“A decade or so after the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis, one of the busiest and deadliest entry points to the continent has devolved from crisis to something more chronic,” writes Giuliano Beniamino Fleri, a historian of migration, in a recent New York Times Opinion piece about Lampedusa.
“Lampedusa is the critical but deadly entry point to a continent that fears immigration but cannot live without it. It should be where the paradox of European migrant policy is most visible, but it’s disappearing from view,” Fleri writes.
Lampedusa, which is located between mainland Italy and the North African coasts of Libya and Tunisia, “has been a node along irregular migration routes to the European Union since the 1990s,” he notes.
The first paragraph of the piece is truly heartbreaking, with Fleri detailing how residents of Lampedusa have told him that they’re “used to getting phone calls from people across the sea. Mothers, fathers, siblings and friends call searching for someone who left to try to reach Europe but has not been heard from since. Was a son among the rescued? Did a daughter’s name appear on a list? Does any trace remain? The answer is often no.”
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 