The death of migrants in the Mediterranean is a truly ‘European’ tragedy

Over 300 migrants travelling from Libya to Italy died on 3 October when the boat they were travelling in caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean. Nando Sigona writes that efforts to prevent further disasters taking place must focus on the reasons why migrants choose to risk their lives by travelling to Europe. He argues that the EU has not taken on its fair share of asylum seekers in comparison to developing countries in Africa and the Middle East, and that opening up the asylum process should be a key priority

Why the jury is out on the Commission’s latest proposal for a ‘distribution key’ to help solve the refugee crisis

The European Commission is expected to announce new proposals in the coming months which will aim to reform the so called ‘Dublin regulation’ that assigns responsibility over asylum applications to EU member states. According to a recent statement by the European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the new proposal will be based on a ‘distribution key’ system, which will semi-automatically assign applications to individual states. Nando Sigona argues that given the slow implementation of previous agreements, notably the relocation scheme for asylum seekers agreed in September 2015, there are reasons to doubt whether such a proposal would have the capacity to help solve the current crisis

"A disgusting political lie": EU parents respond to the Children's Commissioner's letter to Michel Barnier

On 13 July, the Children’s Commissioner for England wrote a letter to the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator outlining concerns over the status of children with non-UK EU passports living in England. Nando Sigona argues that by placing the blame for the current situation on the EU, the Commissioner has obscured the role of the UK government in creating uncertainty for EU nationals and their children

Superdiversity’s backstory

In “Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity”, Vertovec returns to theconcept of superdiversity and reviews its uses in different disciplinary fields.Importantly, the book also offers a useful backstory to the concept whichhelps to better locate it into a long standing but not mainstreamanthropological engagement with social complexity. While triggered by anew age of migration and the socio-demographic transformations it wasproducing in London, the concept was also since inception a way ofcapturing the diversification of world views and systems of categorisationbrought by these processes. However, drawing from research I carried outwith EU migrants in London after Brexit, I argue that profound movementsand transformations are occurring under the surface of a city that remains“superdiverse”; changes driven by forces that fall outside the analytical reachof “superdiversity”, leaving the question: what drives migration-driven diversification unanswered

EU families feel more welcome in Scotland than they do in the rest of the UK

In the 2016 EU referendum, 62% of Scottish voters backed Remain, but do the experiences of EU families living there differ from those living elsewhere in the UK? Drawing on new research, Marie Godin and Nando Sigona find that this is indeed the case

Infrastructuring exit migration:Social hope and migration decision-making in EU families who left the UK after the 2016 EU referendum

Since the 2016 EU referendum, estimates on net-migration by the UK’s Office for National Statistics have shown two parallel trends: declining new arrivals from the EU (EU immigration) and increasing departure of EU nationals formerly living in the UK (EU emigration). To date, little is known of the latter and of the circumstances and factors that inform and shape EU citizens’ decisions to leave the UK. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 37 EU families who left the UK after the EU referendum, this article offers insights into their social hopes, migratory trajectories, motivations and decision-making. Using a family-centred approach, the analysis of these ‘exit trajectories’ through the lens of migration infrastructures reveals a range of challenges EU migrants must negotiate and overcome – often within their households. The analysis complicates assumptions of the meaning and experience of ‘going home’ as seen from a family perspective and reveals the intergenerational tensions, challenges and accommodations that ‘return’ produces and how these differently affect each family member. Faced with diverging interests, needs and expectations, families pursued two main strategies for accommodating these differences: a spatial strategy, namely negotiating and choosing a destination that would suit the present and future of the family members, or a temporal one, planning the exit strategy not as a one-off event but taking place over a longer period. However, accommodation and reconciliation are not always possible, leading in some cases to the fragmentation or dissolution of the family unit

Boat migration across the Central Mediterranean: drivers, experiences, responses

Those crossing the Mediterranean from Libya have been described as either refugees or economic migrants. The reality is somewhere in between. The drivers of migration are complex and often interrelated. The most common driver is insecurity which, according to interviewees of this report, came from armed nonstate actors, land disputes, political persecution, or localized situations of civil unrest. Interviewees spoke of violence due to their political affiliation, the threat of imprisonment, and facing corrupt or unfair legal processes, all of which not only put their lives in jeopardy, but also impeded their ability to provide for their families