Italy 2023: Central Mediterranean becomes busiest route to Europe

Rome: In 2023, the path from North Africa across the central Mediterranean to Italy became Europe’s busiest migration route. By mid-December, more than 152,000 migrants had arrived this way in Italy.

In January 2023, the right-wing Italian government had only been in power a few months. Elections took place at the end of September 2022 and the government took up their mandate on October 22. They had come to power partly on a ticket to get tougher on migration, and yet, by the beginning of 2023, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy’s shores was rising — not falling.

In fact, as the year progressed, the central Mediterranean route became the busiest migration path to Europe. The Italian government’s latest figures at the time of writing (December 21) show that more than 153,000 have arrived in Italy by small boat since the beginning of the year.

In early 2023, InfoMigrants launched the ninth episode of the podcast series Tales from the Border, focusing on the island of Sicily. The recordings were made when our team visited the island in September 2022.

The numbers of monthly arrivals throughout 2023, with the exception of May, October and November (and possibly December, although the month is not yet over) were far greater than their equivalent months in 2021 or 2022.

August showed a peak in arrivals in 2023, with 25,673 migrants arriving on Italy’s southern coasts, compared to 16,822 in August 2022 and 10,269 in August 2021.

July registered similar levels. In July 2023, some 23,480 migrants arrived in Italy by small boat, compared to 13,802 in July 2022 and 8,609 in July 2021.

And it wasn’t just migrants arriving by boat. Italy’s northeastern borders near the city of Trieste also registered increases. In January, the prefect of the city reported that the numbers of migrants arriving via the Balkan route and crossing Italy’s border with Slovenia had “increased fivefold since October.”

The year began with a flurry of consternation and criticism among private rescue organizations working in the Mediterranean. The Italian government’s decree included limiting the number of rescues NGO ships could make before they had to head for a safe port.

Disembarkation ports, previously located mostly in Sicily and southern Italy, started being placed further and further north, often requiring four or more extra sailing days before the migrants could be disembarked.

The government said this measure was passed to ease the burden on Italy’s southern regions and share reception capacity with the richer northern regions of the country.

NGOs, however, accused the government of seeking to make rescue missions more difficult by essentially slowing down the number of migrants that could be rescued by each boat. The new rule also effectively lowered the number of rescue vessels in the Mediterranean at any given time, which the NGOs said put migrant lives at risk.

Perhaps a side effect of this new policy was to highlight the huge amount of rescues carried out by the Italian coast guard and border police (Guardia di Finanza). Their mission has always been to rescue anyone who gets into trouble in Italian waters. But with fewer and less frequent NGO rescue ships patrolling the Mediterranean, the vast majority of migrant arrivals to Italy were actually being brought in by Italian officials.

Despite the high proportion of rescues carried out, there were also a number of serious shipwrecks in and around the Italian coasts this year.

From file: A wreath is laid on the Mediterranean off Italy to commemorate just some of the thousands who have died over the years | Photo: ANSA

In April 2023, the UN Migration Agency Missing Migrants project documented 441 deaths, recording the “deadliest quarter for migrants in the central Mediterranean since 2017.” Many more may have died — the boats that set off towards Italy do everything they can to avoid detection and no one takes an official tally of who is on them.

More than 20,000 deaths have been recorded on this route since 2014. On December 21, the Missing Migrants project had recorded at least 2,271 deaths on the central Mediterranean route since the beginning of January and an estimated 188,510 attempted crossings, with about 28% of all journeys intercepted at sea.

At least 83 of those who died along the route in 2023 were children, according to IOM.

Earlier in the year, a shipwreck off Libya in January and off the Calabrian coast near Cutro in February took the lives of hundreds of migrants.

All these arrivals begged the question: Why did it appear that suddenly so many migrants were arriving in Italy? InfoMigrants asked Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for the IOM in Italy.

The question came in May, amid proclamations of a migrant “crisis” and “emergency” among Italian authorities, who appointed their own emergency commissioner help deal with the reception of the new arrivals.

At that point in the year, more than 44,000 people had already arrived. The reasons behind the migration are “quite complex,” explained Di Giacomo. However, he said that trying to call it an “emergency” was to fall into the trap of seeing it from a Europe-centric perspective. “In a country of nearly 60 million people, and in a continent of around 450 million people, this is, in our opinion, not an emergency,” stated Di Giacomo.

Di Giacomo said the increases Italy experienced in 2023 could be partly attributed to events on the other side of the Mediterranean. In 2023, Tunisia overtook Libya as the favored point of departure for migrant boats leaving for Europe.

Many Black African migrants experienced increased discrimination and ill-treatment in Tunisia this year, partly stemming from comments made by Tunisian President Kais Saied in February, when he equated them to criminals.

Previously, explained Di Giacomo, Tunisia had been a country of destination for many coming from further south to live and work in Tunisia. But a combination of the worsening political and economic situation meant that even those who had been working in Tunisia for years were starting to see Europe as the only option for them to earn enough money to send home.

Sadly, as demand on that route increased, unscrupulous smugglers started putting cheaper and cheaper boats to sea. Di Giacomo noted a trend of badly soldered metal boats, which served mostly sub-Saharan African migrants. The voyage might have cost marginally less but the boats were liable to break up mid-voyage and capsized easily.

This year, more and more focus was placed on Tunisia. Both Italy and the EU made strenuous efforts to shore up migration pacts and bilateral agreements. European countries offered aid, training and development in return for more engagement from the coast guards and navies that patrol these stretches of water.

In January the Italian government handed over its latest coast guard vessel to the Libyan coast guard. Later in the year, similar packages were offered to Tunisia from Italy and other EU countries like the Netherlands and Germany.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was at the forefront of many of these initiatives. She worked hard to gain credence for her approach to migration throughout Europe and beyond.

At several points in the year, Meloni met with the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Britain had already been trying to push its version of offshoring of the asylum process since April 2022 through the deal it signed with Rwanda.

In autumn 2023, Italy came up with its own version. A deal with Albania, in which non-vulnerable asylum seekers would be processed in centers in Albania. The deal was signed to great fanfare between Meloni and Albanian premier Edi Rama.

The Italian authorities hope it will become effective in 2024. However, the ratification of the deal was delayed by Albania’s Supreme Court.

Amid Italy’s talks of getting tough on migration, the country’s government recognized in a report that in a country with an aging population and a low birth rate, migration to boost the economy could actually be useful.

In parallel to the deals to lower the migration of those without papers, Italy allowed hundreds of migrants to arrive via humanitarian corridors and expanded its seasonal work schemes.

Next year’s contingent, reported ANSA in December, was oversubscribed with applications within hours of it being launched.

Among the doom, gloom and difficulties that many migrants arriving in Italy faced, there were some stories of hope and survival.

One woman survived a shipwreck by clinging for hours to her life vest before she was rescued by fishermen.

Another Bangladeshi migrant was just one of 17 who survived a shipwreck off Libya in which at least 30 migrants are reported to have died.

Siful, a 33-year-old carpenter from Bangladesh, and the eldest of three siblings, was one of those survivors clearly still shaken by his experiences when he spoke to ANSA in March. “I made it, while so many of my fellow travelers drowned before my eyes,” he said.

When Siful recounted what happened, he trembled, reported ANSA. His eyes remain downcast and struggle to hold back tears. “There were 47 of us, all men, on an eight-meter boat that couldn’t hold everyone.”

Some of the migrants who do make it to Italy want to give back after the experiences they have been through, like 28-year-old Ivorian Arnaud Yao.

In March, he spoke to InfoMigrants about the work he does as a community mediator at the Franco-Italian border. Yao arrived in Italy in 2016. As a child of a middle class family in Abidjan, Yao can speak English, Italian, French and Baoulé, the language of his ethnic origin.

After escaping slave-like conditions in Libya, Yao eventually reached Italy and filed an asylum application. He joined a training center to study Italian and soon graduated as a logistics manager in Turin, able to act as a mediator for other migrants.