Southern Europe

Since the peak of 2015, the number of irregular border crossings in Europe’s external borders has reduced significantly. From the 2015 high of 1.8 million, in 2016 over half a million crossings were detected, a figure that reduced by a further 60 per cent in 2017 (Frontex, 2017). Most of these detected crossings took place in Europe’s southern coasts, and so this chapter focuses primarily on maritime smuggling, the principal migrant-smuggling method (Frontex, 2018), into five Southern European countries: Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain. The first two – Greece and Italy – are among the top five European destinations for migrants who use smuggling services, with the highest concentration of smuggling hotspots in the European Union (Europol and INTERPOL, 2016), followed closely by Spain (Shelley, 2014). These three countries, together with Portugal, are also among the major hubs of organized crime in Europe (Peixoto, 2009). Malta, on the other hand, is considered by migrants to be a dead-end destination, especially since its accession to the European Union in 2004, as it does not have a mainland territory (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 2011) or “hinterland” (Lutterbeck, 2009). Southern Europe represents a unique subregion for research on migrant smuggling, being the Mediterranean smuggling routes, particularly the central one, the riskiest in the world. They accounted for about two thirds of migrant deaths and missing migrants worldwide in 2015–2016, and almost 60 per cent in 2017 (International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2017). This trend is not abating, rather the opposite, to judge from the available figures for 2018 so far (IOM, 2018a).

Sustainable Development Goals:

Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Reduced Inequalities