 40,000 people, including migrants, asylum seekers, refugees. These numbers refer to recorded deaths, and given the circumstances in which migrants lose their lives, it is certain that many more went unrecorded, especially those of people who died at sea or in the Sahara. The magnitude of this death toll raises a question: are these deaths inevitable? The answer offered by several scholars, among others Albahari (2017), Czaika and Hobolth (2016), Zetter (2015), Fargues (2014), is clearly no: these deaths, far from being inevitable consequences of the global migratory phenomenon, are the products of increasingly restrictive European immigration policies, in the context of the identitarian and defensive atmosphere that has been referred to as “Fortress Europe".

The European Union, together with all other UN members, recognizes the right of people to seek protection or asylum in foreign countries: according to the EU Commission, “Asylum is granted to people fleeing persecution or serious harm in their own country and therefore in need of international protection. Asylum is a fundamental right; granting it is an international obligation, first recognised in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees" (EU Commission). Many of the migrants who lost their life on the way to Europe over the last 25 years had been escaping from internationally recognized crises which often justify receiving asylum of other forms of humanitarian protection. The figure below shows that most migrants found dead came from areas that have the highest refugee populations in the world, including Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Ethiopia, Senegal, and others (according to UNHCR data of 2017):

Individuals from most of these countries have a high chance of obtaining asylum abroad, and yet, increasingly restrictive asylum and visa policies make it difficult or impossible for them to physically reach safer countries where they can apply for asylum (Zetter 2015, Heller and Pécoud 2017), a situation confirmed by a 2018 report of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency: “Access to EU Member States’ territory has become more difficult in almost half of the EU Member States covered. Despite a significant drop in newly arriving asylum seekers, in most EU Member States, the management of external and internal borders remained in emergency mode or became stricter.” (EU FRA 2018, p. 4). In other words, while many migrants theoretically deserve international protection, they often do not have a legal or accessible way to actually request it.

The concrete process to request asylum or protection is far from straightforward, and wait times for a decision to be reached range from a few months to a few years. The first and highest barrier to an asylum application, however, is the difficulty of reaching a safe country where to apply (in this case, in Europe): individuals in need of international protection need to first leave the country where they are in danger, find the means to reach a safer country, and then apply. Most African, Middle Eastern and Asian citizens, who make up the majority of migrant populations and migration victims, need a visa in order to travel to a European country legally. Although the Schengen Agreement introduced shared rules for granting visas to non-EU citizens, European countries retain a certain degree of flexibility in setting visa requirements and fulfilment criteria (Czaika and Hobolth 2016). Obtaining a visa has become increasingly difficult for citizens of countries that are considered unable to provide satisfactory security standards, even though this is precisely one of the reasons why citizens try to leave. Zetter (2015) explains this phenomenon as a negative feedback loop: citizens from countries considered unsafe or unable to provide guarantees for the safety and identity of their citizens are assigned a “terror identity” (p. 108). This strongly damages their chances to receive a visa and makes it close to impossible for them to travel legally. Several European countries have also been increasingly criminalizing actions in aid of migrants, as well as redefining and narrowing their criteria to grant humanitarian protection (HRW World Report 2018). Zetter (2015) adds: “Europe offers increasingly less humanitarian protection, and family reunifications have become more difficult. Stricter visa conditions, the criminalization of aiding refugees, and stronger pass and border controls do the rest” (Zetter 2015, p. 180, transl.).

The scarcity of legal pathways to requesting international protection is a major driver for the choice to seek illegal ways to flee abroad. Many migrants, in the absence of other options, embark in dangerous, expensive, and illegal journeys with smugglers, which are connected to the increasing number of people found dead along inner and outer European borders in the past 25 years. Often, these journeys are the product of an institutional paradox where migrants are mostly allowed to stay in Europe, but not to enter. For example, Fargues (2014, p. 3) shows that 86.7 % of Syrian asylum seekers received a positive decision in 2011-13, but almost half of them had to reach their European destination illegally. Similarly, Zetter (2015, p. 71) reports that in the first six months of 2015, about 102,000 unauthorized migrants travelled to Greece and Italy across the Mediterranean, and yet at least 75% of them were from countries in clear need of international protection, such as Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali. There is an evident connection between the absence of legal pathways to requesting protection and the number of deaths during illegal migration: citizens of the countries mentioned by Zetter make up the majority of migration deaths of 2015.

Another key factor in the rise of the death toll is what Albahari (2017) calls the “militarization of the border” (p. 10), i.e. coercitive military action against a perceived invasion threat accompanied by a war-like public narrative. For instance, Albahari (2017) and Ferraretto et al. (2018) mention the southern Spanish border at the Strait of Gibraltar and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast. Spain controls its border with an almost 20-feet high double barbed wire fence, a buffer zone, and high-tech patrolling tools (Ferraretto et al. 2018, p. 58). Migration death map data show that at least 208 migrants died in this area (without considering all the people found dead at sea between Spain and Morocco), highlighting the impact of this border fortification policy. The impact of restrictive policies is particularly visible in Europe’s Mediterranean borders: like in Spain, a connection between migration policies and a higher death toll can be seen in Italy, where a restriction of immigration policies led to less involvement in rescue operations since 2014. As described by Albahari (2017, p. 10), Italy’s southern borders have been traditionally patrolled by the Italian coast guard and navy, which in fact have also been very active in rescue operations. In November 2014, due to increased pressure from several EU states to further control migrant arrivals, EU border security agency Frontex introduced border patrol Operation Triton with Italy’s direction and the voluntary collaboration of other EU states. This operation, with lower funding and a narrower scope than previous ones, restricted the patrolling area to about 30 miles from the Italian coast and had an immediate impact on the effectiveness of rescue operations (Zetter 2015, p. 111; Heller and Pécoud, p. 82). As shown by the chart below, the death toll of migrants increased dramatically as a consequence of this new policy:

Policies of this type have often been introduced in Europe in recent times as a reaction to the so-called migration crisis. As Zetter (2015) points out, however, increased rigidity and closure in the face of a perceived threat stem primarily from internal conflicts among EU countries, which failed to fully achieve the harmonization of social and economic policies that was one of the EU’s foundational ideals. In this perspective, the migration crisis can be regarded as an effect, more than a cause, of these new tendencies, as it exposes the weaknesses of the European system in the face of new global phenomena (Zetter 2015). The feeling of invasion or crisis perceived by many in the EU does not really seem to correspond to current migration flows. In spite of this, Europe’s general approach to managing immigration in the context of shared EU regulations and international human right law has been to a great extent defensive and bureaucratic, with the primary goal of blocking or relocating undesired newcomers (Zetter 2015, Heller and Pécoud 2017). Zetter (2015) highlights how this law-and-order approach is not sufficiently focused on the humanitarian side of migration issues: “We are sacrificing the value of protection to the interests of immigration control” (Zetter 2015, p. 91).

This approach, as mentioned above, creates a negative feedback loop that both produces and amplifies situations of illegal migration. In particular, Czaika and Hobolth (2016) have explored the “deflection into irregularity” effect of restrictive visa and asylum policies. They examined a dataset of apprehensions of irregular migrants at the borders of 29 EU countries between 2008 and 2011 and compared them with UNHCR data on asylum and visa request refusals by nationality. They found that there is a correlation between increased visa refusals and increased illegal migration: “An increase in rejected asylum applicants by 10% turn –on average – into an approximately 3% to 4% increase in the total number of (apprehended) irregular migrants [...] An increase in visa refusals by 10% lead, ceteris paribus, to a 5% to 7% increase in apprehension at the border”. (Czaika and Hobolth 2016, p. 357).

This increase in illegality, which in a way is an artificial one, leads to the criminalization of migrants in general and to an increased feeling of public threat that justifies the use of force (Albahari 2017). One of the most visible effects of this phenomenon is how immigrants often tend to be treated like criminals by law enforcement officers. According to data extrapolated from the UNITED list for this project, death at the hands of the police or other officers is the eighth cause of death for migrants, and the first among man-induced causes (excluding suicide, the seventh cause of death). More migrants were killed by the police than the sum of migrants killed by smugglers, by racist attacks, by arson attacks against refugee camps, and migrants killed after they were repatriated into the country they previously escaped because they were in danger (for a total of at least 295 confirmed police killings, half of which in the past 10 years). This number, while lower than other causes of death more present in the collective imaginary (such as drowning or starving), is quite telling, as it shows how the migrant is being increasingly constructed as a criminal figure that is to be treated as such.

It has been widely established that the media play a crucial role in the creation of this identity (Ferraretto et al 2018, Thorbjørnsrud 2015, Beyer and Matthes 2015, Weber 2014). Ferraretto et al (2018) highlight how the construction of the migrant as a threat, which is instrumental to justify a strong defensive approach, is founded on a lack of adequate historic and geo-political characterization of migration phenomena. As pointed out by Thorbjørnsrud (2015), the representation of migrant figures in the media plays a key role in the creation of public opinion on the matter. With a study of migration coverage by media in France, Norway and the US, she identifies two main “frames” through which the figure of the migrant appears to the public: the law-and-order frame, which tends to create the feeling of threat and emergency in connection to migrants, and the humanitarian frame, which “portrays immigrants as victims of an unfair system” (Thorbjørnsrud 2014, p. 774). Ferraretto et al (2018) identify two further narratives: the spectacularization of sporadic migration incidents or related crimes, and the figure of the European citizen as a victim of migration and the alleged changes and threats it brings about.

The representation of migrants in media is inherently political: the opinions of public political figures, as conveyed and shaped by the media, significantly influence public attitude and perception of immigration, which in turn support more restrictive political actions (Thorbjørnsrud 2015, p. 775). A narrative which frames migrants as “fake asylum seekers”, “irregular job seekers”, “economic migrants” (implying the assumption that economic migrants have no right to protection), “over stayers”, “illegals” (Thorbjørnsrud 2015, Zetter 2015, Beyer and Matthes 2015) supports oversimplified restrictive policies that do not address the migration phenomenon in its complexity. Rather than illuminating long-term interpretations and possible solutions, an episodic and decontextualized media coverage on migration stirs strong personal reactions in both extremes of the public opinion spectrum, from the “criminal” frame to the “victim” frame. By focusing only on pitiful or outraging extremes this sort of representation obscures the broader context in which unauthorized migration takes place, from global crises to the lack of adequate European policies focusing on the humanitarian aspect of migration. This partial view supports a vicious cycle where the lack of a clear and coordinated action towards immigration is increasingly seen as a need and not as a fault of the European system.

Media narratives alone, however, illuminate only part of the public opinion and political agendas regarding migration, as they do not necessarily correspond to the audience’s beliefs, even though they influence them. With reference to the type of media coverage described by Thorbjørnsrud (2015), Beyer and Matthes (2015) investigated the audience’s opinion on the frequency of certain frames (criminal or victim) in the media in US, France, and Norway, with three simultaneous surveys with little over 1,000 participants in each of these three countries across a diverse demographic sample. Their study aimed at investigating whether the audience feels the media cover appropriately positive and negative migration issues. They found that while a negative media framing of migration issues does influence the audience’s opinion, study subjects often tend to mistrust the media’s representation and have even more negative personal beliefs on the matter: “citizens in all three countries have a negative or strict view on irregular immigration clearly highlighting negative over positive aspects. [...] [C]itizens in all three countries tend to believe that the negative aspects of irregular immigration such as crimes or border control are covered too little, whereas positive aspects are covered too much.” (Beyer and Matthes 2015, p. 851). While it can be argued that the public’s impression of migration issues is influenced by media mostly in an indirect way, it was found that personal experience, whether real or perceived, has on the contrary a quite direct influence on public opinion. Through a study of 22,733 survey responses from 15 Western European countries, Weber (2015) found that perception of immigrants as a threat correlates negatively with closeness: on the regional level, where citizens have a relatively direct knowledge of the local implications of migration, “the correlation between immigration and perceived threat is negative” (Weber 2015 p. 130). On the national level, on the contrary, the correlation between immigration and threat perception is positive, suggesting that citizens form negative opinions based on their impression of the situation of their country as a whole, without having direct experience of it. This also seems to suggest that even in situations where the public mistrusts the media’s representation of this phenomenon, the information and representation frames transmitted by the media indirectly influences them to form opinions not supported by first-hand knowledge.

The criminalization of migrants, which as discussed above creates a sense of public threat, also leads to the normalization of migrant deaths: in a progressive dehumanizing process, these deaths risk being subconsciously treated as the inevitable price to pay to maintain security. In this regard, Albahari (2017) identifies a process of desensitization to death aided by media representation. As deadly accidents involving migrants become routine news for the public, in spite of the sensationalization of each account, it becomes “morally acceptable to tolerate migrants’ death” (Albahari 2017, p. 15). They are seen as tragic but inevitable episodes, almost as a necessary evil justified by national defense needs. Migrant deaths, though, are not (simply) tragic accidents: they are structural consequences of the sovereignty policies of each destination State, and of the lack of coordination and sense of shared responsibility among them. According to Heller and Pécoud (2017), these deaths are the product of a “multi-faceted violence” (p. 70) where one of the many factors is undoubtedly the role played by different states.

While EU countries do not seem willing or able to adopt truly coordinated measures to deal with migration in its legal, social, and humanitarian aspects, it is clear that coordinated action across EU borders is the only way forward, because the phenomenon of migration concerns the entire EU block without border distinctions. The issue of migration is indeed above all one of borders, and not just external borders, an image that fosters the feeling of being surrounded by invaders at the borders of the European block (Heller and Pécoud, 2017). On the contrary, the heart of the problem is the EU’s attempt to recreate borders (and to do so at different paces and with different criteria) to stop a phenomenon that by nature is not concerned with borders. One of the most heated points of debate concerning the management of migration fluxes in the EU is determining which country is responsible for processing the asylum request of a migrant and taking care of all related matters (identity verification, case reviewing, relocation, integration process, potentially repatriation, etc.). Currently, the EU follows the guidelines of the Dublin III Agreement (EU Commission), whose key point is that the Member State responsible for an asylum claim is the state where the migrants first entered the EU territory, and in theory, were their fingerprints were first taken. In case a migrant is apprehended in a country different from the one they first entered, relocations are organized to take them back, or to take them to a so-called third safe country (which may not be within the EU). There is no consensus among EU countries about which quota of migrants each Member State should accept, and this system inevitably generates tension between countries that happen to be more or less exposed to first arrivals. While some countries, like Sweden and Germany, have voluntarily accepted higher numbers of asylum seekers for a certain period (Zetter 2015), others such as Hungary and the UK have been unwilling to accept any relocations, and yet others like Italy and Spain have expressed frustration about the lack of balance in the management of migration fluxes.

A country-by-country framework where the Member States have no shared agreement on the treatment of migrants and are increasingly concerned about defending themselves against requests from other States seems to be quite out of touch with the reality of migration. The figure below shows that the vast majority of migration deaths happen during the attempt to cross borders between European countries, or to cross the sea which constitutes the Europe’s first shared border:

The phenomenon of migration concerns Europe as a whole as a perceived unified area of safety and economic opportunity. One of Europe’s key achievements was indeed the creation of a space without internal borders, and that is the way it is viewed by migrants and people in search of international protections. The map makes visible the fact that migrants approach and cross Europe as a whole, following dynamics of family reunification, institutional relocation, escape, and movement in search of opportunity. It seems quite inefficient for countries to act as if such a fluid migration movement could be managed in discrete and static groups to be divided between countries and dealt with without any dynamic collaboration (except for relocating migrants to other countries). The lethal role of European borders seems to be the greatest paradox of a region that originally saw itself as a safe area without borders, and is regarded as one by both insiders and outsiders. The renewed focus of European governments on border enforcement highlights Europe’s bureaucratic and non-cooperative approach to the global migration phenomenon, which, as discussed above, does not leave sufficient space for a humanitarian approach designed for the protection of migrants, international law and human rights (Zetter, 2015).

Any attempt to coordinate migration management measures must rely on accurate shared data on migration. Considering the proven impact that different media or public political narratives can have on the shaping of policy and public opinion, it is evident that the way available data is represented and framed is extremely influential. Heller and Pécoud (2017) distinguish two main approaches to migrant data collection and representation, particularly in the context of data about migrant deaths: a representation aimed at gaining control, and a representation aimed at exposing the failure of migration policies (Heller and Pécoud 2017, p. 72). For the former, they mention the case of the Missing Migrants Project by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the main inter-governmental agency in the field of migration. They point out that while the Missing Migrant Project collects and displays data about a high number of people who lost their lives in migration, the final objective of the IOM icollaboration with European governments in the implementation of their immigration policies. According to Heller and Pécoud (2017), “the IOM aligns itself with the security preoccupations of destination countries and reinforces their capacity for control. Therefore, it contributes to creating the very conditions that lead to border deaths, that is to say the reality which it claims to be representing and fighting in its Missing Migrant Project” (Heller and Pécoud 2017, p. 65). In particular, by focusing on the collection of migrant death data at the external borders of Europe, the project implicitly contributes to the narrative of an invasion threatening the borders of the European block. Operations of this kind are problematic, as they contribute to the reinforcement of a superficial narrative that ignores Europe’s own contradictions and faults in the management of migration.

In opposition to this approach, Heller and Pécoud (2017) mention the so-called counter-statistics, which aim to to contrast the indifference and the policies that contribute to these deaths in the first place. Examples of this approach include the list compiled by UNITED for Intercultural Action, which provides the data used for the present project with a systematic collection of detailed yearly migrant data information starting from 1993. Earlier information (although less detailed) going back to 1988 is available through the blog Fortress Europe, and a partially combined and integrated version of both above mentioned lists is available through the project Migrant Files, discontinued in 2016 (Heller and Pécoud 2017, p. 71).

In conclusion, it seems clear that representing data about clandestine migration and migration deaths does not automatically promote a more humane approach to managing . this phenomenon. While it does give reality and visibility to people who often travel and die as unknown figures, it is a tool that can be used to promote quite diverse narratives, for the humanization as well as dehumanization of individuals. The purpose of the present project is to highlight the discrepancy between the reality of these unnecessary (and often gruesome) deaths and a diffused narrative that considers migrant deaths as a necessary evil, promoting a culture of criminalization of the migrant without engaging with the contradictions of the European system. For these reasons, the primary objectives of data representation in this project are to try and maintain the humanity of people who are only known to us as piece of data, and to encourage viewers to interrogate the reasons that make such deaths possible.

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