Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, was inaugurated in October of last year, after winning the election on a pledge to block migrant boats and support for traditional “family values” and anti-LGBTQ themes.
This has sparked concerns that the far-right has been using immigration as a political issue to sway disgruntled voters.
In 2015, the European refugee crisis started and peaked. It has created substantial problems to political parties throughout Europe as well as the European Union’s governance. More than a million migrants and refugees came to Europe in 2015. This wave continued until 2016, after which there was a significant decrease in 2017 and 2018.
In 2021, irregular migration to Europe returned to pre-pandemic levels, with around 200,000 unlawful crossings documented at EU borders, a 57% increase over 2020 and a 38% increase over 2019.
Though uneven economic and social recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting all major migratory routes to Europe, immigration from North Africa, as well as Somalia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, continues to climb.
In the case of Africa, images of people crossing the Mediterranean on dinghy boats have become mainstream and caused many to believe that many young Africans are attempting to reach Europe in search of greener pastures.
This could not be further from the truth, according to a study commissioned by the African Union and the IMO in October 2020. According to that study, the majority of African migration in the 21st century occurs primarily on land and not by sea. And, the majority of African migrants’ destinations are within Africa, rather than in Europe or North America.
Africa’s migratory patterns and trends are still largely unknown by the wider public. One area people are especially ignorant of is the entry of migrants from beyond Africa.
In 2012, Portugal’s economy was in the grip of the eurozone’s debt-driven crisis. With the country’s unemployment rate reaching an all-time high of 15%, Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho controversially encouraged people to look for work overseas. As a result, 20,000 Portuguese migrated to Angola that year and subsequent years. At that time, Angola had been enjoying a stunning oil-fueled economic boom, with annual growth rates of around 10% over the previous decade.
Similarly, Africa has become the preferred destination for Lebanese citizens fleeing the country’s economic turmoil. For three years, Lebanon has been experiencing one of the world’s greatest economic crises since the mid-nineteenth century, according to the World Bank. The country’s unemployment rate has risen from 11.4% in 2018-19 to 29.6% in 2022. Lebanon saw a drastic decline in essential services as a result of depleting foreign exchange reserves. To escape economic hardship, a hundred thousand Lebanese moved to Africa in 2020, mainly to Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Senegal.
